Labyrinth of language learning

It's been ages (over three weeks!) since I last published a blog post on language learning. I have been busy, in part, with language teaching, so I would like to share some things I have been observing about this process.  1. Keep reinforcing the basics. So often with foreign languages, we repeat basic mistakes which we learnt a long time. There is always merit in reinforcing basic points and this also increases learner confidence. 2. Have a plan. How many times have you said to yourself, "I need to brush up on my German (or your language of choice)." Organise your learning in some way. Set aside time every day - even five or ten minutes can make a difference, 30 minutes is ideal. If you are going to attempt an hour or more, you might want to break the time up into slots of 20 minutes, so that you can be more effective. And have a plan. In one case I wrote a simple learning plan based on identifying the verbs in short text. This evolved into learning to recognise verb...

This morning I started to read a book on relationships. The opening chapter began with a description of a marriage which had deteriorated. The author observed, "It had not always been like this." The idea being conveyed was that a marriage was now bad, but there had been times in the past when it had been good. As I thought about this phrase, I thought, "I wonder how you would say that in Russian?" And then I began to think about clarity and ambiguity and how easy it is, in a foreign language, to either 'get the wrong end of the stick' or to fail to convey what we mean, and our hearer/reader 'gets the wrong end of the stick'. So, the translation into Russian of the phrase, "It had not always been like this," would be four words. These could be arranged in at least the following four ways (the underlined words are emphasised). Так было не всегда. It wasn't like that always . Не всегда так было. It wasn't always like th...

Language learning involves attention to detail. We have all interacted with people who have half-learnt our language, and when they speak or write at times the 'connection' is lost entirely. Half-learners gabble, say confusing things, experience major interference with their native language and make the same mistakes all the time. It can be tiring, even annoying to converse with them. And often they don't realise or do anything about it. At the present time I am involved in several situations which require attention-to-detail language learning and teaching. I thought it would be worthwhile sharing some things I am learning. 1. Always go back and check things. Even if you are certain you have written or said it right. I have worked long enough as a translator to know that mistakes creep in and can be overlooked. A completed translation would require at least three start-to-finish read-throughs and checks. Language learning would be much the same. 2. Find objective w...

The subject of this blog post is inspired, of course, by the film Aladdin, the latest version of which includes this masterful performance by Will Smith. This post is about language lessons - either for those giving the lessons, or for the learner. The 'genie' in this scenario is the instructor/tutor and 'Aladdin' is the language learner. How do you do language lessons? How do you organise the time and what activities are useful? Let me share my experience - and maybe you can message me with your thoughts. Straight off, let me say clearly, that when it comes to language learning, I am not 'old school'. I can still remember the weekly 'old school' Russian grammar lectures at Cambridge University, scheduled first thing on a Monday morning, at which the lecturer delighted us to every possible metaphor for murder in connection with Russian grammar: "Last veek ve drowned verb aspect and zis morning ve vill strangle ze dative case!" By c...

The significance of the picture to the right is the saying, "An elephant never forgets." And, indeed, remembering is a big part of language learning . To master a language, a working vocabulary of 2000 words is required. Besides vocabulary, there are also phrases, grammatical endings and constructions to remember. This does take time and effort, both to learn and to be able to retrieve what you have learnt. I want to talk about how to make that effort in a way which is effective, not wasting energy on what will not deliver the result you need. So how do you do it? Let me suggest some ways I have used to remember language . 1. One artificial way of remembering words is to come up with some association . My Hebrew teacher taught us to associate the Hebrew derekh (road) with the name of my current church minister, Derek. The word for yellow in Russian, jolty , sounds like the word for a dayglow jacket ( jilet ). I remember the German for elephant trunk, because it ...

The title of this post is based on a saying in English, "to call a spade a spade." This means to say things directly, rather than using euphemisms or not saying what you really mean. However, I am using this saying to show how words can have different meanings in different languages.  Most of the languages I know are Indo-European, that is to say they derive from a single parent language called Proto-Indo-European, which was spoken as a single language about 4500 years ago somewhere in modern-day Ukraine or Turkey. Its speakers then spread as far as India in the East and Ireland in the west. You can even listen to a reconstruction of that original language here . Native speakers of Indo-European languages account for almost half the world's population (3.2 billion people). The relevance of all this for language learning is that when I, for example, as a native speaker of English, learn, say, Italian, then lots of the words will be familiar. The numbers will sound th...

One of the most difficult things to 'get' in a foreign language is humour. In case you did not understand the title of this blog, it is a reference to something people say when a joke is not found funny by the hearers. In other words, background information ('being there') is required in order to find something funny. Often jokes function by saying something unexpected. Here's my first joke for today. Two Irishmen are talking and one says to the other, "What do you think about the Covid 19?" His friend answers, "Ach, they are probably innocent; they should all be set free." This joke - in case you don't 'get' it - is based on several high-profile court cases in the United Kingdom, when groups of men, designated as 'the Birmingham Six' or 'the Guildford Four' etc., were accused of terrorist crimes and later exonerated (found not guilty). The joke is based on someone thinking Covid 19 is another such case of wro...