How to Learn a Foreign Language

the handbook used by schools, universities, and independent language-learners throughout the world:

Don't miss this little book!
It is unusual in that it treats languages as respectable and serious study but also fun. It addresses common fears, and deals with the attitudes that have made Americans increasingly monolingual. It is packed with advice on how to learn a foreign language…Excellent, simple, with summaries at the end of each chapter…I enjoyed it very much.

Rene Perez-Lopez
Voice of Youth Advocates

This book could save a beginning student hours of confusion, and might provide some confidence that learning a language is normal and possible, even for someone like him or her!…
Fuller has codified what many successful language learners have found out for themselves about learning languages…The knowledge that Fuller is writing from such vast experience can only inspire confidence on the part of the reluctant language learner.

Carol L. McKay
Modern Language Journal

Introduction

Chapter One
How To Use This Book

Chapter Two
Why Do I Need A Foreign Language?

Chapter Three
Teaching Your Mouth New Tricks

Chapter Four
Swimming In The Alphabet Soup, Or, Don't Trust Familiar Letters

Chapter Five
In Other Words, Learning To Think All Over Again

Chapter
Six
Learning To Spot Relatives, Or Language Families

Chapter Seven
Digging Up Words By Their Roots

Chapter Eight
Words, Words, Words

Chapter Nine
Stringing Words Together

Chapter Ten
Grammar (Ugh)

Chapter Eleven
No End To Endings (More Ugh)

Chapter Twelve
The Gender Gap (Ugh, Ugh, Ugh)

Chapter Thirteen
Moving Off Plateaus

Chapter Fourteen
How Far Can You Really Get?

Special Section
Going It Alone

T
his book is for those of you who have never studied a foreign language before. And it is for those of you who have already had one painful experience with a foreign language and who hope to do better at it this time.

I'd like to pass along to you all the tips that it took me years of study in many different languages to learn. These tips all by themselves won't teach you a language—but they will help you to learn one.

And I want to teach you something about what foreign languages are all about
—
how languages work and how to approach this very special learning challenge. As you'll see, learning a foreign language
—
any foreign language
—
will be different from any other kind of study you have ever done.

I have had to study a great many languages over the past years. Fortunately, I've always liked languages. And since I've lived overseas in many different countries, I've had to learn quite a number of them just to do my job properly. Between job requirements and curiosity about languages—and a good bit of language work in college as well—I've studied to one extent or
another more than a dozen of them, including Latin, Greek, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and numerous European languages. In other words, I've been through it all, lots of times. My aim is to make the process as easy as possible for you, whatever your own language goal may be.

If you really like foreign languages, that's great. It will only make your task easier.

But this book isn't just for people who like languages. It's for those of you who have to learn a language for one reason or another. You might come to enjoy the process, but your goal is a practical one. And just because your goal is a practical one doesn't mean that the effort required to reach it can't be interesting
—
and even fun as well.

The main reason I've written this book is that I remember a lot of needless suffering the first time that I went through the process back in high school French. I had a friendly teacher who loved French—and he even knew how to teach. But there were hundreds of things about how to understand the
process of learning a language
that neither he nor anybody else ever told me. As a result I had to learn it the hard way, by trial and error, puzzling it out. It's that kind of inefficient, counter-productive work that I'd like to spare you.

But let's get one thing straight right away. Learning
any language
involves a lot of hard work. True, some languages are easier than others for English speakers. But any foreign language is going to require using a
whole range of different skills
that you may never have thought about before. This book will describe how to approach studying a foreign language and will outline the necessary skills. Then it will show you how to use them.

If you're lucky, you'll turn out to be one of those people who has a “knack” for languages. We often hear somebody say that Good Old So-and-So is “gifted” at learning languages. Or that somebody's cousin went to Mexico and “picked up” Spanish in a few months. In fact, no one has ever been able to decide just what it
is that makes one person better at learning a language than another. Is is brains? Absolutely not. I've known a lot of people who are terrific at learning languages who don't know enough to come in out of the rain. And I've known a lot of people who are very smart—excellent at all sorts of academic work—who never get to be terribly good at a foreign language no matter how hard they try. Other people claim that it may be related to a sense of logic. Still others think that if you have a “musical ear” you will be better at languages. But nobody has ever convincingly demonstrated that these are key factors, either.

But if you turn out
not
to have a “knack” for languages—don't worry about it. And don't be discouraged. As you will see, learning a foreign language is like anything else in this world. If you are interested in accomplishing your goal, and if you devote a fair amount of attention to it, you'll succeed. But what else can make a difference?

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it will certainly help you in languages.
There are lots of fascinating aspects about foreign languages, from the people who speak them to the cultures they live in. Be prepared to learn some really interesting things. Get into the whole experience and ask questions about the culture you are studying and what makes the people tick. You may want to learn about a people anyway. Language is one of the keys.

An ability to imitate, to mimic, and to play a role will come in handy in your language work.
You can't be shy about trying out your new language. Everybody makes some dumb mistakes in speaking. It's par for the course. Just laugh it off and keep on plowing ahead.

Above all, a sense of enthusiasm will make a big difference.
As you read through the pages and chapters to come, keep in mind that you're heading into a brand new kind of learning adventure unlike anything you've ever studied before. Enjoy it. And try to have some fun as you go. You'll be pleasantly surprised at how much easier the job will be.

C
hances are you will have a very good language teacher. And the chances are that this teacher will be very skilled at teaching you French, Spanish, Hebrew, Bulgarian, Burmese, or whatever language you happen to be learning.

This book is designed to pave the way for your teacher—and, of course, for you. In the pages to come you will learn what foreign languages are, how they work, why they are different from English, and in what ways. Most of all, you will learn how to
think about
a foreign language, how to be prepared for what's coming, and how to approach it, using the techniques that have worked best for me over the years.

Keep in mind that this book is not supposed to
teach
you Spanish, Russian, Japanese, or any other specific language. I leave that to the experts whose classes you'll be sitting in. They know what they're doing and will do it well. This book will
prepare
you for the extraordinary experience of learning a foreign language so that your actual classes won't come as too much of a surprise to you and so you can start right off knowing what to expect and how to study.

To use this book effectively, first read it through from beginning to end. Don't take notes, and don't worry about memorizing anything at all. Your objective is merely to get the feel of what it takes to learn any foreign language
—
of what sorts of skills are involved and of what sorts of study techniques work best. When you've finished reading this book, you will be ready to begin learning whatever foreign language you've chosen to study.

Remember
—
this is a handbook. So keep it handy and refer back to it often as you begin learning your chosen language. Use this book to supplement whatever you learn in class, and to remind yourself of the best techniques for practicing the specific language skills
—
pronunciation, vocabulary, conversation, grammar, and so forth
—
that your instructor will be teaching in class. By reading this book now, and then referring back to it as you go, you'll find it easier to get started and, then, easier to make progress.

Think of this as a book about how to go on a safari. After all, I'm not going to take you on the safari—your real guide awaits you in your class. But I can tell you what it's like to go on a safari and how to prepare for it in the best way possible.

Now you are about to embark on a remarkable experience—a safari into the mind and culture of a new people—in a way that you have never done before.
Bon voyage! Gute Reise! Shchastlivogo puti! Yi lu ping an! Rihla sa'ida! Yolunuz açik olsun!

In other words—Have a good trip!

I
f you are able to read this book you are already a lucky person. Why? Because you are able to speak and read English—the one language that is known and spoken by more people internationally than any other in the world. That means that just by growing up in an English-speaking country you are part of a huge group of people who can already communicate with one another. If you had grown up, say, in Finland or Mongolia or Fiji, you would be speaking a language that hardly anyone else in the world knows, or ever studies. People who live in countries like that absolutely have to study a foreign language—probably English—if they are ever going to travel or do anything outside their own small country. But you don't have to do that. You already have learned fluently what millions and millions of other people in the world have to spend hundreds—probably thousands—of hours learning. In fact, a pretty good case can be made that if you already speak English you don't need to learn a foreign language at all to function quite well in this world. But
then, there are some good reasons why you don't need more than a high school education to get along in this world, either. We don't go to college just because it is essential to getting along in life. We go because there is also tremendous value in learning something more, training our minds and broadening our exposure to new things in the world. This may sound vague—and perhaps it is. But it just isn't always possible to put a clear dollar sign on everything we do. But for those of you who want some concrete reasons for going through the effort to learn a foreign language, here are some of them:

In America we live in a huge country—a continent really—where we share a common language and a common culture. But we also have to live and function in a world where a lot of people do things very differently than we do. Whether or not we like all of the ways they do things, we still have to live in the same world and deal with them. That's what questions of foreign policy, for example, are all about: figuring out what people in other countries are likely to do, why, and how best to deal with them.

What does this have to do with language? Two things: If you can learn a foreign language well, you gain a great deal of access to that country. You can read its newspapers and magazines, listen to its television programs, talk to a greater variety of its people, and really understand them first hand. But more important, even if you never learn the foreign language really well,
you can still learn an amazing amount just from having worked at it for a limited period.
Learning a language is like getting inside somebody's mind. You start to learn a little more about how they think and express themselves.

The Japanese have made interesting comments about foreigners learning their language. Japanese are likely to be very complimentary to a foreigner who has learned some Japanese and is willing to try it out. But Japanese also say that they get a little nervous on those more unusual occasions when they meet a foreigner who speaks Japanese fluently, like a native. Why? They say they feel that the foreigner has learned too much about them, that he has gotten inside their culture and life too deeply. It's an invasion of their privacy.

Being able to understand someone who is speaking in his native language gives us the “flavor” of that person. Have you ever watched a comedian or an actor who uses some kind of regional accent to portray a personality? Like a hillbilly, or a cowboy, or a black musician, or a New England fisherman? By hearing the accent and the words and expressions that he uses, you get a strong feeling for his personality. We laugh or enjoy his performance because we feel we understand the personality or the type by hearing him speak in his “native language.”

If you can learn something about how a foreigner expresses his thoughts, you are a great deal closer to getting into that culture than you ever were before. It's almost like learning a “secret code” into another culture. After all, one's native language is one of the closest and dearest things to a person. Not for nothing do we call it “the mother tongue.”

A person's mother tongue, by the way, has a hold that is almost impossible to shake off. For instance, no matter how fluent we become in another language, we will nearly always continue to use our native language for the rest of our life in counting and doing math calculations in our head. During World War II anti-Nazi resistance forces in Europe believed the enemy was sending in spies to report on resistance activities; individuals would show up claiming to be Norwegian or Dutch when in fact they were Germans well-trained in one of those languages. The real test was to ask them to solve a math problem in long division—out loud. If a person was not a native speaker he usually had extreme difficulty in doing math out loud in a language other than his own native one. That kind of math error would often cost someone his head.

By learning a foreign language, you are in a way getting into the mind of that Frenchman, that Russian, or that Chinese. You are starting to share with him the way he “dresses” his own thoughts and expressions—in linguistic clothes very different than your own. You suddenly realize that we English-speakers have
our own
odd ways of saying and expressing things too. You start to learn that there is no “normal” or “right” way to say things, and that our way is no more “natural” than any other way.

This idea seems hard to accept. On our own continent we are surrounded by American English, so much so that some people even have a hard time accepting that the British speak the way they do. Mark Twain once remarked that he was sure that if you were to suddenly shake an Englishman awake at night he would forget—and talk like an ordinary American.

Knowing something about foreign languages is also an important experience in preparing you for your first trip abroad, whether you are just travelling or intend to set up a household. If you've struggled a little bit with a foreign language, you're going to be a lot more sensitive to the problems that foreigners have in speaking English to you.

Moreover, many foreigners will be grateful for any effort you make to learn their language. They know it represents hard work on your part and see it as a compliment to themselves. Even if you learn just enough of a language for basic social purposes, it will be time well invested. For a business executive it can be especially important, suggesting a more serious business interest and longer-term approach than somebody casually drifting through.

Even small gestures can have their rewards. I remember when my wife was approached by a shoe-shine boy in Istanbul the first day after we had moved to Turkey. At that stage my wife had learned enough Turkish to say “No thank you, I don't need it.” The boy was so astonished that a foreigner could respond in his own language that he reached over and kissed my wife's hand. In later years her ability to pass the time of day in Turkish earned her a warm and regular welcome and a good number of friends among the merchants in Istanbul's Covered Bazaar.

Language study also helps you learn things about your own language that you never knew before, simply because you start to make comparisons between your language and the new one. I think I learned more about English grammar from studying foreign languages than I ever did from years of English in school. I never saw the point of learning what a “direct object” or a “prepositional phrase” was, until I suddenly had to learn how to express one in a foreign language. And only then did I really start to understand what it was in English.

A last good reason to study a foreign language is that the whole process can be fun. I'm not saying that it won't be hard work and, yes, a good bit of drudgery too. But you can also have a lot of laughs along the way.

Some of the fun comes from laughing at yourself. Trying to wrap your mouth around some foreign sound or phrase is funny, although it can be humbling too. You have to shed some of your own self-importance
and your worries about dignity if you really want to make progress. And in some ways you make progress without really realizing it. You begin to learn how to think in an entirely new way—and to learn that there are many different ways to think in this world other than “our way.”

Now a new dimension has been added to your life. You start being conscious of another culture which in turn enriches your own life. You start getting more and more interested in that country and its people, its food, its music and its novels and short stories. You find that a trip there takes on a whole new meaning. Every facet of life there becomes interesting to you—not just the monuments and the museums. Like that first trip to Paris after you have started to learn French:

After a while the language you are studying will itself take on a new personality. You will come to associate it with the whole range of experiences you have had. The mere sound of the language will bring back a series of memories and feelings. You are getting hooked by the language, and it has already become a new part of you. In short, you have discovered a new world.