Of all the languages in the world, English seems to be the most deceptive, since it is learned with an ease that completely falsifies its real dimension. The tourist who has learned to order a coffee at the airport believes he has mastered it; but if, by chance, he tries to read a novel by Dickens, or a poem by Milton, Byron or Chaucer, he realizes in a few lines that he knows nothing about the language he has learned. And the curious thing is that, syntactically, English is always the same: the structure of the periods never complicates understanding too much. But literary English is a dungeon into which the foreigner always enters without a flashlight. The words, the infinite expressions, obscure and untranslatable, are like hauntings. It takes a lot of courage to understand it and face it as a writer.
Tag: languages
The Phonic and Syntactic Richness of Portuguese
The phonic and syntactic richness of Portuguese, more than the nature of its people or the flair of its authors, places its poetry among the most remarkable in world literature. As a vehicle for expressing the primitive impulse represented by poetry, its possibilities are so varied and its effects so unique that, even when worked on by ordinary hands, it sometimes achieves results worthy of sincere admiration.
The Countless Facilities That Are Available Today…
There is a certain irony in the fact that the countless facilities that are available today for learning every language imaginable are not enough to understand them in depth, since, after a certain level, to understand them is to understand their difficulties. In other words: the countless and valuable incentives for learning hardly allow the student to go beyond the surface of the language studied; if he wants to do so, he has to abandon them and face the difficult, using the most archaic processes, although they are proven to be essential. There is no way out: there comes a time when it is necessary to put aside the jokes and sink into the difficult originals.
Learning a Language Is a Matter of Hours of Study
Learning a language is a matter of hours of study. The primary function of the method therefore comes down to keeping the student stimulated, so that he can study more and therefore learn faster. Secondly, it is up to the method to guide learning according to the student’s objectives, i.e. among the four fundamental skills in the study of a language (oral and written comprehension; oral and written expression), it is up to the method to focus more on the one or ones that are most desired. In all cases, progress won’t be very far without a solid foundation in all four. In all cases, progress is directly proportional to dedication. The rest is useless talk.