This is, however, only part of the lesson, and not even
its more difficult part. It is at least just as important to be
able to reproduce the sound, stress, intonation, and rhythm
of speech that you have made conscious. This is where men,
“the crowns of Creation,” are handicapped compared to
women. Imitation ability is much less common in men,
who tend to be too shy to venture a facial expression alien
to them.
When someone resolves to acquire it, he will have to
diligently practice “scales” on the sounds and sound clusters
unknown in his mother tongue. You wonder which ones?
First of all, those whose incorrect pronunciation changes the
meaning of the word.
A Hungarian knows several versions of the sound “e.”
Therefore he will not have a problem comprehending words
with “e” that are pronounced differently. However, the
Englishman is not so fortunate. The English word “bed” pronounced with a closed “e” and the word “bad” pronounced
with an open “e” mean completely different things. “Bed
manners,” mentioned so frequently in the literature of our
age, should not be confused with “bad manners.”
I would like to mention two aspects from my own experience. One is that you should do this “phonetic drill”
with words that don’t exist in the target language: nonsense
words. The reason for this is so you don’t confuse them with
actual words.
For example, the difference between the sounds “w” and
“v” is especially difficult for us Hungarians. Let’s practice,
then, syllables like wo—vo, wa—va, we—ve, wi—vi, etc.
Walking or taking a bath, waiting for the tram, or doing
your hair are good opportunities for it. I can especially recommend the latter because you can easily check your mouth
position in the mirror.
It is also instructive to notice the pronunciation mistakes of foreigners who speak your mother tongue. Listen to
them with the consciousness so important in language learn-
94 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
ing. “I’ve actually understood the pronunciation rules of
German from Siegfried Brachfeld’s60
Hungarian,” an attentive friend of mine once told me. Whoever heard a speaker
of English asking for thölthőthollthintha
61
in a store will
never forget the rule of aspiration.
Generally, radio, TV, and language cassettes provide
good models of pronunciation. Of course, they are worth
the time only if you pay special attention to them. For example, listen to how an individual sound is different (shorter
or longer, closed or more open, sharper or flatter) from the
way it lives in your mind. Even if you learn only one sound
at a time, you can still build a decent collection of lasts.
It is even more important that you learn the correct intonation of words and sentences. You can effectively ingrain
them in your mind by recording radio and TV programs
and playing them back repeatedly. The eternal rule holds
here as well: you should do this for a short time but with
full intensity. Don’t sit next to the radio or the tape recorder
with your thoughts wandering among yesterday’s experiences or tomorrow’s hopes.
TV is an excellent way to learn languages because it often
shows the face in close-up: at such times, you can hear the
sound and you can practically read the right mouth position
from the screen. I envy my foreign—e.g., Dutch—fellow
language learners: they see undubbed foreign films on TV
and therefore have the opportunity to hear the foreign language for one or two hours a day andsee the transcription in
Dutch in the subtitles, should they miss something.
Even if I understand the reason, I greatly regret that
original-language audio tracks are so rare on Hungarian TV.
60. Popular Master of Ceremonies of German birth, who lived and performed in Hungary in the 1970s.
61. Töltőtolltintameans “fountain pen ink.” Hungarian consonants “p,”
“t,” and “k” are pronounced without aspiration (release of a strong burst
of air, like a short “h”), which is usually hard for native speakers of English
to master.
Reading and Pronunciation / 95
We language students are very grateful for them.
There is no need to emphasize the usefulness of language courses, especially if they provide the opportunity to
listen to a lesson twice. Let’s contribute to the success of
classroom language learning by not following it with only
half our soul and one of our eyes.
I would be happy to write here that the educational
achievements of recent years have solved our language learning problems. Unfortunately reality hasn’t proved our rosy
hopes right. Most of us come home from work tired; we are
more likely to stick to crime movies and westerns than improve our foreign-language speaking skills. As for teenagers,
they are thirsty for pop songs, which usually do not provide
clear models of spoken language. Videos can enrich our vocabulary and improve our sentence construction skills, but
only if we watch them repeatedly. According to my own informal surveys, this is not typical of fans of videos.
97
11
_______________________________
What Sort of Languages
Do People Study?
≈
UNESCO sent out a questionnaire a couple of years
ago to find an answer to the above question. After they had
collected the responses, they didn’t name any languages.
They only reported that people tend to study the languages
of peoples living at their country borders because these are
the languages they are most likely to use.
If that is the rule, Hungary is partly an exception to it.
Of the languages that Hungarians acquire, Czech,62
Serbian,
and Romanian are rare. Our linguistic isolation is such
that we have to learn languages with a large “radius of action” to obtain a passport to the world. Happy Switzerland:
it has embraced three world languages within its borders.
Whichever language a Swiss chooses, he or she will have an
open door to several million speakers.
Our language is spoken, apart from Hungarians here
and abroad, by only a few hundred people motivated to
learn it for some kind of personal (emotional) reason, the
interesting nature of its linguistics, or to read our literature.
62. The Czech Republic is not a neighbor of Hungary, but Czechoslovakia was until the end of 1992, when it dissolved. Czech and Slovak are
mutually intelligible languages.
98 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
Thus it is all the more curious how often you seem to meet
speakers of Hungarian abroad. When a compatriot of ours is
waiting at a red light, stamping his feet in anger and swearing
with the impatience typical of those in Budapest, someone
often looks back with a smile, indicating that Hungarian is
actually a world language and one should not relieve one’s
temper this way in Brussels or in London.
Many years ago, an international youth conference was
held in a northern European city. I admit I was not included
in the committee as a representative of Hungarian youth but
as an interpreter. To arouse interest among the local population, organizers suggested a procession and asked the participants to appear, if possible, in national costumes. Along
with the natives, our little group applauded the Dutch girls
in bonnets, the Japanese girls in kimonos, the Polish guys in
mantles, and the Scottish guys in kilts, who provided a really
attractive sight.
Suddenly, I noticed the ebony black sons of an African
nation approaching naked to the waist, their face painted in
colors, with swinging, purple feather headdresses.
The African group arrived beside us and one of them—
the leader, judging by his more colorful feathers and his longer spear—caught sight of us.
“Hi, Kate!” he shouted enthusiastically in flawless
Hungarian. “Where are the Budapest guys?”
It was T. M., who had spent four years at a Hungarian
university and maybe found nothing surprising about the
fact that someone who had been born around the Equator
could speak impeccable Hungarian.
How does one decide which language to learn? How
does one decide which language his child will learn? The
answer is usually connected to usability and facileness.
I will discuss usability in the chapter on the future of
languages. As far as easiness is concerned, the decision is
personal. In Hungary (as in most other countries outside
the “big” languages), we have no lack of teachers, course
What Sort of Languages Do People Study? / 99
books, dictionaries, or theoretical and practical literature on
methodology. Therefore the learner can select the language
that suits him best.
You sometimes hear people claim that there are nice and
ugly languages, or rich and poor ones.
Italian is usually considered to be the most beautiful by
the layman. It is praised for being soft and melodious.
Italian is pleasant to the ear because it builds its words
with many vowels and few consonants. German is considered less so. At best it can compete in the olympiad of languages with sentences like Laue Lüfte wehen lind.Is this sentence likable because there are several l ’s in it, or because it
spontaneously evokes its translation, which also flows nicely:
“Warm breezes are blowing gently”
63
?
Russian is often considered more manly than ingratiating, though the poet Fyodor Sologub found nice-sounding
words to praise his darling:
Beley liley, alee lala,
Bela byla ty i ala.
64
The original sounds more beautiful than my rough-andready translation: “You were white and rosy, whiter than a
lily, rosier than a ruby.”
65
“The acoustic phenomena of language are hard to distinguish from the influence of meaning,” Béla Zolnai wrote
(Nyelv és hangulat [Language and atmosphere]). The rigid
or soft ring of words doesn’t only depend on the combination of sounds! You fall into a reverie when hearing the
word “violet”: what a gentle, kind little flower. The word
“violence” clangs angrily in your ears, although its letters are
almost the same. The word “Andalusia” tinkles softly, but
63. Hungarian: “Langyos szellők lágyan lengedeznek.”
64. From Plamennyi krug[Circle of flame], 1908.
65. “Ruby” is poetic license; “ЛАЛ” (lal) is red spinel.
100 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
“vandalism” clangs roughly, even though both words come
from the same root. You react to the word fülbemászó
66
one
way if it means a catchy tune, and another way if it means
an ugly earwig.
Czech and Serbian usually earn bad grades in melodiousness. They are condemned by public opinion because
of their complex consonant clusters. Crni vrh(black peak)
is usually quoted from Serbian: it consists almost solely of
consonants. The reason why I think Czech doesn’t have
a pleasant effect on the ears is because it has word-initial
stress: i.e., it is always the first syllable of a word that raps
your eardrum. This may be the reason why Hungarian is not
considered nice either.
“What do you call your darling?” an Italian soldier in
World War I asked his Hungarian comrade.
“I call her galambom [my dove],” he replied.
“Ding-dong, galambom,” the Italian wondered. “But
it’s a peal of bells, not an endearment!”
Many have attempted to attribute expressive features to
sounds. Few did it more poetically than Kosztolányi:
Oh, the l’s Full of l,
elegance, full of i,
and the m’s full of n,
melody, full of e,
pastoral full of creams,
poesy full of dreams,
pining for full of screams,
Melanie. Melanie.67
66. Lit., “into-the-ear-crawling” in Hungarian, used as an adjective of
music and as a name of an insect.
67. From the poem “Ilona,” translated as “Melanie” by P. Zollman. The
Hungarian original: “Ó az i / kelleme, / ó az l / dallama, / mint ódon /
ballada, / úgy sóhajt, / Ilona. // Csupa l, / csupa i, / csupa o, / csupa a, /
csupa tej, / csupa kéj, / csupa jaj, / Ilona.”
What Sort of Languages Do People Study? / 101
Much more prosaically, we can also state that some
sounds occur in words with certainmeanings with an aboveaverage frequency—for instance, the vowel /I/ (as in “bit”)
in the meaning “tiny.” Let’s just consider the Hungarian
words kis, kicsi (small, little), pici (tiny), German winzig
(tiny), Russian mizinyets (little finger), English little, itsybitsy, teeny-weeny, French minime, Italian piccolino, Spanish
chiquito(little boy), the word piti(petty, no-account) in the
Hungarian argot, and bikini, even smaller than a mini(mini
skirt), even if it didn’t get the name from its size. Do the
words Donner, tonnerre, thunder, гром гремит (grom gremit:
thundering thunder) sound so grim because of the frequent
occurrence of “r,” or because of their ominous meanings?
The beauty of a language is, therefore, generally judged
by its soft, rigid, melodious, or harsh ring. Other aspects,
such as the flexibility of derivation, play hardly any role in
grading. Were it the case, Russian would certainly be placed
on the winner’s stand. It would rank first in plasticity.
Gold is said to be the most precious metal because a
nugget the size of a cent can be hammered into a sheet of
considerable size, without losing the slightest bit of gleam or
color. Russian is not dissimilar. For example, let’s start with
the one-syllable word “СТАТЬ”:
стать stat’ become
ставить stavit’ put
оставить ostavit’ leave
остановить ostanovit’ stop
приостановить priostanovit’ suspend
приостанавливать priostanavlivat’ cease
приостанавливаться priostanavlivat’sya be discontinued
приостанавливаемый priostanavlivayemyy stoppable
A complicated structure? Undoubtedly. But after all,
the cathedral of Milan is complicated too, and you still look
at it with awe. The C major scale is simple, but it is not especially nice; however, the Jupiter Symphony, built from it,
102 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
is a wonderful masterpiece.
Language is a servant and a compliant lamb of humankind. It varies its existing devices so that every idea should
be suitable for translation in its entirety. He who is frightened by the number of suffixes in Finno-Ugric languages
should think of the infinite variety of combinations of isolated words in English. The meaning of a sentence depends
on what building blocks you move about on the chessboard
of your thoughts.
For example, the verb “to turn” changes meaning completely when certain adverbs are added to it. These combinations of verbs and adverbs, called phrasal verbs, need to be
remembered one by one, as new words. Here are just a few
examples:
I turned down (I rejected)
you turned up (you appeared)
he turned in (he went to bed)
we turned over (we sold)
you turned out (you produced)
they turned on (they switched on)
There is a separate chapter in this book about the question of languages being easy or difficult. One general truth,
however, needs to be mentioned here.
The language that is usually considered the easiest to
learn is Italian. This is so because there are relatively few
rules needed to recognize the relationships of sounds and
letters, to build them into words, and to create sentences
out of them.
103
12
_______________________________
Language and Vocabulary
≈
YOU OFTEN hear that there are “poor” and “rich” languages. One language may indeed offer more synonyms for
a concept than another; I don’t know of any exact survey in
the field. However, while a language may be rich in words to
express a certain concept, it can be surprisingly deficient in
words expressing another. Hungarian is no exception.
Our translators like to sigh that they can’t render all
the shades of meaning within foreign literary works into
Hungarian. I admit that we are poor here and there. For
example, we have only the word “hang” for the German
words Stimme, Ton,and Laut.
68
The English words “seed,”
“nucleus,” “pip,” “core,” and “semen” can always be rendered
with one Hungarian word, mag ; the words “grain,” “kernel,” and “stone” can mostly be rendered with it. But what
other language can pride itself on the ability to differentiate
between felszabadulásand felszabadítás, and felhalmozásand
felhalmozódás?
69
68. German: “voice, tone/note, sound.”
69. Felszabadulás and felszabadítás mean “liberation”; felhalmozás and
felhalmozódásmean “accumulation.” They derive from transitive and intransitive verbs, which are distinguished in Hungarian but which often
coincide in English. Hence, their literal meaning is approximately “becoming free” vs. “setting sb/sth free,” and “becoming accumulated” vs.
“accumulating sth.”
104 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
German is usually considered the richest language. Yet
it doesn’t have separate words to express a) a skill that can be
acquired and b) an ability that depends on circumstances,
unlike French, Russian, and Polish. In those languages Je sais
écrire, умею писать (umeyu pisat’ ), and umiem pisaćmean
that I can write because I have learned it; je peux écrire, могу
писать(mogu pisat’ ), and mogę pisaćmean that there is no
external obstacle to my writing (e.g., I have a pen and it is
not forbidden, either). The translators’ sigh was caused by
the difference between the French pouvoirand savoir: Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait—“If the young only knew,
if the old only could.”
English has a separate auxiliary verb to express possibility depending on permission: may. This was what provided
the answer for G. B. Shaw when a mediocre translator asked
him if he could translate one of his works. “You may, but
you can’t,” he replied. Without these auxiliaries, it could
only be rendered awkwardly as “You are allowed, but you
are not able.”
The above lines about the auxiliary may have led me
to a topic that often comes up nowadays: the special vocabulary of the young. It is criticized by many and praised
by many others; I belong to the latter group. Rarely documented, it often proves indispensable. A teacher explained
to a German class that the auxiliary mögen70
has no equivalent in Hungarian. “And what about csípem
71
?” the students
retorted. Indeed, it would have been a pity for such a short,
concise, almost imitative word like cucc
72
not to have been
born.
The unforgettable Klára Szőllősy once noted what
70. Mögen: “to like.” Its traditional Hungarian equivalents are szeret,
which implies a stronger feeling as it can also mean “to love,” and kedvel
(“to cherish, to like”) (dated)
71. Csíp, originally “to pinch,” is now a slang term that means a positive
opinion or a moderate degree of liking.
72. Hungarian: stuff, things, belongings.
Language and Vocabulary / 105
a headache it had been for her to translate the following
sentence from The Magic Mountain: “It is a shame that the
most pious attraction to the most intense physical desire is
expressed with a single word (die Liebe).”
The richness of our Hungarian language—the words
szerelemand szeretet
73
—made the excellent translator’s job
rather difficult.
73. Both mean “love” in English, the first referring to romantic love and
the second implying affection.
107
13
_______________________________
Vocabulary and Context
≈
“MOM, what does ‘TB’ mean?”
“It depends, son, on what you are reading. It may be
‘textbook’ or ‘thoroughbred.’ If you are reading a sports
story, it may be ‘tennis ball.’ In a medical article, it may
mean ‘tuberculosis.’ In a physics text, it may stand for ‘turbulence.’”
The above conversation, taken from my own life, illustrates that words—or in this case abbreviations—cannot
be removed from their contexts. One can only understand
them—and should only learn them—in their contexts.
Contextis a Latin word; it means a material woven together or, in a figurative sense, connection and background.
It warrants mentioning here because text is always a woven
fabric. You can take a word or phrase out of it but such
an isolated unit will only represent the whole as much as a
snippet of fabric will represent the bolt of cloth it originated
from. The threads interweave and strengthen each other;
this is how they give the whole its color, form, and stability.
Surely all of you remember a situation when you had
to start speaking a language you hadn’t used for years. The
wheels of the mind creak with difficulty. You shake your
head in anger: you knew the words but now you’ve forgotten them. Even the simplest words don’t come to you. When
they finally do come to you, however, they are not from your
108 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
default language (your native tongue). Rather, they are from
another foreign language you have studied. You are annoyed
and surprised, but then after 10–20 minutes the words and
forms from the “right” language start to fall into place. Your
partner wonders and you think to yourself with a silent rapture that you may still be a language genius—although it
was but the power of words recalling each other that pulled
the context into place.
I’ve racked my brains for a long time about why name
memory is the weakest point of one’s memory. Commonplace
or technical terms crop up in your mind at first call even if
you don’t use them for years, while sometimes you can’t recall
the names (especially the first names) of your acquaintances,
friends, or even your relatives in spite of great effort.
I bring this all up because my advice for preventing such
memory lapses is the same as my method for memorizing
words. I mean mnemonics, which is the art of putting terms
into artificial contexts. The word or name to be memorized
should never be left floating in the void but should be associated with another, already-known term or concept. This
can be done lexically, semantically, or phonetically, among
other ways. For example, I will never forget how a poor man
is expressed in Japanese, or a little boy in Italian: both of
them sound like “bimbo.”
74
Of course, formal associations are not completely without danger. Richard Katz notes in one of his books that he
remembered the Japanese equivalent of “thank you” (arrigato) by thinking of the alligator. This must be why he once
said to a kind little geisha who helped him with his coat,
“Crocodile!”
Not only can a word serve as context, but everything
that accompanies it can too, such as facial expressions, intonations, and gestures. That is why we can understand a
live, gesticulating speaker more easily than an invisible radio
74. Bimbómeans “bud” in Hungarian.
Vocabulary and Context / 109
announcer, no matter how perfect his or her pronunciation
may be.
Once, in a critical moment, an unusual concomitant—
a man’s skin color—served as a life-saving context for me.
I took part in an important international conference
as a simultaneous interpreter. Like most simultaneous interpreters, I usually work at such conferences with my eyes
closed so that I exclude all visual impressions and can concentrate entirely on the spoken text. One of the delegates
came up with an economic policy proposal that I felt was racially discriminatory. Someone replied in clear, fine French,
but I didn’t catch the decisive word in his short comment; I
didn’t understand if he considered the proposal “acceptable”
or “inacceptable.” I opened my eyes, frightened, and was
rescued: the speaker’s pitch-black African face removed all
doubt.
I will discuss vocabulary again because it is the most
concrete and tangible part of knowledge.
I heard from a proud father recently that his daughter
was studying German and that “she was around halfway at
the moment.” “What do you mean by halfway?” I asked.
“Well, now she knows around 1500 words and when she
learns 1500 more, she will speak German perfectly.”
I only heard a more naïve remark—also in connection
with German—from a fellow average language learner. Let
it serve as his excuse that he must have been only 7–8 years
old. He was talking to his mother on the tram:
“Mom, I imagine we’ll have German class tomorrow.”
Mom, obviously absorbed in her own problems, acknowledged the big event only with an absent-minded nod.
The young lad, however, seemed to be very excited about it
because he started to speak again after a couple of minutes:
“And tell me, mom, when the class ends, will I then
speak German?”
No, little boy, unfortunately you won’t. Not even after
weeks, months, or perhaps years. And not even when you
110 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
have the 3000 words allegedly sufficient for knowledge at
your fingertips.
75
Vocabulary, according to Gyula Laziczius,
76
is a shoreless sea unceasingly swollen inside by the possibility of word
reformulation and creation, and expanded outside by contacts with other languages.
Fortunately, even before you start flirting with a new
language, you may know some of its vocabulary. I counted
14 Italian words in one column of a music review last week.
Our soccer fans practically quarrel in English over the details of last Sunday’s match. Sputnik and its sister satellites
entered public knowledge once and for all in Russian. But
even from such an outsider language as Japanese, you already know what you call clothes (kimono), hurricane (typhoon), artist (geisha), good-bye (sayonara); you know “(may
you live) 10,000 years” from banzai, “belly” and “cutting”
from hara-kiri, and even “butterfly” from Cio-Cio-Fujin
[Madame Butterfly].
Foreign languages have given us many geographical and
scientific terms, among others. The only problem is that
when we adopt such words, we treat them by our own language’s rules. Unfortunately, the words often undergo such
changes that it would take a clever philologist to recognize
their original meaning sometimes.
Not long ago someone was bet that nearly all the words
in a piece of English medical writing had their origin in the
international Latin-Greek vocabulary. He read an excerpt in
front of physicians who didn’t speak English: none of them
75. It has been shown that we need a vocabulary of about 3000 words to
understand at least 95% of an unsimplified text before we can efficiently
learn from context the other 5% (Liu Na and I. S. P. Nation [1985].
Factors affecting guessing vocabulary in context. RELC Journal 16 [1]:
33–42). Other studies, such as those by D. Hirsh and P. Nation (1992)
and B. Laufer (1989), confirm that a vocabulary of 2000 to 3000 words
provides the basis for practical language use.
76. Hungarian linguist of the 20th century.
Vocabulary and Context / 111
understood anything of it. And I’m not surprised. It is indeed hard to recognize esophagusfrom “isuffegs,” psychefrom
“sikee,” and fetusfrom “feets.” The Russian words natyurmort(nature morte, still life) or shedevr(chef-d’œuvre, masterpiece) won’t provide aid to those speaking French, either.
Understanding high-level, written texts is easier.
However, as you learn the vocabulary of everyday life, words
become more and more context-specific. There is nothing
you can do about it: you have to learn them. You can’t weave
a fabric without thread.
113
14
_______________________________
How to Learn Words
≈
THE BASIS of classic vocabulary learning is making a
glossary. You record the words to be learned from a lesson
in one column of your notebook and write the equivalent
terms in your mother tongue in the other. Now you cover
one column with your palm, then the other; the eyes look
at the words, the mouth murmurs them, and the mind is
said to memorize them. This method is almost as old as language learning itself. Its disadvantage is that it carries isolated words to the brain, removed from their contexts. And
the meaning to which you attach each word to be learned
is your mother-tongue’s meaning of the term. That is the
only nail you hang your new possession on—or to put it
more scientifically, that is what you associate it with. Not
the healthiest start.
Among other reasons, it is not a good start because only
one meaning of the word is recorded. For example, if I state
in my glossary that the word marblemeans limestone, I have
only recorded a half-truth because it is used at least as many
times to mean crystallized rock. Large dictionaries explain
words in several contexts. If you only record one meaning of
a word, you deprive it of its Hintergrund, background.
This method, however, has a great advantage. It is you
who have compiled the glossary—you have personal experiences associated with it. The terms on the pages crop up in
114 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
your memory embedded in the context of your self. They recall the setting where you encountered them, the time, and
sometimes even the mood in which they were jotted down.
I recommend untidy glossaries with all my heart to everyone. Neatly inscribed lines with uniform pearly letters
are like desert landscapes. They mix together and make you
sleepy; memory has nothing to cling to. We gain firm and
steady footholds if we write with different instruments (pen,
pencil, or colored pencils) in various styles (slanting, upright, small letters, capital letters, etc.).
The advantage of a glossary, thus, is its personal nature.
The other method—which is, interestingly, quite
widespread—is the dictionary method. It was applied by
the Orientalist Ármin Vámbéry and the poet Attila József.
They both waded through complete dictionaries and that
was how they got hold of the necessary vocabulary to learn
languages.
A modern dictionary provides words in context. That
may be why the dictionary method proves fairly successful
in practice, even though it runs counter to most modern
language-learning pedagogies. I have long been searching
for the reason why this seemingly absurd method is so efficient.
I asked a secondary school acquaintance who learned
enough German to succeed as a tourist in Germany. He replied that it was the initial letters of words that formed his
associative basis; from those, he could memorize words. He
learned each word’s various meanings, assembled them into
phrases, and the relationships revealed the inner logic of the
language to him.
You can unite the logic of a dictionary and the personal
feature of a glossary if you record the word to be learned in
context in your notebook. You can also add words with similar meanings (synonyms) or opposite meanings (antonyms).
You shouldn’t force the addition; only add the words that
you know are natural “associates” of the word in question.
How to Learn Words / 115
Monkeys and apes are called higher primates because,
among other things, they can use their forelegs as hands.
Humans became giants because, among other things, they
learned how to work with their hands. Therefore, it is no
wonder that the richest group of words in all languages
comes from the word hand. According to a German scholar,
each and every variant of human activity can be expressed
with the derivations of this single word. I haven’t checked to
see if this is so, but in French at least, a little bunch can be
collected from it (Fr: main).
abolition (manumission)
affected (maniéré)
begging (manche)
crank (manivelle)
cuff (manchette)
demonstration (manifestation)
demonstrator (manifestant)
to emancipate (émanciper)
handcuffs (menottes)
handle (manche)
to handle (manier)
handling (manutention)
horse training (manège)
to maintain (maintenir)
mandate (mandat)
manifesto (manifeste)
manipulation (manipulation)
manual (manuel)
manual labor/er (main-d’œuvre)
manufacture (manufacture)
manuscript (manuscrit)
muff (manchon)
now (maintenant)
one-armed man (manchot)
operator (manipulant)
116 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
to rework (remanier)
sleeve (manche)
slovenly (démanché)
to transfer (mandater)
way, manner (manière)
etc.
Probably all of my fellow language learners have noticed
that some words stick easier in the mind than others. This
depends on subjective and objective factors. The subjective
factor can be simply expressed like this: you memorize the
word that you have a personal connection to. An expression,
a number, a name, or an event will become more fixed in
your mind the more meaningful it is to you.
Here I return to my opinion again that the knowledge
you obtain at the expense of some brainwork will be more
yours than what you receive ready-made. If you figure it out
from the context, this small incident will be a positive experience.
In addition, consider Pavlov’s principle, albeit in primitive form: if two areas of the brain react at the same time,
the effect is always more lasting. In language learning, the
intellectual sphere can react with the emotional one. If the
target language can stimulate both, the learning effect is enhanced.
Objective factors in language learning are independent
of your approach and are in the word itself. You can learn
most easily nouns that refer to a specific object (house,
window, book, pencil). Then come adjectives denoting perceptible properties (color, form, size). Then follow abstract
nouns, and then verbs that express an easily imaginable,
specific action (run, give, bring). In my experience verbs
expressing a symbolic action are the hardest to learn (complete, ensure, refer).
Verbs are so far down this list because they constitute
the word-class with the most changeable form. They crop
How to Learn Words / 117
up in the present tense, the past, the singular, the plural,
the active form, the passive form, the conditional, and the
imperative. (And we haven’t even touched upon aspect [e.g.,
the progressive and perfect aspects in English], the imperfective and perfective forms in Russian [a great pitfall of the
language], mood, etc.)
Apart from a word’s meaning, its form also plays a role
in how easily it can be memorized. You get in trouble with
long words because with more letters, the more likely you
are to have some similar letter combination lurking in the
back of your mind.At such times, it is cross-association that
makes you uncertain: you can easily mix them up. By the
way, it holds for both words and languages that you mostly
confuse what is lurking. What you are certain of is waiting
to be revived neatly arranged in the multi-drawer wardrobe
of your memory.
According to several educators, the danger of cross-association of similar words should be avoided by keeping them
away from pupils’ minds. However, I prefer lining them up
and interrogating them. There are three verbs in Japanese,
okiru, okoru, and okuru, which altogether have 10 meanings: get up, wake up, happen, rise, get angry, occur, see off,
give as a present, send, and escort. I tried to avoid confusing
them for a month by ignoring their similarity. I didn’t succeed, and the only way I eventually managed to put them
in order was by summoning them all for questioning at the
same time.
Words don’t only differ from each other in how easily
they can be memorized; they also differ in importance. You
will need “Please…” 10 times more often than “big,” “big”
100 times more often than “appearance,” and “appearance”
1000 times more often than “orangutan.” Unfortunately,
you will most often need “Excuse me?” Obviously, that will
be the first thing you will say when addressed by a foreigner;
logically, that is what every course book should begin with.
Yet, I haven’t seen even one that says how to express this
118 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
vitally important question for the beginning student.
Our course books used to suffer from “substantivitis,”
an excess of nouns. It is understandable because nouns are
the easiest vocabulary element to acquire. In the Ollendorff
course books of the early 20th century, no sentence was let
off without a triple possessive construction (the thoroughbred riding horse of the poacher of the neighbor’s land).
Let me include a short list of words you will need if you
want to make contact with someone who doesn’t speak your
mother tongue:
Contact-making
words
Hello. Excuse me? Thank you.
Please. I’m sorry. Good morning,
good afternoon, good evening.
Good-bye.
Ready-made
formulas
I’m from the U.S. Where is…? Do
you speak…? Please say it again.
Slower please. I don’t speak…
Pronouns I. You. Whose? Mine, yours…
Who? What? This, that.
Adverbs of place,
time, etc.
Here. There. Where? To the right.
To the left. Straight on. Already.
Yet. Still. Now. When? How many?
How much? Many, much, few,
little, more.
Auxiliary words Have to, must. May. Can. I’d
like… Why? Because…
Inflected forms of “to
be” and “to have”
[Language dependent]
Numbers From one till ten, till a hundred.
Days of the week, names of the
months. Today, tomorrow, etc.
How to Learn Words / 119
Important verbs Leave. Arrive. Come, go. Start,
finish. Eat, drink, look for, find,
buy, get on, get off, have, know.
Nouns It is a difficult question as their
priority depends on the situation.
For a tourist: room, bed, bathroom.
In a restaurant: soup, bread, meat,
water, beer, pasta. If you have some
money for shopping, you don’t
have to do anything but point. You
will be understood.
Adjectives in
the positive and
comparative degree
Big, small. Cheap, expensive.
Hot, cold. Good, bad.
This list, of course, can be extended and reduced at will.
You can also play with it by checking how many forms you
can instantly express in their foreign equivalents.
Unfortunately, there are a host of expressions that play
a greater role in making you fluent than verbs, nouns, adjectives, and all other “responsible” word-classes. I call them
filler words because their common property is that they don’t
change the essence of a sentence, they only supplement it.
Such filler words are quite, obviously, rather, of course,
well, in fact, though, mostly, certainly, instead, a lot, still, anyway,etc. It is not easy to memorize them because there are
no objective concepts attached to them, yet I recommend
learning them with all my heart.
Since we are discussing filler words, let’s not forget filling clauses, either. These are usually sentence-launching expressions, not even bricks of the building of language, but in
fact ready-made slabs of it. They can be carried to the spot
in prefabricated forms and plastered in immediately. Their
great advantage is that they provide transitions between banal discourse and important discourse. In addition, they al-
120 / POLYGLOT: HOW I LEARN LANGUAGES
low you time to recall expressions that have sunk deep into
your memory. You can then strike the tuning fork, which I
have mentioned several times.
I have also mentioned that adults—as opposed to children—don’t learn texts verbatim easily or willingly. Even if
your mind has aversions to cramming fairly long coherent
pieces, don’t be shy of compiling and learning launching
expressions. I have a notebook of them for each of my languages; I keep them updated with constant additions. My
source is not only my readings, but also what I learn from
my partners:
The fact is that…
I would like to specifically point out…
Let’s consider especially…
That reminds me,…
On the other hand, however,…
Of course I know that…
It is also true that…
Not mentioning the fact that…
We should not forget that…
As a group unto themselves, these launching expressions are unpleasantly sticky and gluey. But used in front
of a sentence, they are lubricants. Their role is to make the
delivery of the more important parts of a message smoother
and more acceptable.
And anyway, my dear reader, all I want to say is that we
shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a foreign language,
and in a foreign (unknown) language environment, we are
often glad to be alive at all.
