How to Learn Any Language 11
Gathering Your Tools
You’ve decided which language you’re going to learn, and you’ve made a deal with the grammar of that language: you agree to learn it, and in return it agrees not to rush you, bore you, discourage you, or hurt you.
Now it’s time to go shopping. Find a bookstore that offers a broad selection of language learning materials. Don’t settle for one where the clerk is not sure but says, “We might have something in French and Spanish over in ‘Language.’”
BASIC TEXTBOOK
Find a basic book (textbook, workbook) that gives you a good grounding in the grammar of the language. Never mind if it seems to give you grammar and little else. Never mind if it reminds you of the books that depressed you back in high school and college. We’ll find all the excitement – reading and conversation – elsewhere. Grammar is all you need from this one.
DICTIONARY
Most language dictionaries are two way: English-French (or whatever) and French-English. Make sure the dictionary you buy at least lives up to that. (I have walked out of bookstores with dictionaries I assumed were two way that turned out to be only one way, and the way I wasn’t looking for!)
A lot of dictionaries are infuriatingly inadequate. They don’t even have words like negotiate and proprietor. Spend a little time making sure you’re getting something substantial. It’s a good idea to look through a newspaper and make a list of some of the more complicated words in the news columns. Those are the words you’ll soon be looking up. Does that dictionary have them? Price, colour, and the neatness with which the dictionary fits into your pocket, brief case, or handbag are a lot less important than finding a dictionary that can deliver.
PHRASE BOOK
Buy a phrase book for travellers. Berlitz publishes a series in eighteen languages, and others keep popping up in bookstores and the racks of airport newsstands. They’re inexpensive and easy to use. These books, smaller than a piece of toast, offer little or no grammar, but they bristle with practical words and phrases, listing the English followed by the foreign language and then a transliteration that guides the rankest beginner to an understandable, usually a creditable, pronunciation.
Don’t be put off by the naïveté, inexpensiveness, superficiality, and comparative weightlessness of these travellers’ phrase books when laid alongside your impressive dictionary and your complex grammar book. Good zoos need hummingbirds as well as elephants.
NEWSPAPER OR MAGAZINE
Find a newspaper or magazine in your target language. Most big cities have newsstands where you can buy publications in a dazzling variety of different languages. Otherwise, call the nearest consulate or embassy of the country whose language you’re out to learn. Usually they’re proud and pleased to help you. If you have a choice, go for a publication from that country itself, rather than one published by immigrants from that country in America. Certainly no foreign language publication printed in America is likely to contain language more authentic than publications printed in the home country, and it may very well be less authentic.
A friend of mine who set out to learn French immediately bought a subscription to Le Monde, a popular Paris daily. That’s overkill. If he were to learn every word in any one issue of Le Monde, it would be “mission accomplished.” One issue of one publication in your target language at this point is all you need.
STUDENT READER
It may be difficult, but if possible see if you can locate a schoolbook or some reading material from the country at about a sixth grade level. Such books are obviously excellent bridges from the rudiments to the real world. If you can’t find one, never mind. Your newspaper or magazine will seem elementary to you soon enough.
PORTABLE TAPE PLAYER
The invention of the handy portable cassette tape player catapults language learners from the ox cart to the supersonic jet. You can now inhale a foreign language through your ears. “You can’t expect me to do two things at once!” is a bygone complaint. Listening to foreign language cassettes as you go about your daily deeds is a high form of doing two things at once.
The Walkman (or any such tape player) is an electronic can opener for whatever language you’re learning. Formerly we had to chew through the tin.
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