The English-Learning and Languages Review Æ Homepage
Learning Vocabulary
1
Amorey Gethin and
Erik V. Gunnemark
This web page is an edited extract
from The Art and Science of Learning Languages, by Amorey Gethin and
Erik V. Gunnemark, published by Intellect in 1996 (http://www.intellectbooks.com)
The Editor invites articles
in response to this page and to Learning
Vocabulary 2, itself a critical reply to
Learning Vocabulary 1.
1 Languages are translations of 'life', not of
other languages
Learning a language
is observing it; that is, simply noticing what words mean what, and how
the words are used together to produce broader meanings. Children have two
great advantages in this task. First, they are allowed to take many years to
learn their language, a length of time that older children and adults cannot
usually allow themselves for learning a foreign language. Secondly, they do not
have one language already, so they cannot get muddled by it, and they
appreciate, without thinking, something that is fundamental to the nature of
all languages: they are not translations of other languages; they are direct
'translations' of reality, of things, feelings, ideas, actions, of human
experience.
The
result of this is that at one level all languages are in principle exactly the
same, that is to say, they are sets of meanings, collections of words for
directly representing the world. Note 1
2 Every language is
different and divides the world up differently
But it also means that every language is in a sense completely
independent of all other languages. Each language divides the world up in its
own way, a different way from other languages. One can see this at the very
simple level of single words. For instance, Italian has two words:
sapere and conoscere,
where English has only one:
know.
On the other hand, English has two:
do and make,
where Italian, like many other languages, has only one:
fare.
This does not mean that when you have two words
it does not matter which you use. Each word has its separate meaning, as we can
illustrate with
do the washing up
and
make a plate
But Italian-speakers use fare for both. In the same way, Italians
use sapere when they are talking about knowing facts or truths - for I
did not know she was here they would use sapere - and conoscere
when they want to express the sense of being acquainted with somebody or
something - for I know her well they would use conoscere. So we
can see that know has at least two different meanings.
There are untold thousands of cases like this
throughout the languages of the world. English can use the same word to
describe a person who is annoyed because his neighbour has a nicer house, and a
person who is upset because he thinks his wife is interested in another man: jealous.
But Swedish, for example, calls one avundsjuk and the other svartsjuk.
However, it is by no means always as simple as that. In Swedish, for instance, bra
as an adjective has the sense of good, but bra as an adverb means
well. On the other hand, of all the things English simply calls good,
some would be called bra in Swedish but others - such as food - would be
called god.
3 Prepositions don't
fit from one language to another
Prepositions are famous for being used in their own special and
'different' way in each language, and cause great difficulties to students all
over the world. If you look up the Spanish word por in a Spanish-English
dictionary, you will almost certainly find that the first word given is by;
and, vice-versa, if you look up by you will find por. Yet for a
sentence such as
She's walking about IN the garden.
the Spanish would be
Está paseando POR el jardín.
In the same way, if you look up the Swedish på in a dictionary,
you will find on and vice-versa. Yet the English for
Jag har inte sett henne PÅ mycket
länge.
is
I have not seen her FOR a very long time.
And although dictionaries will tell you that Italian da first and
foremost means from or by and the other way round,
She must go TO the doctor.
is
Deve andare DAl dottore. (!)
And so on. Nearly everybody thinks it is the
other people's language that is peculiar. But the true moral to be drawn is
that you must recognize that every language works in its own special way, and
if that's peculiar, then your own language is just as peculiar as any other.
4 Words in one language
do not usually mean exactly the same as words in another language
It is also important to understand that there are not many words in a
language that mean exactly the same as words in another language. (This
naturally does not apply between languages that are very close to each other,
such as the Scandinavian languages, or Russian, Ukrainian and Bulgarian. But
there we are really talking about what are effectively the same words.)
If we imagine a word in one language (let's say
English)
and a word in another language (let's say Russian),
it is very rare for their meanings to fit exactly like this:
It is much more likely that they will be related to each other something
like this:
Now, there may be a second English word that covers part of the Russian
word that is not covered by the first English word. But again, it won't cover
the 'missing' part exactly. There will also very likely be a part of the
meaning of some Russian words that cannot be covered by any English word –
perhaps even not by any other word in any language in the world – and
vice-versa. Notice that there are large parts of the English words which are
not covered by the Russian word. Perhaps there is another Russian word that can
do that, but maybe only partially.
Gentle is in fact an example of a word that possibly has no exact
equivalent in any other language. It can of course be translated, but only in a
very rough and approximate way. The first thing to notice is how gentle
has to be translated in one context by a certain word and in a different
context by another word. (In some contexts it might even have to be translated
by a combination of words.) Its most likely appropriate Russian equivalent is
given below for each of the following sentences:
|
1 |
He is a very gentle person. |
myágkiy |
|
2 |
He gave her a gentle smile. |
lyubéznyy |
|
3 |
She gave him a gentle push. |
lyógkiy |
|
4 |
He was rowing against a gentle current. |
slábyy |
|
5 |
Can't you give him a gentle hint? |
tónkiy |
|
6 |
She laid it gently on the table. |
ostorózhno |
|
7 |
The tap on the door was so gentle we |
|
Seven different Russian words are thus used for the same English word,
and further uses of gentle in other contexts might require further
different Russian translations. And there is almost certainly a part of the
meaning in gentle that is missing in all translations, whatever word is
used.
Gentle is perhaps a rather extreme case. But there are huge
numbers of words in the world's languages that have this same unique character,
even if not always so clearly.
5 Whole expressions, too, are different in different languages
Again, different languages express the same combination of ideas in
different ways:
|
English |
I have been here for two hours. |
|
|
Italian |
Sono
qui da due ore. |
= Am here since two hours. |
|
Japanese |
Koko-ni
ni jikan imas. |
=
Here two hour-period am. |
|
|
|
|
|
English |
She
is six years old. |
|
|
Italian |
Ha sei anni. |
= Has six years. |
|
Japanese |
Kanojo-wa roku sai desu. |
= She six age is. |
|
|
|
|
On the
|
|
|
|
English |
This is Maria. |
|
|
Italian |
Sono Maria. |
= Am Maria. |
|
Japanese |
Maria desu. |
= Maria is. |
We can see here not only that some languages sometimes leave out
meanings that other languages have to put in, and vice-versa, but also that
different languages 'think' about the same reality in different ways. We see
here that Italian, for instance, "has...years", whereas
English says "is...years old".
6 Do not learn by
translating into your own language
That foreign languages work differently from your own is the first and
most basic thing to observe and remember about them. Do not try to learn them
by constantly translating them. We have just seen, in the previous sections,
the immediate practical difficulties involved in translation and how the same
word in one language may have to be translated into another language by
different words in different contexts.
But the difficulty is also more basic. If you
always try to turn the foreign language into your own you will never truly
understand it, and you will certainly never master it and be able to use it
naturally and fluently. This is because translation goes right against the
basic nature of language that we explained above. Translation is never truly
'true'.
7 Translating is not the path to complete and certain
understanding
Many language students insist that they cannot 'really' or 'completely'
understand anything in a foreign language, from sentences to single words,
unless and until they have translated it into their own language. Some do not
go as far as this, but say they cannot be sure they have understood
until they have translated. Naturally, if you are not sure you have understood
something, and you have someone with you who knows the foreign language, you
can suggest a translation and ask that person if you are right. But that is
quite a different matter. What we are talking about here is your basic approach
and the normal practical method you use to study the language. It really is a
very bad idea always to turn the foreign language into your own. If you still
desperately hanker after such translation, please consider two facts:
Young children have no other language to turn
their mother tongue into as they learn it. Yet we all know that in the end they
learn it far more effectively than most people who try to learn that language
as a foreign language. The children can only turn their language into 'life'.
So if ever you get a longing to turn another language into your own, remind
yourself that children can't do that, and yet they get to know exactly what
words mean.
Secondly, you can only translate a piece of one
language into another if you have already understood it properly. (If
you have not understood it properly you will translate it wrong.) But if you
have understood it properly there is no need to translate it!
8 Translation diverts
your attention to the wrong thing
There is a very basic practical psychological reason why you should not
translate. If you constantly translate you will find it far more difficult to
remember how the foreign language was expressed. Your attention should always
be on the foreign language, not on your own.
As we have just pointed out, you can only
translate if you have understood first. If you go on from there and turn the
'real life' in your mind into your own language, you take a fatal step. You
break the crucial connection between the foreign language and 'real life'. You
interfere with the proper use of the foreign language in both 'directions',
that is, both comprehending and producing the language. When you hear or read
the same words or phrases again, you will tend to experience them in terms of
your own language, and so the true meaning will get distorted. Equally, when
you want to speak or write you will tend to have forgotten the words and
phrases that express what you want to say, as you will have 'left them behind'
in your hurry to turn everything into your own language.
Alternatively, you may remember some
expressions superficially, but because the exact meaning has been overlaid by your
translation - a translation almost certainly only appropriate in certain
contexts - you will forget the proper use of the expression. Indeed, it will
probably never have been anchored in your mind in the first place, because of
that haste to translate.
Apart from anything else, this will probably
mean that you will tend to use many expressions in quite the wrong way, to
convey meanings that the expression does not have, or at least not in that
context.
9 Translating acts as a barrier to understanding speech
Furthermore, if you try to translate as you listen to the foreign
language, you will find that you are putting an almost insurmountable obstacle
in the way of understanding the speech you hear. In real everyday situations
you simply do not have the time to both translate and understand.
10 Translating can make language-learning far more difficult,
sometimes for whole countries
It is often an insistence on translating that makes learning a foreign
language much more difficult for some individuals than for others. Sometimes,
even, this misguided approach can affect whole countries. It is quite possible
that it accounts for a lot of the difficulties in
The practical command of foreign languages in
Japan is far below the average for a highly literate community, such as Japan
is, and this is especially remarkable when one considers the attention paid to
them in Japanese education. This is not due simply to the fact that the
Japanese language is very different from English, the first foreign language
for students in
11 Translating may also
spoil the enjoyment
The translation approach may also deprive the learner of that delight
there can be in mastering a foreign language. My experience has been that
'translating' students tend to have a tense anxiety about what is for them a
laborious learning process. That is perhaps partly because it is not an
effective method. But it is probably also because they do not experience the
thrill that one can get from controlling the direct link between life and a
'new' language in the same way as the native speaker.
It can perhaps in some ways be likened to
learning to ride a bicycle. Learning to ride a bicycle by carefully analysing
how the muscles must be used to apply the laws of gravity, energy and motion to
the bicycle would not only be hopelessly unsuccessful; it would be horribly
boring. But a child who learns how to ride a bicycle delights in the natural
confident mastery gained through becoming one with the machine without any
intervening process.
12 Good translators
don't translate
It is also worth considering what good translators do. They could not
even begin to translate properly if they simply transferred the words of one
language directly into those of another. What they have to do first is turn
words into the 'languageless' ideas, the 'real life' in their minds, and then,
as a second stage, turn those ideas, that 'real life', into the other
language.
Language 1 Language 2
à Þ
Idea, thought, picture
of reality
There can be little doubt that no person who
learns a foreign language solely through translation will ever be able to speak
it completely idiomatically and fluently. To truly master a language you will
have to get 'inside its skin', just as you have got inside the skin of your own
language. You don't get inside a language's skin by translating it.
13 So how should we
remember foreign words?
Connect foreign words to 'things', not to words in your own language
Remembering the words of a foreign language depends on how you remember
them, not on how good your memory is. The secret is to connect foreign words to
things, people, events, feelings and ideas in real life, not to words in your
own language. In other words, you should not try to remember words (or phrases
or sentences) by translating them. Think instead directly of the thing the word
represents.
For instance, if you are an English-speaker
learning French, do not try to remember that lit = the word
bed but that lit = that thing that people sleep
in. The same goes for abstract words. Think of the idea of
fear, not the word fear, when you are learning the French word peur.
If this seems a strange approach to suggest, consider the fact that when
you were learning your own language you had no other language you could
translate the words of your own language into. You had to 'translate'
the words of your native language into things or ideas in your mind. That is
the natural way to use words and to learn them.
Let us look at another example from
English/French. What happens when an English-speaker learns, as part of her own
language, the word soufflé? She does not say to herself: I must
remember that the word soufflé = the words light frothy dish. She
gets in her mind a picture of the thing that is light and frothy that
one can eat. Yet in fact, of course, soufflé (with its acute accent and
all!) is a French word. So the English-speaker is learning, quite naturally and
without any worry, a French word in the same way psychologically that she is
learning all English words, and in the same way that she should learn all
French words if she is studying French.
The importance of connecting words directly to
things and ideas can perhaps be seen rather well if we think of telephone
numbers. Imagine you were asked to memorize just a single column of names and
their numbers in a telephone directory. You would surely find it very
difficult, particularly if you did not know personally any of the people named
in the column. It would require a person with an outstanding memory to learn
that whole column of numbers within a reasonable time.
Many people find they can learn words if they
are given pictures they can associate with them. This is an excellent method as
far as it goes, but the trouble is that it doesn't go very far. One can really
only use pictures to illustrate words for concrete objects. One cannot make
pictures of abstract ideas, nor of most actions. Attempts to do so are
dangerous in two ways. Students can easily misunderstand what the picture is
supposed to represent; and they will almost inevitably start searching for a
word in their own language, which it is the whole point of pictures to stop
them doing. It should always be immediately obvious what a picture is intended
to represent.
There are indeed some purely practical though
important differences between the ways people learn the words of their own
language and those of foreign languages. We shall discuss the details of those
differences later, particularly in Sections 35, 37 and 42.
II. First steps
What we have emphasized above does not mean that you should never use a
translation given you in a book or by a teacher - or that you should never use
a dictionary. On the contrary, there is only one practical way to take the
first steps in learning a language, and that is to learn meanings through
translation. It is the only method that can give the beginner a reasonable
amount of knowledge within a reasonable time. To recommend any other approach,
such as the 'direct method', is to do a great disservice to would-be
language-learners. You can only make that direct connection between words and
'things' etc. that we have recommended if you have first found out what
'things' the foreign words represent. Translation is the only quick way of
finding out.
But there is a right way and a wrong way of
using dictionaries, and translation generally, which we suggest in detail in
Sections 32, 34, 44-47, and 50-61. What we want to warn against here is not
translation as a practical instrument. Translation is an essential practical
instrument for any beginner making a conscious study of a new language. What is
terribly dangerous, though, is the translation 'mentality', the approach to
foreign languages that cannot see them or learn them as anything but
translations of the mother tongue.
It also does no harm to translate phrases and
sentences literally in the way we have done in Section 5. On the contrary, this
is probably the simplest and best way to explain to a beginner the way a
language works. But neither this nor any other sort of translation should
become a habit. It should only be used right at the beginning in order to 'get
you into' the language. Once you have got a fair idea of the basics of a
language you should think of translation as something to be avoided.
15 What words do you need to know?
Words, or perhaps we should say meanings, are the essence of any
language. One does not learn to speak or write, or to read or understand a
foreign language by swotting away at grammar or doing innumerable exercises, or
even by writing countless compositions. Mistakes in grammar do not usually lead
to confusion and misunderstandings to the same extent as flaws in one's
pronunciation or the wrong choice of words. It is knowing words, rather than
knowing the grammar, that is at the very heart of learning a foreign language.
But what words should you learn, and which
should you learn first? The answer is that it depends, as usual, on what you
want to use the foreign language for and how good you want to be at it. But
everybody, whatever their special interest may be, needs to know roughly the
same basic vocabulary. Everybody needs to know the pronouns, the main
prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs, question words, basic verbs, basic
nouns, and basic adjectives. Even if your only interest in the language is as,
say, a biologist, or a cook, or a lawyer, it is essential for you to know those
basic words first.
16 Active and passive vocabulary; transparent
vocabulary
Active
vocabulary is the words one can remember for using oneself for speaking and
writing. For reading or listening one only needs a passive vocabulary,
that is to say, the words one can understand when one reads or hears them, but
some of which one would not think of for oneself if one was talking or writing.
In their own language people usually understand many more words than they
actually use themselves.
In some ways it is easier to learn to read a
foreign language than to speak it. But one needs a far smaller vocabulary in
order to speak well enough for practical everyday purposes than one needs for
understanding everyday speech. That is because when one speaks one chooses the
words one uses, and one obviously tries to make do with what one has, while one
has little control over what the native speaker says. The native speaker is
liable to use a great many more words than a beginner can understand. To
understand something like a newspaper, where one has no control over the words used at all, one needs an even
bigger vocabulary.
Your passive vocabulary, then, will have to be
bigger than your active vocabulary, but there are two factors that make this
quite easy to manage. First of all, when you listen or read, the words are
presented to you. You don't have to dig them out of your memory. Secondly, in
many languages you will find words whose meaning is 'transparent' to you,
because they are similar to the equivalent words in your own language.
17 Transparency can be
different to different people
A very 'transparent' language is not
necessarily one that has a very large proportion of transparent words. Its true
'transparency' will depend on how many transparent words you actually meet in
your reading or listening. This means, in turn, that not everybody who speaks
the same language will find a particular foreign language equally transparent,
especially after they have got beyond the basic vocabulary stage.
For
instance, a French-speaker whose contact with English consists exclusively of
reading about history or economics, say, will find English far more transparent
than a French-speaker whose only reading in English is novels; German-speakers
learning English who only hear the language in connection with domestic matters
will probably find it more transparent than if they read about politics.
18 How many words? Being
selective is half the secret
For beginners, choosing the right words to
learn is an essential part of the solution to the practical problems of
learning a language. If they can find out which words are the most important,
they can concentrate on those and learn them really properly first, without wasting
time and effort on unnecessary words.
The
fact that the general, or non-technical, vocabulary of a language consists of,
say, 300,000 words is of purely theoretical interest to someone who is just
starting to study a new language. We can usually only learn a small part of
each foreign language that we take on. For that reason it is very important not
to hurl yourself headlong into a new language without being clear from the very
beginning about what you should learn. One of the fundamental principles for
any beginner ought to be what we can call word economy.
The
tables below have been worked out by Erik V. Gunnemark of Gothenburg (who
translates from 45 languages). He emphasizes that they are only an extremely
rough guide. But even if one allows for 50% error, their message is a clear and
very striking one. No more than 400 different words cover about 90% of all the
words in your everyday spoken vocabulary. In order to read you need to know
more words than those, but only as passive vocabulary, and with a knowledge of
1,500 words you can read a considerable amount reasonably well and get quite a
lot out of it.
The percentages of the total spoken and total written
vocabulary of a language that is made up of a given number of words
Percentages of the spoken vocabulary
|
The most common |
40 |
words |
= |
about |
50% |
of the spoken |
|
" |
200 |
" |
= |
" |
80% |
" |
|
" |
300 |
" |
= |
" |
85% |
" |
|
" |
400 |
" |
= |
" |
90% |
" |
|
" |
800-1,500 |
" |
= |
" |
95% |
" |
Percentages of the written vocabulary
|
The most common |
80 |
words |
= |
about |
50% |
of the written |
|
" |
200 |
" |
= |
" |
60% |
" |
|
" |
300 |
" |
= |
" |
65% |
" |
|
" |
400 |
" |
= |
" |
70% |
" |
|
" |
800 |
" |
= |
" |
80% |
" |
|
" |
1,500-2,000 |
" |
= |
" |
90% |
" |
|
" |
3,000-4,000 |
" |
= |
" |
95% |
" |
|
" |
8,000 |
" |
= |
" |
99% |
" |
So
at the beginner stage, learn the most important words properly first, instead
of grabbing constantly at new ones. Erik Gunnemark has found it best to start
off with vocabularies of 400-600 words and some 150 'phrases' or everyday
expressions.
The
basic vocabularies are very similar all over the world. Most of the words, or,
more correctly, most things and concepts, that are important in one country are
also important in another. Non-Indo-European languages too, such as Finnish and
Hungarian, are today typically European as regards the make-up of the
vocabulary, although the words and sentences in themselves appear very alien to
speakers of the Indo-European languages. So there is no reason why one should
not use one's mother tongue as the starting point when learning foreign
languages.
19 One
has to crawl before one can walk: the 'active minimum'
Gunnemark writes: "A basic principle for
studying a language effectively is, first, to learn thoroughly an active
minimum. This applies irrespective of which particular skill one wants to
concentrate on, that is to say, not only speaking (understanding the spoken
word and making oneself understood in it) but also reading and writing.
"By
'active' here I mean that beginners should learn the equivalents in the foreign
language of words and phrases in their own language, and learn them as well as
possible, preferably by heart. 'Minimum' means 'first things
first', that is, as quickly as possible getting down to learning what is most
important in the way of words, phrases and grammar, even when the learning is
hard going.
"Children
crawl before they walk, and it is the same with learning a language: first we
crawl, and then we begin to walk…..
"This
'mini' material gives beginners an invaluable overall view: they know what they
have to concentrate on 'in the first round'. This is particularly important
when the language is difficult at the beginning. Moreover, their assurance and
self-confidence is increased by the fact that the mini material is specially
adapted so that they can study effectively on their own. They need not be
afraid to 'crawl-speak' or 'mini-speak' when they are conscious that they know
the most important words and phrases by heart.
"In
order to 'crawl-speak', or 'survive-speak', however, one can get by with
considerably fewer 'crawl-words' and 'crawl-phrases'. When I travelled around
"More
words are needed for 'crawl-reading', that is, about 800, but here we are
talking about 'passive' words - and one can of course begin to read with an
even smaller reading vocabulary. I began to read non-fiction in Irish, Lappish
and Turkish when my passive vocabulary in those languages did not consist of
more than 400-500 words.
"Note
that the 'crawl-phrases' as well as the individual words must be so well learnt
that you can use them without hesitation - as if you are pressing a button. In
other words, you must know them completely by heart.
(Your knowledge of the 'crawl-grammar' must be equally solid.)"
Note 2
20 Concentrate
on central words!
Anybody who wants to learn a new language ought
first to concentrate on common words that may be needed instantaneously, those
which can be called central words (or 'instant words'). You should learn
these so that you know them 'automatically' and can use them without
hesitating.
21 Don't learn unnecessary
synonyms
As a
beginner you should not spend time and energy on learning synonyms without
immediate practical value. (In fact, as we shall see later, there are actually
no such things as synonyms.)
In a 'survival list' there should be as few words as
possible, preferably only one as an equivalent for each word in the 'home'
language. At this stage it is important to maintain 'word economy'.
22 Don't bother about marginal 'interest' words at the beginning
Most
'interest' words - words belonging to particular 'fields of interest' or to
subject areas of various kinds - are not central to vocabulary learning for a
beginner; they are marginal. You should not learn these marginal interest words
at the expense of central words. If you do, you are only acquiring seeming
knowledge – relatively unimportant words instead of the ones you really ought
to be learning. One seldom needs to remember without delay the words for
animals, plants, parts of the body (you can point to them) and illnesses, any
more than the names of pieces of furniture or household utensils. As a result
of the spread of department stores and supermarkets, words that were previously
common in speech are now used comparatively rarely in everyday life. This
applies, among other things, to many of the names of items of food, clothes,
writing materials and various odds and ends.
In the teaching of beginners in some countries a lot
of time is wasted on marginal words. Many students are still deceived into
thinking that it is important to know the equivalents of words like monkey,
donkey, elephant, snail, parrot, plum, pear, cherry, raisin; horseshoe, bow (as
in bow and arrow), padlock, church bell. There is nothing wrong in itself
with knowing a lot of marginal 'interest words'. But there is usually plenty of
time to look them up in a pocket dictionary, and in principle you should learn
them at a later stage, after the central words.
I have seen even worse examples of misdirected
energies, such as Italian coursebooks for use at the elementary stage of
English in which the children are given lists to learn of the names of the
creatures to be found at the seaside!
23 Important central
'interest' words
However,
not all 'interest words' are 'out-of-the-way' words. Some are so common and
important that it is proper to treat them as central words from the learning
point of view. Particularly within the 'interest-areas' of Time and People
there are plenty of central words. The following should be learned as soon as
possible:
Time:
day,
night, morning, evening, hour, week, month, year, time (once, the first time),
Monday etc., spring, summer, autumn, winter, holiday.
People:
father,
mother, child, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, man, woman
(gentleman, lady), boy, girl, relative, friend.
Examples from other 'interest areas' of words we need
to learn at an early stage are:
house,
flat/apartment, window, hill, wood, river, clothes, dress, money, wallet, key,
watch, bag, town, street, road, office, book, newspaper, letter, card, water,
bread, meat, weather, rain
We should learn at the earliest stage what the words
are for the following signs and notices:
Open
Closed
Toilet
Ladies
Gentlemen
Vacant
Engaged
Entrance
Exit
Arrivals
Departures
No
Smoking
And wallet and handbag are two very important words for
travellers abroad.
It is important, too, to know the names of certain
countries, nationalities and languages. In any language with which we are
involved we must at least learn what our home country is called, together with
our nationality and the word for our language.
24 Confidence comes from knowing
common phrases well
In
this article the term phrase is used to indicate everyday expressions
and other common short sentences. 'Phrases' are just as important as separate
single words. One cannot work out common expressions for oneself simply by
combining various words with the help of some grammar - it doesn't work! A
great many everyday ideas are expressed by each language in its own special
way.
Nevertheless, this does not mean that most everyday
expressions are not consistent with grammar, and it is a very good idea at the
beginner's stage to study the grammar of common expressions in a practical
phrase book. At this critical stage of your learning this will teach you a lot
about both the common usage and the grammar of the language, and help
you to get a genuine feel for it.
The mastery of a core of common phrases is invaluable
for one's self-confidence. One can then at least 'say something' in
everyday situations.
To
be able to speak reasonably well one needs to know at least 100 phrases. But
even at the 'crawl' stage an active knowledge of 25-50 phrases is necessary.
You should know them so well that you 'hear them inside you' and use them
automatically, without hesitating. Such phrases can be just as important as
words.
An active knowledge of phrases is also necessary for
one to be able to write easily and naturally. For reading, on the other hand,
one only needs a passive knowledge that does not take much time or work to
acquire; it is merely a matter of knowing what the phrases mean in one's own language.
25 The most important phrases
first!
For
beginners 'phrase economy' is just as important as 'word economy'. First learn
all the most important phrases. Concentrate on a small number of phrases at a
time. If you try to learn too many all at once, you may find it difficult to
remember any of them. As with words, learn the phrases with your own language
as the starting point. Limit yourself to just one equivalent in the
foreign language to begin with, but make sure you know it by heart. Only when
you know that phrase 'absolutely' should you start studying variations.
On the other hand, exercises in the contexts of things
like shopping and ordering in restaurants are for the most part wasted time and
effort. The expressions learned are mainly marginal 'interest' words. In
practice one can manage perfectly well without them. Both at the beginner's
stage and later there are a whole lot of other things which are much more
important to practise and fix in the memory, such as "Could you write
your address for me here?".
26 Don't waste energy and time on fancy phrases
Especially
in the early stages, but even at a later stage, you should be careful not to
waste your energies on what may seem to you entertaining or exotic words and
idioms. For instance, many students of English as a foreign language seem to be
fascinated by the expression cats and dogs in the context of the
weather. Yet it is of no importance whatsoever if students do not know this
phrase. (They are almost certain to understand it from the context if and when
they do hear it.) It naturally does not matter if they acquire it effortlessly
as an extra that they think is fun. But it is misguided for them to grasp at
such an expression if they do not first know how to say "It's raining
hard".
I remembers how many years ago I had a student who was
entranced by the phrase salad days. For a time she tried to bring
it into every composition she wrote for me, and would interrogate me at length
about it each time I explained she was using it incorrectly. I seem to remember
she only gave up when I assured her that it was an expression I had never used
in my life, and that it was extremely unlikely that I would ever use it during
the rest of it either.
27 A practical way of
learning the basic vocabulary
At
the very beginning, that is, when you start to learn the basic vocabulary, and
at that stage only, the simplest method is probably the best. Learn
by heart from a list with the words of your own language in alphabetical order
in a column on the left and the words of the language you are learning on the
right. (Unless, of course, your own language reads from right to left.)
To make sure you spend your energy equally on all parts of the list,
start with a different letter of the alphabet each day: A on the first day, B
on the second day, C on the third, and so on. All you need do is cover one
column with a piece of paper which you move down as you check your memory of
each word or phrase.
You may find it quite a good idea to start by learning
the words and phrases of the foreign language passively. That is, cover
the column of words of your own language to begin with. When you find
you can understand all the foreign words and expressions without difficulty,
move the paper over to the other side and see how your active memory manages.
If you are really serious about your language studies
you should go through your list several times a day. When you think you have
mastered all the words you should still check through the list once a day so
that you don't start forgetting them.
28 Learn
words with other words!
But
at the same time it is essential to find examples of these basic words in context.
Many of them you will find in your list of phrases. But you should also look for
examples of them in your beginner's book. You should even try to find examples
of them in newspapers and magazines, even if at first you understand very
little of what you read there. Even at this stage you should try to get as much
contact with the foreign language as you can.
You should always be looking out for the words that go
together with the word you are learning. For instance, if you are studying
English you should notice that in English one says that:
a person is married TO someone
one stays AT a hotel
they are worried ABOUT something
I am interested IN something
one GETS into a car
you spend time DOING something
it depends ON something
CHECK the baggage
PUT one's clothes on
a rise IN temperature
Where 'case languages' like German or Russian are
concerned, you should also notice which cases the different prepositions
govern. In German, for example, a preposition can govern one case if it is
linked to one particular word and another case if it is linked to another
particular word:
arbeiten an (+ dative) einem Buch = work on a book
denken an (+ accusative) ein Buch = think about a book
29 Becoming independent of
one's own language
Becoming
completely independent of one's own language is the most fundamental, the most
important thing of all in learning a foreign language. In a sense, in fact,
that is exactly what learning a foreign language means – becoming independent
of one's native tongue. Starting out from one's own language, and learning how
its meanings are expressed in the foreign language, is a thoroughly practical
and effective way of working at the start. However, one should never forget
that basic aim of one's studies. Once one knows a foreign word and how it is
used in the context of its own language, there is no longer any need to be
concerned with the word of one's own language.
Indeed, any lingering association with one's own
language is a barrier to complete mastery. One should try as much as possible
to disconnect the words of the 'new' language from those of one's own. Thus,
for example, a Spanish-speaker learning English, once she knows that llorar is
cry in English, should forget llorar and think only of cry.
She should 'think in English', that is to say, connect cry directly in
her mind to the reality of crying.
At the practical level this means that you should no
longer look at the native language side of your word and phrase lists at all.
Simply go through the 'foreign' language side of the lists and make yourself so
familiar with the words and expressions that they are no longer part of a
foreign language.
III. How
to learn many words
30 After
the basic words be greedy for new words
Once
you have got beyond the first stage it is very important, if you want to
become really good at the language, to be greedy for words. Never be content
with the vocabulary you have. Try to expand it constantly. There are factors
that tend to stop people learning new words which we discuss in Sections 32, 38
and 57. The words you know are seldom substitutes for the words you do not
know.
After you have mastered the most basic words,
children's books are one of the best kinds of reading material for getting a
really solid foundation in both vocabulary and most other aspects of the
language. So long, that is, as you do not consider such reading beneath you and
too boring. Become really familiar with children's books, and you will become
familiar with the foundations of the language on which, as adults, native
speakers build the effortless and confident use of their mother tongue. At the
same time you will very likely get an insight into their culture. School books
on geography and history for ten to twelve-year-olds are equally excellent material,
and less off-putting for many adults than children's fiction.
31 You need the vocabulary you need!
When it comes to increasing vocabulary beyond the
basic words, different people clearly need different sorts of word and
different numbers of words for different purposes. There has been too much
worry about selecting the vocabulary that foreign-language learners need to
learn. The principle is very simple. You need the vocabulary you need! If you
want to read serious newspapers in the foreign language, you need the
vocabulary found in those serious newspapers. If you want to exchange ideas on
growing lemons, you will need far fewer words, but they will have to be
agricultural ones, many of them words that most foreigners will never need.
Thus the words you need to know will, as it were, choose themselves. Note 3
We advise specialists in any field not to waste
their time and money on courses for 'special', or 'specific', purposes.
Whatever your field, you can almost certainly learn the relevant technical
vocabulary and usage in the foreign language far more quickly and efficiently
than a non-expert native speaker; since you already know about the things the
writers are discussing. If you are an engineer from
But the problem that is even more important
than choosing the words to learn is:
How should you learn them?
32 Dictionaries - too often the great enemies of word-learning
Words are the essence of any language, far more
than grammar is. Yet sadly, people often have terrible trouble with them, and
many never learn even a quarter of the vocabulary they could if they went about
learning it in the right way.
Dictionaries
are wonderful and fascinating things, and most students of foreign languages
would be lost without them. At the same time, unfortunately, dictionaries have
done untold harm. It may seem strange to say so, but in practice it has
probably been the dictionary more than anything else that has stopped people
knowing the foreign words they would like to know.
Millions
of language students are trapped in vicious circles. They complain that they
cannot understand what they read in the foreign language because they do not
know enough words. So they do not read and they do not increase their
vocabulary, and so they continue not to be able to understand. Then perhaps
someone tells them how important reading is and persuades them to try again. So
they sit down with their dictionaries, and they look up every single word that
is new to them, and very often many words that are not new, but that they
"want to be quite sure about". At the end of three hours they have
got through half a page in a book, or half a column in a newspaper. They do
this for three or four days, and then give up in despair; oppressed by the
tediousness of it all. They are convinced - quite correctly - that they do not
know enough words to understand ordinary books and newspapers. As a result
their vocabularies stay more or less the same size as they were, and they
complain that they are making no progress. They either become permanently
frustrated and depressed, or just give in and give up. And it all happens
because they have spent more time with the dictionary than with the language
itself.
I
have personally known hundreds of students who have had this problem; many of
them probably still have it. It is not possible to make exact measurements of
something like this, but it is a fair bet that at least three quarters of all
students of foreign languages suffer to some extent from this difficulty. Many
believe that every time they come to a new word they must know "exactly
what it means", and so they turn constantly to the dictionary to find out.
This is doubly sad, because it not only slows them up so terribly that they
cannot do a tenth of the reading they ought to do; it also in fact prevents them
finding out "exactly what the word means". There is the added danger
for some that they are not satisfied till they can think of the translation of
the word in their own language. This makes them waste even more time with the
dictionary.
33 Teachers
talking about words – another misguided activity
Listening to teachers giving detailed
explanations of the meanings of words is just as great a waste of time. We
explain in Sections 54-56 and 59-60 how this is wrong in both principle
and practice. But we should point out already here how, once teachers start
explaining vocabulary, they may find they are spending hours on just very few
words. Even if they do not do actual harm by encouraging a faulty approach to
vocabulary, they will achieve nothing of value; there are far better ways in
which they can spend their own and their students' time.
There
is just one sort of word of which this is not true. There are some words that
are often confused with other, often similar words. If the distinctions in
meaning are clear cut, it is useful for students to have them pointed out to
them. Examples of such pairs in English are the verbs come/go and bring/take,
and the adjectives economic/economical.
(There
is an excellent book by R.J.Hill, A dictionary of false friends,
published by Macmillan in 1982. It consists of 178 pages of English words,
showing to which of 14 other languages – including Swiss German – they are
false friends, or faux amis.)
34 What words are and what
they are not
Before
we discuss these problems and how you ought to learn words, it is important to
think about what words are and how they work. As we have already pointed out,
languages are not translations of other languages. English does not exist in
order to translate Russian, Chinese was not invented for the purpose of
translating English, and Spanish was not called into being for the sake of
people wanting to translate Chinese. The child of German-speaking parents does
not have to wait to understand a new German word till she has translated it
into Romanian. The very idea is clearly absurd.
Yet millions of would-be learners of foreign languages
approach foreign words as though that is how they work, and this causes them a
lot of trouble. We showed in Section 4 how one word in one language does not
correspond exactly to one word in another language, and how the same word may
have to be translated in different ways on different occasions, depending on
the context. When children learn their own language they have no other language
to translate their words into. Instead they have to 'translate' them into
'reality', into experience; for them all words mean actual things or part of a
situation, or ideas, never other words. All words are in a context of life, and
that is why children learn them so thoroughly and so accurately. If you want to
learn foreign words anything like as thoroughly and accurately you will need to
learn them in the same way, that is, as meaning reality and experience, and in
contexts, not as meaning words in your own language.
35 The great blessing of being
a grown-up
If
one suggests to people that they should learn foreign vocabulary in the same
way as they learned their own as children, many will protest that that took so
very long, and that they simply haven't got time to do it that way.
It is quite true, of course, that children take many
years to develop their vocabulary. But adults can acquire a far larger
vocabulary in a foreign language, and far more quickly, than a child learning
her own language, for the reason that adults 'know' the world already, while
children do not. Before a child can grasp a new meaning she has to learn about
the reality that the new word refers to. She thus has to do two things for each
new meaning. Adults have to do only one. They already know the reality the word
refers to. All they have to do is recognise it. If a child of six is
presented with a newspaper article on politics, say, she will neither
understand it nor learn its vocabulary, however good a reader she is otherwise,
simply because she has no experience, either direct or indirect, of the things
the words are about. She will have to wait some years before she can master
such meanings.
Adults have an enormous advantage. They can get down
straight away to mastering the meanings of a foreign language, many of them far
more sophisticated than a native child could grasp. To sum up: a child has to
learn about the world and a language; an adult only has to learn about a
language.
(Learning about a language does, of course, a lot of
the time involve far more than learning words and how to put them together.
Learning a foreign language inevitably mean, to a greater or lesser extent,
learning about a foreign culture, and that may often mean learning new
experiences just as children do.)
As
an adult, then, you have a task that can take you far less time than it does a
child. On the other hand, the child learns meanings very efficiently, and we
should consider how she does it. She does it by hearing, and later perhaps by
reading, hundreds of thousands of words. In a normal day she hears hundreds, if
not thousands of them. There are many words that she hears over and over again.
If they have meanings she is ready for; she masters them very quickly. As far
as you can, you should do what the child does. Listen to and read hundreds of
thousands of words. If you do not read or listen to lots and lots of words, you
cannot expect to learn lots of words.
Today, for most people who are learning a foreign
language the more practical way to experience all those words is probably to
read them rather than to listen to them, at any rate at the beginning. When you
listen there will probably often be words you cannot catch, and there is the
further disadvantage that you have a very limited time to think about possible
meanings. In practice it has probably been the dictionary more than anything
else that has stopped people doing that reading.
If you have nothing that you particularly want to read
about, newspapers and magazines are probably best. Detective stories are also
excellent, if you like them. Translations of stories by writers like Agatha
Christie or Georges Simenon contain very useful vocabulary.
Once you have developed a bigger vocabulary, though,
it is a good idea to try to develop it even further by listening to the radio
as well as reading. You should listen to the radio in any case. You need to
listen for the purposes of both pronunciation and training yourself to understand.
As with pronunciation, tapes are not nearly so useful
as the radio. Commercial tapes are a completely unnecessarily expensive way of
learning only a limited vocabulary. The radio is the biggest single
contribution to foreign-language learning since the invention of writing. Or
rather; it is potentially the biggest single contribution, because sadly it is
not used for learning languages anything like as much as it can be. (We are
naturally not talking about any language courses one may be able to hear on the
radio, but about the never-ending stream of language of varying kinds that
pours out of it.)
As
we have emphasized before, it is only by observing a word in many 'living'
contexts, as we have done in our own language, that we can master its meaning.
Most of the equivalents given in dictionaries are at best approximations or
pointers, and 'dead' approximations at that. We should constantly remind
ourselves that languages do not mean each other; they refer directly to
reality.
37 Learning the words of our
own language
By
this time many readers are probably saying: "This is all very well, but
what's the good of doing all this reading and listening if I don't know the
words, and can't understand? How am I actually going to learn meanings?"
We need to think again about how children - and for
that matter adults - learn meanings. Let us imagine that you are forty years
old and can understand about 50,000 words in your own language. (That's a
fairly typical number for an 'educated' person. We are talking about 'passive'
vocabulary, not the number of words a person uses actively in speech and
writing.) How many of those 50,000 have you looked up in a dictionary? How many
have you had explained to you by your parents or anybody else?
Let us suppose that somebody explained four words a
day to you from the time you were two until you were ten, and that since then
you have looked up one word in the dictionary every single day of your life.
Probably almost everybody knows that those are ridiculously unrealistic
figures. But even on that basis, and even assuming that the explanations and
the dictionary work were a hundred per cent effective, you would still know
less than 23,000 words, leaving over 27,000 to account for. In practice most of
us almost certainly get the meanings of far less than a thousand words from
dictionaries or explanations.
How
did we learn the rest? And how is it we not only know exactly what most of them
mean (even if we occasionally get the wrong end of the stick) but also know
exactly how to use practically all the words of our active vocabulary?
38 Learning meanings from
context
The
answer is that we 'worked out' the meanings from the context, the 'real life'
context, of what we were hearing or reading. (The 'extra' part of the
vocabulary of better 'educated' people is almost certainly acquired mainly
through reading.) This is exactly what you should do with a foreign language.
Remember that for a given number of words you read as an adult in a foreign
language you will learn more new words more quickly than you did when you read
the same number of words in your own language as a child.
As children we probably worked out new meanings largely
without thinking about them consciously. This is what you should try to do as
an adult. The secret is to forget that you are studying a foreign language and
concentrate instead on the content - be curious about the story, the argument,
the description and nothing else. This is an added reason why you should read
or listen to language about things that interest you. If you do, you will find
it much easier to approach the problem of vocabulary in the right way.
A great many people become mentally paralyzed when
they are faced with pieces of language containing a number of words they don't
know. Worrying about the language instead of about the 'story', their attitude
is: "How can I understand the sentence if I don't understand all the
words?" If you approach the problem like that you will indeed often not
understand anything at all. If children thought like that they would never
learn any words.
Don't use words to find out the meaning of sentences.
Use sentences to find out the meaning of words.
Naturally there are limits to this approach. Clearly
if there are too many unfamiliar words, you will be left in the dark. This is
why children take a long time to master their language. But if you find it
difficult to accept the way we are recommending you to learn words, we must ask
you to consider again how it is that children learn words so efficiently, even
though they do not have the advantage that adults have. (But see below, Section
42.)
39 Imagine blanks in the text
If
or when you find you cannot grasp the meaning of unfamiliar words with little
or no conscious thought, you can use a method which is probably in fact what
both children and adults, without thinking about it, use in their own language
when they arrive at meanings. Pretend that the word you cannot understand is a blank.
Imagine what meaning it would make sense to fill the blank with. This is
often very easy to do. Many people will have had the experience of having to
try to read bad handwriting in a letter in their own language. The mental
process of working out the meaning of an obscure word in a foreign language is
the same as the mental process of working out an indecipherable word in your
own language - if you can relax enough to see it that way. Once again it is a
matter of not getting into a panic of helplessness just because you don't
'know' the word.
Learning
words through context is not only the best way to learn a 'passive' vocabulary
but also the best way to learn an 'active' one. We have already emphasized how
words in different languages are very seldom exact equivalents of each other.
Each word is used in its own special way in each language. For that reason, in
order to truly master the use of a word, you must observe it in context. This
must be at least a phrase, more often a complete sentence, and sometimes more
than a sentence.
Many
words, actually, have two contexts. Each word has a context of a 'real life'
situation, but very often also a context of other words (known in linguistic
jargon as "collocations"). We have given some examples in Section 28.
Here are a few more. First, two pairs of contrasting situations, expressed in
English:
Could
you bring those plates here?
Could
you take these sandwiches into the other room?
Could
you tell me where the nearest telephone box is? This telephone box is out
of order. How far is it to the next one?
And
four examples of words that go with other words, in English, Italian and
Swedish:
1. They've scored a goal.
2. We had great fun. (NB both have and
great with fun.)
3. She's married to a doctor.
4. She finally achieved her ambition.
1. (Italian) Hanno segnato una rete. ('marked a net')
2. (Swedish) Vi hade väldigt roligt. ('had hugely funny')
3. (Italian) E sposata con un medico. ('married with')
4. (Swedish) Äntligen uppfyllde hon sin ambition.
('fulfilled
her ambition')
There are even more narrowly restricted combinations
of words, so restricted that we might call them clichés, such as fully aware,
but totally unaware, etc.
41 Favourite words
There
is something else that you can only do if you increase your vocabulary mainly
through reading and listening. You will find, if you observe keenly, that each
language has its 'favourite' words.
Most, or at least a great many, languages have rough
equivalents of most meanings in other languages. For instance, other languages
than English have equivalents of the words based on any and equivalents
of any itself, and they have equivalents of the English -ever
words - whenever, wherever, etc. Yet, in practice, other
languages do not use their equivalents of those words nearly so often as
English-speakers use any and -ever words. English-speakers use
them constantly.
There are also English words which have alternatives,
such as particularly instead of especially, and odd
instead of strange. What is very noticeable to anyone who listens a lot
to non-native speakers of English is how they almost never use particularly
or odd, while native speakers of English possibly use these words
considerably more often than especially and strange, particularly
in speech. Many students of English, including those at an advanced level,
claim they have never even heard of the word odd. If you want to speak a
foreign language really naturally, you should keep your eyes and ears open, and
perhaps, if you are a 'list person', even make a list of 'favourite' words as
you notice them.
42 The disadvantage of being
an adult
Adults,
then, have the great advantage, where new words are concerned, of knowing the
world already. But they have the great disadvantage that they cannot be in at
the beginning, so to speak, of a foreign language. That is to say, they cannot
learn the very first words, the basic words, of a language in the same way that
children do. Small children live a life that is concerned with basic concrete
objects, basic sensations, basic emotions, basic physical activities. These are
what their parents talk to them about, and the meanings of the words the
parents use are demonstrated directly to the children over and over again.
For adults it is very difficult - for most of them
impossible - to reproduce this situation. For that reason it is virtually
impossible for them to learn the meanings of the most basic words of a foreign
language by 'working them out' from the context. They haven't got the
context. So right at the beginning of learning a new language you have to learn
words through translations into your own language, whether with the help of a
dictionary or in some other way.
43 Memory aids
Various
mental devices and tricks Note 4 have been suggested for helping language learners to remember the
meanings of words. They are not really to be recommended. In practice they only
tend to put an extra burden on the memory. They may very well work sometimes,
in the sense that with their help you do in fact remember particular words. But
the time you use up in working out and applying such aids to the memory could
have been used to remind yourself of many more words in a natural way, that is,
in a context. On the whole, resorting to memory aids probably greatly slows
down the process of learning vocabulary rather than speeding it up.
It is a good principle in language learning
generally that one should avoid any technique that involves learning or
remembering something extra. Go directly to the language as soon as
possible. Don't spend time and energy on 'middle men'. They tend to be
barriers, not short cuts. The true shortest cut is to follow the real way of
language, which, as we have seen, is to associate the word directly with the
reality it represents.
44 The
dangers of the = sign
Another serious drawback of using these
remembering devices is that they tend to encourage the "this word = that
word" approach to learning a language. For many individual words in
themselves this does not matter. It is probably pretty safe in most languages
to put the equals sign between the words for bread, brother or buy,
for instance.
But
it may be surprising how quickly one comes up against difficulties. Even what
appear to be the most basic words can cause trouble. Take for example what one
needs in order to express bad in Italian. English-speakers take it for
granted that this is a kind of all-purpose idea expressed by the most basic of
words, the uncomplicated opposite of good. Yet in Italian its idea is
expressed by an indefinite number of different words, according to context. (Bad
in bad weather, bad bus service and bad food would be
expressed by at least three different words or phrases in Italian, to take a
mere three examples.)
45 Prepositions
again
The single-word equivalent system of learning
vocabulary is particularly harmful in the way it usually stops students
learning prepositions properly. We gave some examples in Section 3 of how
prepositions in different languages do not correspond with each other.
But nearly all learners of a foreign language meet the basic prepositions right
at the beginning of their studies. They usually learn just one main meaning for
each preposition, and so it becomes embedded in the mind as having that meaning
in their own language. The damage is done, the habit cannot be broken, however
much they may later warn themselves about it, and prepositions confuse them
permanently.
46 More
haste, less speed
The key is to have the strength of mind to be
patient. Most children learning their own language, if they can choose what
they read, and get sensible advice, are not aware of having to be patient.
Adults learning a foreign language expect to learn much faster than children.
The irony is that they can, for the reason already explained, but so often
don't because they go about it the wrong way. If you are an adult, at the very
beginning you must expect to read a great deal that you do not understand. The
essential thing is not to give in to the temptation to turn to the dictionary.
Don't worry if you don't understand everything, don't worry even if you
understand less than half of what you read. The important thing is to keep on
reading as many words as you can. Read what interests you, and concentrate on
the content, not the language.
If
you persevere, read the foreign language for three hours a day, on average look
up no more than two or three words a day (fewer if possible), and don't worry
about the bits you don't understand, you will find that in a few weeks you have
increased your vocabulary enormously. At the beginning of those few weeks you
will sometimes feel that you understand almost nothing, and despair of ever
understanding any more. At the end you may be puzzled how you have done it, and
feel you have learned a large number of words without really noticing it -
which is exactly what we did as children, except that we took far longer. We
must repeat the simple principle: if people do not read or listen to lots of
words, they will not learn lots of words.
47 This writer's personal failure and success at learning
vocabulary
I learned the wrong way and the right way to do
it when I first went to
Almost
forty years later I started to live periodically in
I
must, however; put my experience with Italian in perspective. When I started to
learn it I could already read non-fiction in both French and Spanish without
much difficulty, and to French- and Spanish-speakers a great many Italian words
are transparent. A large number of Italian words are transparent to
English-speakers as well.
On
the other hand I was very busy doing other things while I was in Italy and did
not do nearly as much reading of the local language as I had done all those
years earlier in Sweden. Instead of a whole newspaper a day I read part of just
one newspaper and most of a magazine each week. Undoubtedly the many
years of being involved with foreign-language learning in one way or another
had given me experience that enabled me to learn vocabulary quicker than before.
I
ought also to record the fact that I have never in all my life written a single
note about the vocabulary of any language nor ever made a list, however short,
of equivalent words for any language. I regard it as a waste of time, and have
always wanted to get on instead with the real job of observing the living
foreign language as it is actually used. It seems to me pointless to start
writing one's own dictionary, when dictionaries as good as anything one is
likely to produce oneself already exist.
48 Notes
and lists
However; many learners have a quite different
approach and feel their minds can't work properly if they don't write things
down. If you believe you cannot learn words without writing them down in some way,
do at least try to avoid making simple lists of one-word equivalents.
Always
note down complete sentences, or; in longer sentences, at the very least
complete phrases. You then have records of real pieces of language, examples of
howwords are actually used. It is also much better normally not to write a
translation in your own language. You should avoid the translation approach
whenever you can.
On
the other hand, it does no harm if sometimes your example sentences for a word
you are interested in make general statements about the word itself. Here, as
an example, are the sort of sentences you should try to get hold of and could
usefully note down about the word borrow if you are somebody studying
English as a foreign language. You will notice that there are several sentences
that do not contain the word borrow itself. That is because it is just
as important to know the words and expressions used around borrow as
well.
One borrows things from people.
One lends things to people.
People borrow books from libraries.
They have borrower's cards.
The
borrowers have to return (give back) the books after a certain period.
This book is due back on the 20th.
May I borrow your pen?
Could I possibly borrow your car for the day?
Do you think I could possibly borrow this for a
few days?
I'll return it (give it back) next week.
If
you make notes in this way you will always be learning something really useful.
When it comes to using words in practice it is of limited value just to know
the meaning of a word in isolation. You need to know how to express the
other ideas that that word will inevitably be connected to.
If,
as with making polite requests in the case of borrow above, it involves
including expressions that often occur in the context of other words, that is
all to the good. What is common should become familiar.
Notes
like these are, incidentally, a good illustration of how important it is to use
looseleaf notebooks. If you make your notes in bound notebooks you
cannot possibly organize them properly, and so they will remain effectively
useless.
Finally,
even if you are a confirmed note writer; try just once not making any notes for
a few months, and instead read all that much more of the foreign language
itself in the time you would have spent on notes.
49 Concentrate
on one meaning at a time
On the other hand we strongly advise you not to
try to learn all the different meanings of a word at the same time. Words don't
work in the mind like that. Each different meaning of a word belongs in its own
special context, and it is in each special context that it is natural to
remember it. If you look up a word such as the French porter even in a
small dictionary you may well find over ten different meanings. If you try to
remember them all at once, even in a context, you will probably only become
confused. In our own language we do not remember the different uses of a word
in that way. There are often uses that native speakers do not know, and yet
that does not in any way affect their mastery of the others. With a foreign
language, as with your own, you should be patient and just wait for each
different meaning of a word to present itself in its own natural context.
50 How big?
One of the first considerations for many people when they are choosing a
dictionary may be price. A beginner will not normally need a really large
dictionary (over 50,000 words). Pocket dictionaries with about 8,000 to 10,000
words should serve well enough at the start. These are also as a rule perfectly
adequate for travelling.
51 Good and bad dictionaries
But size is certainly not the most important
criterion in the choice of a dictionary. A good small dictionary is far better
than a huge bad one. One needs a dictionary that tells one what one needs to
know; that will vary from person to person. What is essential is to know what
you personally do need. (One snag of pocket dictionaries is that very often
they do not have all the necessary words for food, or for dishes in
restaurants.)
A
great problem one is up against, when choosing a dictionary, is that it is very
difficult to judge reliably how good a dictionary is by looking at it for ten
minutes in a bookshop. It is often only after one has used a dictionary for a
while that one begins to discover its defects. If you can, get advice from
people who know about dictionaries of the language concerned; but make sure
that they are themselves guided by the right principles.
One
important principle can be seen from the following three examples taken from
the English-Italian section of a medium-sized 'two-way' dictionary of those
languages. They illustrate what a dictionary should not be like. It
includes usage that students will not need until a very advanced stage, if
ever, and omits expressions that most students will need at quite early stages.
Under
(a), the dictionary gives the Italian for (b), but not for (c).
|
(a) |
(b) included |
(c) missing |
|
bed |
you have made
your bed, |
get out of bed |
|
deliver |
deliver a blow |
deliver the
post |
|
spend |
the night is
far spent |
spend time (an
hour etc.) |
Also, a dictionary must show what words are
used together with the head word. For instance, if you are an Italian-speaker
looking up the English for scusare or perdonare, and you find
among others the word forgive, the dictionary should give you forgive
(sb. for sth.; sb. for doing). (sb. would stand for somebody,
sth. for something, and doing for a verb in the -ing
form.)
If
it is a dictionary for students of French, it should tell you for each verb
whether it is followed by a or de before an infinitive: that, for
instance, cesser (stop or cease) is followed by de
(cesser de pleurer - to stop crying'). (And
of course, if you are studying English, your dictionary must tell you how to
use stop.) If you are learning Swedish and want to know how to say
"I like eating", your dictionary should not only tell you that like
can be translated with tycka om, but also that it is followed in such a
case by att: "Jag tycker om att äta". And so on.
Another
general principle is that the more good examples a dictionary has of how
the words are used, the better it is. A dictionary without examples may be good
enough for someone who only wants it for holiday travelling; but anyone with
any ambitions in the language should find a dictionary with examples. As a
rule, dictionary publishers should not sacrifice the space needed for examples
in favour of a larger number of entries.
However;
you should beware of monolingual dictionaries that claim to be the latest in
scientific lexicography because they are based on a huge 'corpus' of millions
of words scanned by computer. (A well-known example is the Cobuild English
dictionary.) These computer collections are almost entirely of sentences and
phrases found in written texts. The result is that not only are many of
the examples quoted in the dictionary completely untypical of the real everyday
use of the words, which is mainly found in speech; they have also been taken
out of their broader context in newspaper articles, novels etc., which makes it
even harder for the dictionary user to understand how the words are used.
52 Dictionaries
- which way round?
When I first became interested in foreign
languages I often heard people say that it is perfectly all right for
English-speakers to use French-English dictionaries as much as they like, but
that they should be very wary of using English-French dictionaries. In other
words, it was all right to use dictionaries from the foreign language into
one's own, but not dictionaries the other way round. I entirely accepted this
principle. The grounds for it were that when one uses an 'own-to-foreign'
dictionary, the chances are that one will not know how to use the foreign words
one finds.
That
danger certainly exists. However; I now think the opposite of what I used to.
It has already been explained why you should use the 'foreign-to-own'
dictionary as little as possible. But when you want to put something into the
foreign language, you cannot 'work out' what the words must be. You either know
them or you do not. The dictionary is the only solution if you have ideas to
express that you do not know how to express.'
But
you must certainly be on your guard. Try to avoid using a word that you do not
recognize, or at least, if you do use it, be aware that you are very likely
making a mistake. It is a good idea, in fact, if you are in any doubt, to
'check back' in the opposite direction by looking up the foreign word you have
chosen in a foreign-to-own dictionary.
On
the other hand you may recognize a great many words, when you find them in the
own-to-foreign dictionary, that you could not have thought of by yourself. As
we have already pointed out, passive vocabulary is nearly always far bigger
than active. You may learn a great deal, particularly when you plan what to say
with the help of an own-to-foreign language dictionary.
53 Dictionaries
and translation
The only times I use a 'foreign-to-own'
dictionary a lot are when I am doing translation work. I do not use the
dictionary to find out what the foreign words mean. I do not consider people
have any business to be translating if they have to use a dictionary more than
very occasionally in order to understand. I use the dictionary to remind myself
of the possible words in my own language. For a competent translator
(into his own language) it is always and only his own language that presents
the real problems. He understands the sense of the original perfectly - but how
should he express it in the language he is translating into?
54 Monolingual
or bilingual dictionaries?
It has been the orthodox view for a very long
time now that more advanced students of foreign languages should only use
monolingual dictionaries in the language concerned (i.e. if you study English
you should use an English-English dictionary, if Russian, a Russian-Russian
dictionary, and so on). Indeed, it is customary in language teaching circles to
go even further and insist that one should begin to use monolingual
dictionaries as soon as possible; from then on they are preferable to bilingual
dictionaries. Thus, for example, according to this view, a dictionary which
contains only French is better than a one- or two-volume dictionary with
French-English and English-French.
It
seems to be a principle that many, perhaps most, language teachers take for
granted, something that is beyond question, so much so that there is virtually
no debate on the issue. On the rare occasions when anybody bothers to explain
why monolingual dictionaries are so superior; the argument seems to be that
they make students think in the foreign language instead of immediately turning
the foreign words into equivalents in their own language.
55 There
are very few true synonyms
It has already been explained why it is a bad
idea to think in terms of equivalents in your own language. But what is an even
worse idea is to translate a word into another word in the same language.
The whole 'point' of a word is that it does not mean anything but itself.
Practically every word is unique.
Words
may often overlap with each other in their objective, practical effect, as in:
He started/began to read.
I've made/done the beds.
You'll have to change/alter your figures.
There are no cats apart from/except mine.
But their meanings remain different, and for
that reason the objective and practical effect is very often different too,
when the context changes, as for instance in:
He started/began(?) the car.
I've made/done the kitchen floor.
You'll have to change/alter your dress.
There are twenty-six cats apart from/except
mine. [except makes no sense in the last sentence.]Note 5
So never try to find out how
words are the same. Find out how they are different! Never try to learn alternative words. For example, if we imagine you are
learning English, do not think about what the words face, confront
and oppose might have in common, never attempt to connect them to each
other in your mind. Connect each one, instead, to the ideas to which it
naturally belongs; one builds up understanding of how words are used from being
alert to the contexts they fit into.
He must face-his-problems-alone.
Simply confront-the-boss-with-the-evidence.
She will oppose-the-motion.
Then, when you feel you really need an alternative, you will be able to
judge which word is the right one from your knowledge of how the words are
truly used, and where they fit naturally. If you learn like that, you are
unlikely to think of replacing the three words above with each other.
56 How
monolingual dictionaries mislead
Monolingual dictionaries give the impression
that the opposite of all this is true. They give definitions (see below,
Section 59), and describe words in terms of each other; tell us that this word
means the same as that word. Over the years I has noted down examples of
mistakes and misunderstandings that have resulted from using one of the most
well-known monolingual English dictionaries produced for foreign students. Here
are just a few of them. The words in brackets are what the writers really
meant. I was able to establish exactly what was happening because in each case
the writers were reporting on something they had read in English.
She died after a long disease (illness).
If people criticize our handling of our
children, we bubble over (seethe).
My wife said nothing, in spite of my
incompetence, until lastly (finally) I dropped the spare wheel on her foot.
They considered (thought of) a genuinely
British solution to the problem.
18th century furniture is rather breakable (fragile).
Luckily
things could be worse. The monolingual dictionary often turned up in rows on
the desks in front of a new group of my students, but I noticed, even if I
hadn't had the heart to tell them they had wasted their money, that at the end of
the term most of these thick tomes still had their pristine, unfingered shine.
57 The
temptation to resist new words
Unfortunately, though, it is what one might
call the 'monolingual' philosophy that does so much harm, even when monolingual
dictionaries are not actually used. It not only encourages a completely false
idea of the nature of language, and misleads students about the meaning of
thousands of words; it also encourages the great reluctance of so many students
to adopt new words.
Naturally
if one accuses them of such an attitude, most will deny it. Of course they want
to learn new words, they assure us with complete sincerity. But their actions
belie their protestations. Led to believe - and only too willing to believe -
that the new word means the same as a good old safe familiar word, students
will stick to the familiar one, and won't bother with the new one. It will
often be as if they had never read or heard it, and they will persevere with
the old one in all sorts of contexts where it won't do at all.
58 The
trap of thesauruses
The only thing worse than a monolingual
dictionary is a thesaurus. The native speaker sifts the 'synonyms' she finds in
a thesaurus, and discards most - or even all - of them. She is able to do this
precisely because she already knows exactly what they mean and can accept or
reject accordingly. If she is not sure of the meaning and use of a word, she
does not dream of using it. A foreign student cannot possibly discriminate in this
way.
59 The
trouble with definitions
To try to learn foreign words by learning
definitions (in the foreign language) is as big a mistake as to try to learn
them by learning 'synonyms'. We do not in effect learn the words of our own or
any other language through explanations and definitions. We understand a word
and master its use when we can make a direct association with the
'reality' it refers to, whether that reality is a thing or action or quality or
an abstract idea or anything else. In a sense the word is the association;
there is no interpreting link between the word and what it means.
When
we hear a word in our own language we do not stop and ask ourselves what the
definition of that word is, in order to understand it. Nor; when we want to use
a word, do we find the right one by deciding on a definition and then
remembering the word attached to that definition.
It
is worth considering here that when we judge that a definition of a word, in a
dictionary or elsewhere, is a good one, we can only do so because we already
know the meaning in a quite different, precise way that has nothing to do
with definition. We do not tell ourselves that a definition is a good one
because it is similar to a definition we have heard before. Equally, one can
only produce one's own definition of a word if one first knows it in some other
way.
But
a foreign student cannot possibly be led by a definition to a proper
apprehension of a word she does not know. A definition, far from being a quick
path to mastery of a word, is a barrier between the word and the reality it
belongs to. It is an extra and misleading burden on the memory, and goes right
against the psychology of the way we experience words in practice. Mastery of a
word is a matter of apprehending it - directly, in a flash.
60 The
false logic of monolingual dictionaries
What exactly is this 'thinking' we are supposed
to do in the foreign language when we use a monolingual dictionary? It is very
unclear. At best it can only be thinking about the words of the definition,
which is not what we need to be thinking about at all. The definition is in a
foreign language, too, which can only increase the student's confusion,
conscious or unconscious. Nor is there anything to stop an English-speaker,
say, 'thinking in English' about a French definition in a French monolingual
dictionary.
Whatever
the thinking is, it is certainly not the sole kind of 'thinking in the foreign
language' that is either possible or relevant: that linking of a word directly to a reality. And what sort of
definitions are we talking about? Here are three examples taken from the same
dictionary that I mentioned above that bring out the failure of the monolingual
approach particularly clearly:
blast - strong, sudden rush of wind
gust - sudden, violent rush of wind
dangle - hang or swing loosely
floppy - hanging down loosely
sarcasm - bitter remarks intended to wound the
feelings
taunt - remark intended to hurt sb's feelings
Let us
also look at a monolingual dictionary compiled in accordance with the
recommendations on vocabulary of the Council of Europe, namely the New basic
dictionary, published by Macmillan-Lensing. There we find among other
definitions:
packet = a small container [a bottle?]
language
= a way in which we communicate [a telephone conversation perhaps?]
tax = money paid to the government [what for?]
In
an English-French dictionary, on the other hand, we get a direct and far more
exact answer:
packet paquet
language langage
tax impot
61 How
to use bilingual dictionaries
If you are studying a foreign language, you
need a way of arriving in your mind at the reality the foreign words refer to as
directly, quickly and accurately as possible. If you have to use a dictionary,
you should always therefore use a bilingual dictionary. The word in your own
language will immediately summon up the idea of a particular reality; there
will be no barriers in the way.
But
there are two things you must always do, two fundamental principles for using a
bilingual dictionary. (Let us assume you are reading, not listening, although
the principles remain the same.)
In
the dictionary you will nearly always find several meanings in your own
language for the one word you are looking up. You should go straight back to
the foreign text and first see which meaning fits into the reality the text describes. Note 6
Then
you should forget the word in your own language. Instead you should concentrate
solely on the context of the foreign language. You have now discovered the
reality which that language is talking about; observe - consciously or
unconsciously - how it expresses it. In this way you will learn the exact
meaning of the foreign words, just as the native speakers have done.
Perhaps
to understand the principle better, imagine you come to a little river, a
stream. The bank you are standing on is a sentence in the foreign language. You
want to cross to the opposite bank, which is the meaning of the sentence. The
stream is too wide to step across - an unknown word. But in the middle of the
stream there is a stepping stone, the dictionary translation of the troublesome
word. With the help of the stepping stone you step over to the other side. Now
you are where you wanted to be - you understand the whole sentence, including
the use of the new word. That is all you need. At this point you do not lean
back to pick the stepping stone out of the stream and carry its weight around
with you for the rest of your life. It has served its purpose and you can
ignore it.
You
should never forget that basic truth, that languages are not translations of
each other. This means quite often that although the dictionary suggests many
words in your own language as an equivalent of the foreign word you have looked
up, none of them would be suitable as a translation for the context you have
before you. But unless you are making a formal translation for someone, that
does not matter at all. What is important is that you should understand the
reality which the foreign language is referring to. The dictionary will usually
give enough indications for you to be able to do that.
But
finally, never forget that the dictionary should always be a last resort. Don't
let it dominate you and steal from you the precious time you should be spending
with the language itself.
(a)
Never spend money and time listening to teachers talking about words. Instead,
spend that time reading and listening and finding out directly what words mean
and how they are used.
(b)
Never waste money on books about vocabulary. Instead, again, read and listen
and find out directly what words mean and how they are used.
(c)
Never make lists of one-word equivalents. (If you need such a list for the most
basic words, try to find one that has been made by a linguist who has studied
the problem carefully.)
(d)
Never translate into your own language "to be sure you really understand".
If you don't already understand you cannot translate.
(e)Never
think that a word means the same as another word.
(f)Never
believe that a definition tells you what a word really means.
(g)Never
use a dictionary more than you absolutely have to – and "absolutely having
to" is much less often than you think.
Notes
1 It is important to be
clear about what is really happening inside people who are described as
'thinking in the foreign language'. Strictly speaking nobody thinks in any
language (see Gethin, Amorey, 1999. Language and thought: A rational enquiry
into their nature and relationship, Intellect, pp.32-51). What an
English-speaker (for instance) is really claiming - though he may not be aware
of it - when he claims to think in French is that when he hears or reads French
he turns the language directly into ideas in his head without going via English
words; and when he speaks or writes French he turns his ideas directly into
French, again without going through English words. There are several simple
proofs that we do not think in language, but perhaps the simplest is to
consider what we mean when we say we understand a piece of language, in the
first place a piece, any piece, of our own language. We do not just repeat
inside our heads the language we hear. We turn it inside our heads into
something else that is not language at all. Let us call that something ideas,
or pictures of reality - nobody has yet pinned down exactly what the something
is, and we shall know a great deal more about ourselves if anybody ever does.
But whatever it is, it is clear that if ever and whenever we cannot turn
language into that something else, we do not understand. Not being able to make
that conversion in our minds is what we mean whenever we say "I don't
understand", whether our own or a foreign language is involved. Quite
simply, we hear words but they don't mean anything to us – or at least,
not the complete meaning that is intended.
2 Erik Gunnemark points out that the 'mini' idea
is by no means new. Among its pioneers was the Swedish explorer Sven Hedin, who
from 1890 onwards systematically learnt about 500 words in each of several
different languages during his travels in
In recent times mini lists have been compiled to promote the learning of new
national (official) languages, such as Catalan in
Now even theoretical linguists are beginning to take an interest in mini ideas
– but they seem to believe that they were invented in the
3 Various attempts have been made to discover how
often each word of a language occurs within the community that uses the
language. The results of these word-frequency counts naturally depend on the
basis on which they are made. The results can be grotesque, particularly when
only the words in literary texts are counted. According to one count of English
words, ere is a far more common word than meaningless. To make a
truly 'scientific' count of the frequency of words in a language one would have
to count samples of four categories of word: not only words spoken and written,
but also those heard and read. One would then have to calculate the proportion
of each in the life of actual communities. But even if one could make such a
count, it would be useless as the basis for choosing a vocabulary for most
individuals, each in their particular personal situation.
4 An English-speaking student of Spanish, for
example, might decide to remember that vaca means cow by
reminding himself that cows have a vacant look. A student of Turkish
could adopt an even more tortuous procedure for remembering the meaning of bos:
bos reminds him that the Latin for an ox is bos (genitive bovis);
oxen have vacant looks, so bos means empty.
It is a different matter for a student of English, say, to remember that lie
and rise, as opposed to lay and raise, are the
intransitive pair, because they have i in their pronunciation. Here one
is reducing information to a simple pattern.
5 The objective and practical 'effect' is not the
whole of the meaning of a word or phrase. An essential part of any piece of
language is what people associate with it and the angle that it makes them look
at things from. A very clear-cut example of this is seen in: "I saw a
kangaroo" / "I have seen a kangaroo". These two statements may
well refer to exactly the same 'objective and practical' event. Yet their
meanings are quite different, and it would be clearly 'wrong' to use the one if
you meant the other. See Gethin, Antilinguistics, pp.5-6, 157-169, for a
longer discussion of this theme.
Differences of meaning are by no means always so obvious, though. This often
leads many native speakers of a language to deny that there are differences
between words, even though they will almost invariably show that they
unconsciously appreciate those differences by the way they use the words.
A lot of and lots of might be thought to mean exactly the same.
Yet I doubt whether any native English-speaker would comp1ain by saying:
"You were making lots of noise last night!" Part of a meaning is
people's feelings about it.
Not even nobody and no-one mean the same. The expression is
"He's just a nobody", not "He's just a no-one".
Again, gramophone and record-player may refer to the same
physical object. But, because of their varying associations, they do not mean
exactly the same.
It is not possible, either, to establish a clear line between meaning and
style. Style is merely at one end of the range which covers both the objective
and practical on one hand, and, on the other, association. Style is concerned
little with the fact, and much with feeling about the fact; but it is still meaning.
6 Many
thousands of common words in most languages have more than one sense. If you
are not used to learning a foreign language and using a dictionary, be very
careful to choose the right one, the sense that fits the context. Usually this
is obvious - even if you are paying only moderate attention to what you are
doing. But it is frightening what even paid translators can do if they are
careless or incompetent. A nice example is what a professional translator
working on an engineering report did when he came to the phrase hydraulic
ram. He translated it into words that meant water goat.
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