Pre course 2 – Learning a language

The second part of my journey of pursuing a long-held dream of mine was to reminisce how it is to learn a language.

The idea/goal of this is to think back when you learned English (or a foreign language in general) and about the difficulties you had. Which tricks you pulled out of your sleeve to help you with it. Which ideas/techniques were best and which completely bad so that you can use said techniques to teach and help others to learn.

The section is divided into three simple questions:

1. Where did you learn?

2. What helped you learn?

3. Were there any negative aspects that made it more difficult to learn or less enjoyable?

In the end they put a video of a Ted talk about learning languages with 5 great techniques to learn a language, which turned out I’ve been doing all 5 of them when I learned Spanish.

I was really surprised and I can confirm that it works as you can see from my español muy bueno.

Anyhow, I thought I’d share the five techniques with you and my experiences with them so it may help you learning a language as well:

1. Make Mistakes

I think this is the single most important advise on this list and therefore the first one:

Make freaking Ms. Steaks!

If you learn Spanish then you know that the conjugation of the verbs can be really intense – especially the irregular ones like yo sé of saber (to know). And it happened so many times that I said “yo sabo” instead which means “I jizz” – slightly something else.

This happened irregularly but it happened until one day somebody taught me this little phrase and explained me what it meant:

Sabo, sabo, la leche de mi nabo. (Jizz, jizz, the milk of my dick).

Since then I never had this problem again. I just want to say that I did not find a source which completely proves or disapproves it.

2. Scrap the Foreign Alphabet

This is somewhat true I would say, depending on the language you’re learning. When I learned Spanish the pronounciation is somewhat similar to German, especially the vowels.

On the other hand the English alphabet is pretty much useless regarding how to pronounce the words.

The idea behind this is that you should not to focus too much on the alphabet as it will mislead you most of the time.

When I learned Japanese with all these special characters you need to find a way to learn them. In case you don’t know, for Japanese learners there is this “language” called Romaji which uses Latin letters to write the Japanese words. This is pretty good and makes it a lot easier to understand. Just have a look at this:

たたかいつかれて おやすみグッナイ まぶたを閉じれば よみがえる (ぴかちゅう！)

compared to:

Tatakai tsukarete o-yasumi gunnai Mabuta wo tojireba yomigaeru (Pikachuu!)

I’m pretty sure you’re having less trouble reading the second one and even understanding at least one word.

And that is the point: When you learn a language don’t be too strict about things you know and do NOT compare your target language with what you know. Otherwise you’re going down a path which is really hard to get off from and end up with this horrible accent you will not get rid of.

I remember for Japanese I wrote underneath all the sounds and words little notes how I would pronounce them which includes my knowledge about Spanish, English, German and sometimes the very dialect I grew up with.

3. Find a Stickler

If you’re unfamiliar with this term it basically means to get a grammar nazi as a friend (it should be a native speaker though).

The idea is that when you speak with him he will immediately correct you and explain you why you’re wrong and why you’re bad, basically all of my teachers and employers.

I mentioned it before in some of my entries but I had such great experiences with it, the app HelloTalk is perfect for that. I met a bunch of people with whom I had this special kind of friendship. Some of them I’m still friends with and we still help each other (often turns into a lovely mocking) with the foreign language. We tease because we love.

The thing with a friend though – and that’s my impression – it’s not as offensive/aggressive as with a teacher (or a stranger) who of course also points out your mistakes in order for you to improve. If you do it in a tandem it goes both ways so there’s no room for any hard feelings.

I felt more mad about myself when they pointed out the very same mistake for the fifth time in an hour or something and you’re just annoyed/let down by yourself. It helped me though to finally remember things.

4. Shower Conversations

Oh, boy I’ve been doing this so much and for so long. And for me this is the best advise on this list because I’m pretty sure this helped me the most practicing my language skills.

Shower conversations is just a nice description for talking to yourself – if you’re lucky enough to find someone that practices French with you while taking a shower, congratulations.

Other than that why not practice with yourself. (Sounded less dirty when I thought about it).

The great thing about this is you get to know your weaknesses. You get a feeling how fluent you are which can be devastating but also very fulfilling.

Not only do you have the same conversations as in school with the same people and the same topics – of course you switch roles sometimes but nobody would dare to ask you where you got that scarr from on your arm and try to tell this story in a foreign language for the first time.

Want to get a tattoo? Tell yourself what kind of tattoo you want and why you want it.

Going/Went on holiday? Tell yourself in the plane your perfect holiday or what exciting things you’ve done.

Read some exciting news? Tell it to yourself in another language.

As you can see these shower conversations are very versatile. It’s super convenient to have them in the supermarket, metro, waiting room of the doctor, you can do it anywhere, anytime.

Just make sure to have a dictionary nearby to look up some vocab quickly. Or even better don’t! Try to explain if you don’t know the word – actually a good tip when talking to others.

Extra tip: Bring a pen and notebook to write down things you want to check, discuss with a teacher or friend or just some jokes you invented (this did happen to me actually).

Don’t be afraid to talk to yourself also you can say things you wouldn’t tell other people.

Heck, I still talk to myself in my head sometimes. A few weeks ago I went to the dentist (first time for me to go to the doctor in Spain) and I had a conversation in my head how he would ask me all the stuff like my health insurance card and he would mention my name and I would say that I was from Germany and so on and so on …. obviously this is not how it turned out but still. This, for me, is one of the best things to learn a language.

Side note: Writing a blog that nobody reads has kind of the same effect.

5. Buddy Formula

This is probably the one thing EVERY language learner tells you: Immerse yourself with native speakers.

There is no, really NO, other way to become fluent in a language without speaking to natives.

Watching movies and listening to music is one thing to get a feeling for a language but you are far away from success if you’ve never had a full conversation with natives. Most of the times you learn the things when you’re just a bystander and listen to what they say and how they say it.

Simply for all the things no teacher would teach you (swear words is only a small part of it).

An English teacher would never use the phrase “bitches be crazy” as it is just wrong and doesn’t want you to learn bullshit – as well he would have failed then. So don’t use it!

I’m referring to what I wrote in my post why South America is best to travel as you learn one language and have so many opportunities to talk to people, have great experiences and simply a hella good time.

Of course this is easier for some languages than others, so you might want to learn a language which it is cheap to go to.

A land where a pint is less then a quid, for my British lads.

A land where a gram of cocaine is cheaper than the place you get your coffee from (not that I know how much cocaine is).

A land where you want to go to is actually another good tip, so you might want to look into this.

If you’re currently learning a language I’m sure some of these tips can help you in some where or another. So enjoy!