Tag: languages

Goethe teaches: He who does not know foreign languages does not know anything about his own. But why? It is subject to hundreds of pages… Knowledge of foreign languages makes an invaluable contribution to the mastery of one’s native language. Languages from the same root broaden vocabulary, deepen understanding of words, strengthen the meaning of common radicals, give the student an arsenal of syntactical resources applicable to his language. Languages from different roots, in turn, challenge the intellect, force the brain to deal with a different organization of language—teaching how to structure thought differently,—strengthen the understanding of word classes, presenting them with new applications. This without mentioning the gains of cultural nature: language is the manifestation of a people’s character; to study its evolution and its particularities is to know a new way of understanding and expressing reality. Therefore, the obvious conclusion: assimilation is dependent on comparison; one apprehends the essence of something when opposed to what is different. And so, the words of the master are wise: deep knowledge of native language requires knowledge of foreign languages.

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Read more:

• How to Learn Languages
• Faust, by Goethe
• The Sorrows of Young Werther, by Goethe
• The American Bush and the Brazilian Bush

Some tricks that time taught me:

I- Establish a greater goal only possible if you know the language. Examples: learn English to read about finance, learn Spanish in order to emigrate, learn Latin to read classics in the original, learn Russian to read what has not yet been translated etc. etc.

II- From basic to intermediate: first, the ear; then speech; then reading; and finally: writing.

III- Learning a language is not a matter of intelligence, aptitude, nothing. Learning a language is insistence, it’s discipline. All you have to do is not to give up. It is a question that can be summed up in: how long can you persist in a text without understanding anything at all?

IV- At first, it is hard; shortly thereafter, progress begins to appear and continue to the intermediate level when contact with the literature begins. Here comes the most difficult, painful and discouraging part: understanding the texts seems impossible, vocabulary seems like an insurmountable wall, reading is not at all pleasurable and you have the feeling of wasting a lot of time in front of a text that will not deliver nothing. Well, it is precisely at this point that, persisting, one learns a language definitely.

V- Being versed in native language grammar contributes incalculably to learn any other language.

VI- I will repeat: teachers and courses are absolutely expendable. The self-taught is not the smart one, but one that resists amid discomfort.

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Read more:

• The Mirror, by Andrei Tarkovsky
• Lack of Maturity and Discernment
• Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift
• Quincas Borba, by Machado de Assis