A friend, now in retirement, asked me for language-learning tips, specifically about Pimsleur. He has been beguiling his hours with sudoku, and now contemplates learning Japanese.
I purchased the Pimsleur introduction to Hebrew awhile back, and spent many hours listening to their minimalist repetitive approach to saying “Hello” in Hebrew. (The package consisted of CDs; they boasted, 'No books!', which alas renders impossible random-access and quick review.) It was boring past imagining, like the Incremental Repetition of doctrinaire musicians like Philip Glass; and today I retain not one syllable from the experience. -- Well okay, I know “Shalom”, but I knew that already.
It now strikes me that I am singularly ill-positioned to advise anyone on how to learn a language, since I myself have never once managed to learn one; and this, despite repeated forays. Piles of books and tapes -- Turkish, Persian, Swahili, Somali, Urdu, Polish, and so on -- a jumble beneath dust-bunnies, attest to the attempts. In all cases, I retain almost nothing.
All I have ever managed to do is to fall in love with the Zeitgeist -- the Spirit of History -- as manifested in this culture or that. Proficiency in its linguistic excipient (French, Arabic, German, Spanish, Latin or what have you) follows as a matter of course.
~
Further thoughts on the subject here:
[Update] A useful method for learning Japanese remains elusive,
but for anyone interested in Mandarin,
here is a novel approach:
http://www.sexymandarin.com/
but for anyone interested in Mandarin,
here is a novel approach:
http://www.sexymandarin.com/
In fact, you've just hit upon what is known as the single biggest factor in successfully acquiring a new language--motivation. The system in the end matters little. My advice is that more is more. Sure, use Pimsleur, and four other things. Go back and forth between them when you tire of one. But you've got to have a strong reason why you will acquire that language. American high schools attest to the fact that wanting an A in a class does not equate to sufficient motivation, since I hear so many people tell me about four years of this or that and now they can't so much as order an enchilada in a restaurant two years later.
ReplyDeleteDr K, a celebrated teacher of Latin and of Arabic, also has a Spanish offering, which we salute here:
ReplyDeletehttp://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2011/08/next-stop-spanish.html