Trawling for Language Tips

So far, I haven’t gotten much free advice about fast-fluency language learning. One guy suggested prayer. But I’m not banking on that alone. Another reminded me that a mutual friend used to teach in Kiev and recommended I hit him up for a crash course. As it happens, our mutual friend is the one who arranged for me to lecture in Kiev in the first place. So why didn’t I think of that?

Something tells me that my reader-pool is too small for my blog request to bring lots of experienced fish to the surface. After all, this blog is, like, ten days old. (OK, eleven.) Readers may not share my ambition to learn other languages in preparation for short-term travel. And those who dream about it may think it’s totally irrational to make the effort.

But trawling for language tips on the web brings hope. I found my way back to a site that I’ve enjoyed reading before—Tim Ferris’s blog on The Four-Hour Workweek. Check it out at www.fourhourworkweek.com. He has a page on “How to Learn (But Not Master) Any Language in One Hour.” I figured if it didn’t take me an hour to see what he has to say, it could be productive. It was.

We seem to think alike, on this point, at least. His strategy is to size up a language for fluency potential by testing it in specific ways. This takes about an hour. When you’re done, you’ll know enough of the language to know what you’re up against. And that’s a huge first step.

At the top of his article are two screenshots, one titled “Deconstructing Arabic in 45 Minutes,” the other, “Conversational Russian in 60 minutes?” Bingo. Russian. But what’s that question mark about? Ferris has something to say about that later. You know how German is laden with noun cases and variations on the definite article, depending on the role a noun plays in a sentence? Well, he says, “Russian is even worse.” That’s what I needed to hear.

But wait. I like German and I enjoyed studying German in school. So I read on. There isn’t anything more specific about Russian in the article. But his advice is concise and sound (no pun intended). His chief admonition is to treat learning a new language like learning a new sport.

One of the scary things about Russian—encountered right away—is the alphabet. It even has its own name—”Cyrillic.” It’s called that because a 10th century Christian missionary to the Slavic peoples, a fellow named Cyril, had something to do with its invention. The Russian alphabet has a few totally unfamiliar characters. It also has some familiar looking characters, like ‘B’, that don’t sound at all like they do in English (even though there may well be a Russian equivalent for the English pronunciation of a particular character . . . if you follow my drift). The Russian alphabet is a tad longer than the English alphabet, and it includes two or three characters that apparently have no sound at all. On the whole, though, learning the Cyrillic alphabet is really no big deal. In fact, mastering it with surprising ease could lead to premature fancies of fast fluency.

Something especially mysterious to me is the dramatic contrast between some printed Cyrillic characters and their handwritten equivalents. For instance, here’s how “Christianity” looks in printed Cyrillic:

x р и с т и а н с т в о

In handwritten form and italics, the third and sixth characters (pronounced like “ee”) look like the English u, the fifth and tenth characters (pronounced like the English “t”) look like m, and the eleventh character looks like a scrunched down 6, but with the top tip of the character curved back into the center of the character. (I can recreate the word as it should be in italics when I write it in the blog editing window, but the word reverts to the above printed form when it’s saved to the blog page. Another mystery. If anyone can explain that to me, I’d be happy to hear.)

More trawling brings up two sites designed to help language learners connect with native (or otherwise fluent) speakers and writers:

http://myhappyplanet.com/register.php?refid=pNEGLdWo

http://www.palabea.net/

Language learning locations include:

http://www.languageguide.org/eng/

http://home.yabla.com/product/home.php?

http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/bics_calp.php

http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/index.html

For French: http://www.aimlanguagelearning.com/hot-topics.htm

For Russian: http://alanlittle.org/weblog/Russian3.html; http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/e/languages/russian/index.html

For German and Spanish phonetics: http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/

For a translation site, go to:

http://www.travlang.com/languages/

If you bookmark this site and travel with a laptop, you may be able to leave your foreign language phrasebook and translation dictionary at home.

I press on.

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Footnote: Cyril and his brother Methodius labored together among the Slavs. Countries strongly influenced by the Eastern Orthodox church are dotted with well-preserved statues and stained glass portrayals of the pair. They are regarded as the Patron Saints of Europe, and without a doubt their influence in the Christianization of Europe a thousand years ago was considerable. Coincidentally, my last day in Ukraine is May 24, which is Saints Cyril and Methodius day in Eastern Orthodox tradition. On that day, they are often commemorated with a national holiday and remembered for their influence on literary culture and the development of the alphabet—in Russia and the Czech Republic, for instance.