Linguanaut: The Adventure of Learning Foreign Languages

By Christopher Gallagher

Sailing through languages is an adventure. Jump on board and see how it’s done, then see what amazing things await you. Learn how you can use free material from your old friend the library, from your new friend the Internet, and then go out and make new friends with your new language skills. The author has picked up about a dozen languages, and with them he has helped bring the Berlin Wall down, shown Tiger Moms how to get their kids into the Ivy League, broken bread with the Mozambique Olympic team, and has helped restore smiles to disfigured children in the Andes. All this with languages? Yes! And best of all, you can too. So read on, become a Linguanaut, and sail the adventure-filled realm of foreign languages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483434001

Book preview

LINGUANAUT

The Adventure of Learning Foreign Languages

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CHRISTOPHER GALLAGHER

Copyright © 2015 Christopher J Gallagher.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3401-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-3400-1 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 06/29/2015

CONTENTS

Introduction

1.   Who am I and how did I become a Linguanaut?

2.   Spanish, the best starting point

3.   Specific Tricks for Getting Fluent

4.   From One to Two, then on to Many

5.   To Be Really Good at One, or Sort of Good at a Lot?

6.   Cool Things Happen When you Speak a Foreign Language

7.   What the Blind and Deaf Person Taught Me

8.   Why Bother? Just Let the App Speak.

9.   The Learn/Forget/Re-learn Cycle

10.   Lies My Language Course Taught Me

11.   Translation Stories

12.   Medical Linguanauts

13.   What about the Real Tough Languages?

14.   Low Tech, the Best Tech

15.   Faking It

16.   Enter the Tiger Mom

17.   Oldsters Need Not Apply? Never!

18.   Through the Linguanaut’s Glasses

19.   Resources for the Resourceful Linguanaut

20.   Wrap Up

Appendix

INTRODUCTION

Thrills and adventures await you. We’re boarding a train and heading for the land of learning—foreign language learning. Hop on board, I’m going to show you a few things I’ve learned while teaching myself a dozen or so languages:

– it’s fun

– there’s a ton of ways to learn

– you can learn on a budget

– cool things happen when you speak a foreign language.

I’m a polyglot—a speaker of many languages. But a better term is Linguanaut—a voyager through many languages. Linguanaut brings to mind the idea of astronauts—voyaging through the stars, or cosmonauts—voyaging through the cosmos. How about you become a Linguanaut too?

Who are we going to meet, we Linguanauts, on this trip through the language universe?

– a little girl in the Andes, who needs medical care, and we’ll give it to her, then melt when she says Gracias

– shipwrecked sailors from Russia, and we’ll give them cookies

– Mozambique Olympic athletes run past us on the track, then we’ll have them over for dinner

– a blind and deaf man who teaches us the key to communication

– then we’ll bump into Tiger Moms, 16 year old’s who speak 20+ languages, and hucksters selling a linguistic bill of goods.

What methods are we going to use on this Linguanaut trip?

– old-fashioned pen and paper

– new-fashioned Apps and Internet streaming

– side-by-side books

and the best method of all

– talking to people!

What other wonders can the budding Linguanaut expect to see?

– A man delivers an entire lecture with only two words

– A translator alters a verb slightly and changes world history

– How we pronounce one letter reveals our background.

The payoff for all this? You will learn how you, too, can become a Linguanaut—a voyager through foreign languages. You’ll learn how to learn one language, and how to parlay that into a few languages. Once you have a few under your belt, nothing prevents you from moving on. Learn a whole lot of languages! Why not?

Why not become a polyglot?

Why not become a Linguanaut?

Come on, let’s do this. Your life is about to change.

CHAPTER 1

Who am I and how did I become a Linguanaut?

I like to teach. If you want to kick the tires and see how much, then read my current curriculum vitae. It’s in the appendix. (If you’re going to commit to reading this book, you might as well know about the author.)

Most of my teaching has been in the medical area, specifically anesthesiology.

But my favorite topic outside of medicine is the study of foreign languages. At the University of Wisconsin, I had a double major, Molecular Biology (to take care of the Pre-Med requirements) and Spanish.

The Molecular Biology helped me in my medical career.

The Spanish helped me in my Linguanaut career. And guess what else, it helped me in my medical career too.

Once I finished my medical training and got a job, I kept the Linguanaut aspect of my life going by continuing to study languages. In addition, I volunteered to speak at different schools about my language interest. I’ve talked to students at grade schools, middle schools, junior highs and high schools.

But why limit this to students in school? Aren’t we all students, regardless of our age? Aren’t we all potential Linguanauts? Of course we are, hence this book.

We’ll start with my personal trip to Linguanaut (call it Mapquest® for the linguist, though you will draw your own personal map), then we’ll go on to:

– demonstrate what an impact speaking several languages make

– show how to go about learning languages, whatever your budget

– paint a picture of the adventures that await the Linguanaut

– enjoy the world when you look at everything through Linguanaut’s glasses.

MR GREEN EYES

Born the 5th of 5 in a Catholic family in Wisconsin. My father was a surgeon and self-taught polyglot. He gave me the initial impulse towards learning more than one foreign language.

Which begs the question—what made my father want to learn languages?

In 8th grade, he broke his leg playing football, and had to spend a lot of time in a wheelchair, sitting around doing lots of nothing. There were a lot of first generation Germans working in his hometown (Waseca, Minnesota), so he taught himself German from a book, and would wheel himself over to where the German immigrants were working and would talk with them.

He found that his German lessons came to life when he spoke with these recent immigrants, so the fire was lit as far as learning languages was concerned.

Later in life as a surgeon, when my father would meet someone who spoke a different language, he would say "I should at least learn to say a few things to them." So when he met a Russian patient, he set about learning some Russian, when he met a Mexican doctor, he set about learning Spanish—and on it went. Of note to anyone considering a medical profession, hospitals have always been Towers of Babel, with doctors, nurses, techs, and patients from all over the world. Linguanauts find hospitals great places to practice any and all languages.

Lo and behold, my Dad discovered what all polyglots eventually discover—once you get a couple languages under your belt, it gets easier to learn a few more. For one thing, a number of languages are closely related:

– after you learn Spanish, it doesn’t take a ton of work to learn Italian

– once you can speak German, it doesn’t take a lot of work to learn Dutch

And a second fundamental lesson becomes clear:

– you don’t need a 5,000 word vocabulary to make yourself understood

– a few phrases, managed well, and oft-repeated, can serve as springboard into a language.

And the best lesson of all:

– speaking a foreign language is fun! It’s the ultimate door-opener/ice-breaker/adventure-maker!

My father discovered that speaking a foreign language is not some misery-drenched slog. It’s a blast!

About this time, Dad started having children (as I recall, my Mom played a significant role in this activity). Surely Dad could impress this magical language lesson upon his offspring! His own genetic material, his legacy, surely they will snap up the language bug!

No soap.

Tutors for the first four kids—no interest. Brought language records home (at this time, cassettes, CD’s, and the Internet were not yet a glimmer in the tech world’s eyes). Zero interest. Brought foreign language speakers to the house, encouraging the kids to speak—again, no luck. Dad tried everything that he possibly could to get the first four kids in our family interested in learning foreign languages. But it was like trying to light wood that is soaking wet—the flame just did not take. So by the time the fifth kind came along, fuhgedaboudit!

But the fifth kid was interested.

Dad would be sitting in the dining room, a Russian dictionary in front of him, translating medical articles from Russian into English. Later in the week, I would see him translating a different medical article but this time the language was Italian.

Invited to a Chinese New Year celebration, and Dad would say a few phrases in that sing-song, tonal language. A visitor from Quebec came to our house and Dad would speak French to him. I would follow him on rounds at the hospital and he would speak Spanish to a colleague from Venezuela.

One evening at home, I asked him, "Dad, how did you learn all those languages?"

Dad took hold of a little statue of a cat we had (Mr Green Eyes, if you’re interested), and said "Well, in Spanish, this is el gato, and you go from there." Putting Mr Green Eyes back on the shelf, Dad put the whole event out of his mind. In later years, Dad said he never remembered us having that conversation with Mr Green Eyes playing the starring role.

But I sure did.

Right after Dad said "Well, in Spanish, this is el gato and you go from there," I picked up Mr Green Eyes.

El gato I said.

That was it, I was hooked. I was going to learn the rest of Spanish (figuring I had the el gato part down at least). And I kept going, with the current language tally including Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Polish, Japanese, Mandarin, along with a bit of Dutch, Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic thrown in for good measure. Smidgeons of Hungarian, Serbo-Croatian, and Icelandic are floating around too.

How did we go from Mr Green Eyes, the Linguanaut-launching gato to all these languages?

SPANISH CLASS AND JUMPING AHEAD

Just then my school started teaching Spanish (I was in 7th grade). The teacher was great, enthusiastic, and clever in creating interesting games and exercises. Rather than a dreary subject, she created an electric atmosphere and before you knew it, kids at school were talking Spanish to each other.

Dad got wind of this and was all over it! At last, a kid who caught the language bug! Now he had someone else to practice with, and away we went. Unbound by the lesson plans, Dad would leap ahead to tenses and vocabulary that I hadn’t learned yet.

We haven’t learned the past tense yet, Dad, I’d say, putting the brakes on a runaway conversation.

So what? I’ll tell you how you make the past tense, then he’d proceed to explain how to make the past tense in Spanish.

This represented another breakthrough moment, almost as momentous as Mr Green Eyes. You are not bound by what they teach you in class. This, to a grade schooler, is just plain something you never consider. You do your lessons, sure, you do your homework, you get ready for tests—but go ahead? Learn something not required for class? Can you even do this?

Sure!

All Linguanauts do this! Learn what you can in class, but never hold back on forging ahead, learning the next tense, adding to your vocabulary. You are not learning the language to get an A on a test, you are learning the language to learn the language. A teacher will necessarily go at a pace appropriate for the class as a whole. But if you feel the need for speed, and want to go faster than the class as a whole, just read ahead another chapter. Finish the whole book while you’re at it, and get another one, why not?

So with a great teacher, and a tremendous tip from my Dad, Spanish was off and running.

TIME TO TRY ONE ON MY OWN

Dad had a big collection of Teach Yourself books. My Junior year in high school I plucked Teach Yourself French out of the lot and had at it. My top secret, super-complex, unfathomably mysterious method of teaching myself a language from scratch was born.

Open the book to page 1.

Do Lesson 1.

Continue to the end of the book.

What a concept! Every Teach Yourself book (they come under a blizzard of different names Teach Yourself French, French in Three Months, Colloquial French, the list goes on and on) has a guide on pronunciation, starts with greetings, introduces grammar to you in bite-size, digestible chunks, and gives you a fine start in the language. Most have accompanying audio to help you with pronunciation. In my many moons on this planet, I have seen the accompanying audio in all its forms—LP records, cassettes, CD’s, and today’s access the cloud version.

So the approach to learning a language is simple—start at the beginning, go until you finish the first book.

Now it’s time to supplement. The rest of the book goes into all the different ways to supplement your learning, but here’s a sneak peek:

– find someone to speak with

– watch movies

– read a book in the foreign language side-by-side with the English version of the same book.

So to flesh out my French, I:

– spoke with recent arrivals from Vietnam who spoke French

– got a hold of some movies in French and watched them with subtitles

– checked The Little Prince out of the library along with the version in its original French, Le Petit Prince.

That last maneuver proved extremely valuable. You get your hands on a simple book, written at kid’s level, so the vocabulary and structure are manageable, and you read the books side by side.

Great! The Linguanaut journey is beginning. One language learned through a class (Spanish) and now one language learned on my own (French). Now what?

How about, keep going?

LUCKY FIND

At this point,