What is the secret to not just studying, but truly acquiring a language? It's not only about memorizing words and putting them together. In fact, this has proven to be boring, discouraging, and exhausting for many, many people.
So, it's not about memorizing word lists until you can suddenly go and speak one day!
Language is a social tool, and language is inextricably tied to culture. Culture is inextricably tied to how we think (more on that here). And how we think leads to how we express ourselves.
Truly learning a language is about understanding Culture, Context, and Colloquialisms. Catchy, right? Here's how that translates (no pun intended) into actually speaking a new language in record time:
1.) We, as learners, need to overcome cultural barriers to understand how the native speakers THINK, in order to learn why they communicate differently. This requires a willingness to listen to others and reconsideration of our own views of how things work.
In Spanish, when you're cold, you HAVE cold. In Russian, you say it's cold TO you... enter blurriness about whether cold is really solely in our personal perception, or an outside factor that we are subjected to.
2.) We need to integrate unfamiliar concepts into appropriate contexts for full, usable understanding of the new material. Word-for-word translation can stop working in the first month, or even first WEEK.
Some languages have different contexts and connotations, matching two different words for "and." In some languages, one article before a word changes its meaning (think "morning" and "tomorrow" in Spanish).
Context, context, context. Without it, we are shooting in the dark.
3.) We need to embrace the novelty of expressions which sound "strange" in order to commit colloquialisms to memory and adopt them into their lexicon.
In English, when we're angry, we've "had it up to here". When we're busy, we're "up to our eyeballs" in work. Imagine how many of these there are in other languages! It's all worth exploring, comparing, rethinking, and embracing.
Does it all seem like an insurmountable task? It's not! I give you multiple strategies to do exactly this in my e-book, which was recently released on Amazon.
(You do not need a Kindle to access the book. It is simply available through Amazon on desktop or through the Kindle app, which is free for all mobile devices.)
Open up a new world of opportunity by learning a language - you won't regret it!
