How do I learn languages

Hello, Khabrovites! A long time ago, when dinosaurs walked the earth, and the author of these lines was in the sixth grade, I came across a small book by the Hungarian translator Kato Lomb "How I study languages." I read it and - the Kalabukhov house disappeared. A completely new world opened up in front of me, I was fascinated by the beauty and logic of constructing different language constructions. And it was also clear from the very beginning that each new language is a new chance. Under the cut I will tell you which chances were used, and which were not, and why it happened.



At first, the school was German, but then we moved and from the sixth grade I had to start learning English, since others were not taught in the new school. I have the most vague memories of school German, but the teacher of English, Sima Isakovna, studied with me, sparing no effort, and by the end of the school year I managed, at the very least, to reach the top three. I was so grateful to her that many years later, when I was already living in New York, I found Sima Isakovna with the help of a university friend in Eilat. And here a surprise awaited us all. The only woman who studied English with me, who laid the foundations for the knowledge of grammar-spelling and in general everything that eventually led me to the other end of the world, she, rightly considered one of the best language teachers in the city,my beloved teacher was unable to maintain a simple conversation on the phone with my classmate sabra - neither in English nor in Hebrew. This story does not in the least diminish the significance of everything that Sima Isakovna did for me, but it is an illustrative example of how the teaching of languages ​​at that time was arranged. No matter how you add up the parts of the stroller, you always end up with a Kalashnikov assault rifle. As in the school there is no brisk, but only “knowledge of the language of a potential enemy with a dictionary” comes out.As in the school there is no brisk, but only “knowledge of the language of a potential enemy with a dictionary” comes out.As in the school there is no brisk, but only “knowledge of the language of a potential enemy with a dictionary” comes out.







In general, in high school it became clear that the useful must be combined ... right, with even more useful, and in the summer I went to volunteer at a Baptist camp, where American preachers with their families came. One can argue about the ideological usefulness of this approach, but at that time it was my only opportunity to improve both the language and the budget. Ordinary, non-ordained Americans and Puerto Ricans also came there. Later, I learned that spending the holidays painting the walls of a Philippine church or picking apples in a Breton monastery in the West is quite a good point on a resume. Moreover, the more exotic the occupation, the more favor you can win from the admissions office of the university. Well, be that as it may, it was necessary to communicate with all the newcomers, and there were only one or two speakers in our outback.On the first day, I was in complete prostration from all this talkative, bright crowd and could not put two words together. Out of despair, I decided that since knowledge of English with a dictionary was declared, then it was necessary to use it. I never parted with a notebook, where I wrote down absolutely all the phrases in Russian that I needed to communicate with Americans and translated them with a dictionary at any free moment. And here this advice from the book of Kato Lomb came in handy, which I use to this day:And here this advice from the book of Kato Lomb came in handy, which I use to this day:And here this advice from the book of Kato Lomb came in handy, which I use to this day:

Memorize not with words, but with sentences.

This is not easy for beginners, but after a couple of weeks, this method began to bear its first fruits. In fact, memorizing a language in whole sentences, you kill several birds with one stone: you improve your vocabulary, an understanding of how sentences are built in the language comes, and a ready-made communication tool comes at your disposal. Moreover, this is not at all the same as memorizing ready-made topics like "Landon from the Capital .." . You not only memorize those sentences that are really needed in everyday communication, but you also constantly apply them. In order to make learning more effective, I also used a frequency dictionary: I looked at which words are used most often and made sentences with them. Another good piece of advice from Lomb was

memorize sentences that give you respite:

- Hmm, wait a minute, let me think ...

- The question is interesting, I did not consider it in this way.

- Wait a second, I'll answer you.

I immediately remembered a story about an American who was able to support absolutely any conversation in Russian with just three words: "Seriozna?" Nitshotak and Danunafik.

But poker was the real breakthrough for me. After an underground bunch of his fans formed in the camp, my English went up the hill. Still: standard vocabulary plus constant material and emotional stimulus. The emotional component in any training is very important, it is not without reason that it is said that:

To painlessly learn a new language, you have to be either a child or in love.

Moreover, lovers do not necessarily have to be a native speaker of this very language. The general background and inner mood are important. Curiosity and openness. You do not learn the language, you get to know it, you absorb it with all your senses. The experience of learning languages ​​came in handy later in other areas. More than once I found myself in situations where it was necessary to get up to speed as quickly as possible, and this was a very difficult matter. It can be compared to trying to jump onto the bandwagon of a full-steam train. And one of the most important principles of learning, learned in the process of such jumping, is this:

Let it happen to you.

In place of "it" you can substitute anything you want: English, Java, quantum physics or forensic psychiatry. This means: give yourself time, do not judge strictly for mistakes, but swim forward with all your might as soon as you can. Do not stop.







For me, a dense introvert from the provinces, the most difficult thing was to overcome myself and constantly communicate with native speakers, to find interesting topics for communication (which was very difficult due to significant cultural differences). Therefore, poker became my salvation. I studied language and tactics at the same time. It was the knowledge and contacts tied over an overturned metal basin with a pile of cards in the bushes behind the camp shower that led me to enter an American university. Naturally, this did not happen right on the day after arriving from the camp, and until then I had to go through a lot - and starve, and get cold, and stay on the street. But these scrapes do not belong to the main topic, so let's rewind straight ahead. I remember my first university day well: I urgently needed to find a part-time job,after all, funding was not guaranteed for the entire period of study and constantly had to look for sources of income.



- We only have a vacancy on the "hotline" for suicides, in the evening from 19 to 23 - phlegmatically said a plump black woman in Career Services.

“Suitable for me,” I said quickly.

“Yes, but you won't suit them,” she said.

- Why not? I'm just a doctor, I think I can handle it.

- Your English is not native, how will you advise them, did you think? Neither they will understand you, nor you will understand them.

In the end, I still got the job and again had to jump on the footboard of the train - I was the only employee for whom English was not native. Yes, listening (my understanding of the language) was at first a serious difficulty, but a much bigger problem became ... the Slavic accent! Many of the callers were very strange people (here's a surprise on the line for suicidal individuals, right?), Many found the Slavic accent sexy and tried to use the hotline, um ... well, like another hotline. But this job gave me my first American job and more self-confidence.







With this new confidence, I decided to learn Turkish. Why him? Why not? There are no births in it, no particularly difficult times, no declensions. In addition, it makes practical sense to study the language from different groups: Germanic, Romance, Slavic. So the Turkic is a completely separate and extensive language group. By that time, I had read another book about Henry Schliemann, the discoverer of Troy. About the fact that when boarding a steamer following a transatlantic voyage, Schliemann took with him a book he already knew, but in a language he did not yet know. And two weeks later, walking down the gangplank in New York, he was already able to speak this language. And so with the Turkish language, I decided to test the effectiveness of this method. Took detective Sidney Sheldon, where the action takes place, among other things, in Istanbul.And for six months she signed with a thin pencil each unfamiliar word in this text. Then I had to read this book again, because by that time I had already forgotten what was being discussed. What do we end up with? Basic knowledge of Turkish helped me in student backpacking trips not only in Turkey itself, but also in Xinjiang (Uyghur was easy to understand, and in Chinese it was enough to know basic hieroglyphs for “exit” and “women's toilet”;)), Central Asia (and there would have been enough Russian, but Turkish had more discounts). Suddenly, Turkish was very useful to me after moving to Germany, since here it is almost the second state language.What do we end up with? Basic knowledge of Turkish helped me in student backpacking trips not only in Turkey itself, but also in Xinjiang (Uyghur was easy to understand, and in Chinese it was enough to know basic hieroglyphs for “exit” and “women's toilet”;)), Central Asia (and there would have been enough Russian, but Turkish had more discounts). Suddenly, Turkish was very useful to me after moving to Germany, since here it is almost the second state language.What do we end up with? Basic knowledge of Turkish helped me in student backpacking travels not only in Turkey itself, but also in Xinjiang (Uyghur was easy to understand, and in Chinese it was enough to know basic hieroglyphs for “exit” and “women's toilet”;)), Central Asia (and there would have been enough and Russian, but with Turkish there were more discounts). Suddenly, Turkish was very useful to me after moving to Germany, since here it is almost the second state language.since here it is almost the second state language.since here it is almost the second state language.







Moving to Europe - and the train accelerates even more, and it is customary to lubricate the footboard with oil. In general, under the terms of doctoral studies, protection was provided in English. But even packing my bags, I firmly decided that I would start learning German from the first day, so as not to be limited to the framework of the expatriate ghetto.





I had a month of vacation after moving and I used it all, from the first to the last day: three hours of German courses a day, an hour off, three hours to prepare homework, an hour off, and then another couple of hours of watching teaching materials on YouTube, or films with subtitles. During the breaks, I had to run around the shops and offices, take shape and settle in a new place. After starting work at the Institute of Forensic Medicine, I continued to attend evening courses for several months.



And then it came - the Christmas blockage.



It is no secret that it is during the time before and after Christmas and the New Year that the highest number of suicides occurs. There are more fatal accidents in the pre-holiday bustle. All bodies for which there are reasons to suspect a violent death must be opened within a reasonable time; they cannot wait in the refrigerator for the end of coroner's holidays. At the same time, the end of the year is also the flu season; many of the institute's employees fell ill and did not come to work. Therefore, by order of the director, absolutely all employees were put on autopsies, even graduate students, who, in fact, were engaged in virtual autopsies, not real ones. It took me all day and half of the night for the first autopsy, because I endlessly had to take off my gloves, look for a suitable definition in the dictionary, check the nomenclature,put on gloves again, weigh, measure, and so on. The next day, I pasted over the tiled walls of the sectional hall with yellow stickers with synonyms, adjectives, and phrases borrowed from old conclusions. Now it was necessary to take off and put on gloves much less often. A dictaphone was suspended at the level of my face to dictate the conclusion without interrupting the recording. And yet the work progressed at a snail's pace. I came to work at 7.15 and finished closer to 23. A couple of times I stayed overnight in the lab, just because I didn't see any reason to go home for a couple of hours. But when the damn Christmas blockage was over, it turned out that I had acquired incredibly valuable skills and significantly expanded my vocabulary.The next day, I pasted over the tiled walls of the sectional hall with yellow stickers with synonyms, adjectives, and phrases borrowed from old conclusions. Now it was necessary to take off and put on gloves much less often. A dictaphone was suspended at the level of my face to dictate the conclusion without interrupting the recording. And yet the work progressed at a snail's pace. I came to work at 7.15 and finished closer to 23. A couple of times I stayed overnight in the lab, just because I didn't see any reason to go home for a couple of hours. But when the damn Christmas blockage was over, it turned out that I had acquired incredibly valuable skills and significantly expanded my vocabulary.The next day, I pasted over the tiled walls of the sectional hall with yellow stickers with synonyms, adjectives, and phrases borrowed from old conclusions. Now it was necessary to take off and put on gloves much less often. A dictaphone was suspended at the level of my face to dictate the conclusion without interrupting the recording. And yet the work progressed at a snail's pace. I came to work at 7.15 and finished closer to 23. A couple of times I stayed overnight in the lab, just because I didn't see any reason to go home for a couple of hours. But when the damn Christmas blockage was over, it turned out that I had acquired incredibly valuable skills and significantly expanded my vocabulary.A dictaphone was suspended at the level of my face to dictate the conclusion without interrupting the recording. And yet the work progressed at a snail's pace. I came to work at 7.15 and finished closer to 23. A couple of times I stayed overnight in the lab, just because I didn't see any reason to go home for a couple of hours. But when the damn Christmas blockage was over, it turned out that I had acquired incredibly valuable skills and significantly expanded my vocabulary.A dictaphone was suspended at the level of my face to dictate the conclusion without interrupting the recording. And yet the work progressed at a snail's pace. I came to work at 7.15 and finished closer to 23. A couple of times I stayed overnight in the lab, just because I didn't see any reason to go home for a couple of hours. But when the damn Christmas blockage was over, it turned out that I had acquired incredibly valuable skills and significantly expanded my vocabulary.



Now you are reading this article, and I am sitting at my work console and dictating another conclusion into the microphone in a patter. In most cases, dictation, such as an MRI of the knee, takes less than one minute. Sitting across from me is Jean-Pierre, his Alsatian accent can be difficult to discern in small talk, but a trained speech recognition system instantly translates slurred muttering into elegant text. Natalia, a colleague from Hungary, is also whispering nearby into her microphone. When she first started working, it took her up to five to six hours to complete one MRI report, then an hour, then twenty minutes, and now she practically does not lag behind the pace of the others. And this is the next trick of language learning:

Übung macht den Meister (“Patience and work will grind everything”).

After moving to Switzerland, I came to the conclusion that it is necessary to master at least half of the state languages. Every Swiss high school graduate (and, therefore, every university graduate) is fluent in at least three or four languages, and did not want to lag behind colleagues.







The choice fell on French, since it is the second most common language in the country, which means it facilitates communication with almost 25% of patients. Plus, this is a new language group, plus it can be used to communicate in Canada, many African and some overseas states. Plus Maxim Leonidov bequeathed him to us... Wherever you go, there are some pluses everywhere. And then a fiasco befell me. I've spent nearly four years on courses, books, software, podcasts, and other study materials, and about the cost of half a decent car. But to this day I have not managed to reach the level at which I speak English and German. No, I am quite capable of reading Le Monde, and on the rare occasions when I sit down in front of the TV, I only watch French news channels. I don't need an interpreter to understand what the extract from the medical history is about. But I’m at a loss if I need to call somewhere in Strasbourg and ask them to send pictures of a patient, and I certainly cannot give even the simplest presentation in French. Listening is a scourge of English, grammar is a scourge of German, irregular verbs are a nightmare of Russian,but the French language combined all these difficulties and a host of others. In her book, Kato Lomb wrote:

"After the third language, everything will go smoothly with you."

Perhaps, but I never managed to speak fluently in a third language, I do not consider myself a polyglot, so it was not possible to verify this postulate. What did my knowledge of French give me? Is it just that I can now help my child with school lessons. Almost all the French patients here speak either German or English. And those patients who have a language barrier speak completely different languages. Thanks to a Google translator, I have already managed to successfully see patients in, among other things, Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya and Swahili. There was still a story with the latter.





And here we return to what I already said at the very beginning: each new language is an additional chance. It can have a very definite monetary value (somehow I came across a study where it was shown that fluency in every foreign language for a Swiss means, on average, an additional two hundred francs to monthly income, for life). But it may not have. A chance is not a guarantee. Sometimes it does not lie at all in the plane in which it was originally expected, but this chance exists.







When I was in Belgrade a couple of years ago, I accidentally got into a conversation with a Serbian colleague named Branko, and he told me that during the NATO bombing every night I had to go down to the shelter and it was impossible to sleep in such conditions. Therefore, in order to somehow distract himself, he decided to choose an occupation for himself that was least connected with the surrounding reality: he took a Chinese textbook and set himself the goal of one lesson for three days, twenty hieroglyphs a day. Gradually, the system of constructing the language began to emerge, the components of the hieroglyphs acquired meaning and the rate of memorization rose to fifty, then to eighty per day. When the bombing ended, a group of Chinese construction workers came to Belgrade to help rebuild the city. In the evenings, Branko went to their site and after a while noticed with amazement that he was quite capable of communicating with them. And no,today, he is not the oligarch-co-owner of a Chinese logistics firm, as the law of the genre might say. But he still has a lot of good Chinese acquaintances, he has been many times at their invitation to China, he has been given good side jobs more than once. For himself, the most important thing Branko considers is that he managed not to go crazy, but even to use that dangerous and difficult time for personal growth.



And for everyone who has the patience to read this longread to the end, the most important advice from Kato Lomb:

Language is a fortress that must be assaulted by all means.

Good luck with your assault.