Labyrinth of language learning

Lots of people across the world are faced with the challenge of learning a foreign language. You might be in your country of origin wanting to learn a language such as English for your work. Or you might have moved to another country and want to make progress with the local language.  But how do you do it? Is there any prospect of making significant progress? Will you ever be able to give that talk or do that job in another language?  Well, almost certainly yes, but it will take time and staying power. Accept that your ambitious goal may take some time to reach, but, as you make progress, every step is worthwhile in and of itself.  What I can offer is some tips to make your learning more effective .  Let me say straightaway: don't bury your head in an old-style textbook or rely on a language tutor to teach you (their job is to assist your learning) - that is not going to deliver the results you need. Nor is using Duolingo, on its own, although that is...

Just today I wrote my first email in Spanish. It had a few mistakes in it - I asked someone to check it for me and they corrected what I got wrong. But it was intelligible and hopefully I will get a reply. Here it is (corrected): ¡ Hola I! He preguntado a N como funciona el grupo L a C. Me interesa también tu punto de vista.  Más tarde quiero organizar un seminar Zoom sobre esto.   Russell  Having done that, I am now learning the numbers and need to go over the alphabet and pronunciation again. This is the wrong way round... or is it? I don't think it is. I am learning. I can understand stuff in Spanish now and I am increasingly able to compose sentences which are not just modified Italian. Come to think of it, I have never finished a language textbook for any of my languages - not even Esperanto . I have certainly had plenty of teach yourself books, many of which, such as Teach Yourself Russian , proved very helpful. But, like those stabi...

Those of you who know me personally will know that I am an Esperantist, a speaker of Esperanto . Esperanto is what is called a planned or artificial language, invented (if that is the right word) by a Polish Jew, called Ludwik Zamenhof, living in Bialystok in NW Poland in 1887. His vision was to create a language which would be easy to learn and would unite people by serving as a universal second language. Zamenhof authored the book outlining the 16 simple rules of grammar of what he called la Universala Lingvo (the Universal Language) under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (The Hoping Doctor). It was this pseudonym which became the name of the language. Esperanto looks and sounds like a sort of Slavicised Italian. Here is a sample sentence: "En la komenco estis la Vorto." ("In the beginning was the Word"). In my experience Esperanto functions as a language. I have been able to converse in Esperanto and indeed correspond in the langauge. When I was 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...