A delightful read.

Some things I remember:
- Cassette tape learning (both pre-recorded, and recording yourself)
- Flash Cards
- Make conversation opportunities
- Make opportunities for learning
- Make memorable associations
- Don’t get hung up on grammar, use mistakes as learning opportunities

In the more than 30 years since this book was written, cassette tape technology has been replaced. So, use your preferred audio delivery technique. ( )

Certain sections of the book are outdated. That aside, the book is motivational ( )

This was just the encouragement I needed to start really digging into a new language. If you have been frustrated by tradtional language courses please don't quit before you read this. It could use a more modern rewriting for our advanced technology but surely you would be smart enough to jump in on your own to find internet resources after reading what he has to say about using multiple resources. This is a great quick encouraging read... just try it! ( )

Kind of prescriptive, but useful to know some of Farber's methods. ( )

For anybody looking for resources, you may find it useful to take a look at my blog on learning French. Whether or not I succeed in doing that, what I am managing is a large collection of super-useful resources for learning and practising. A lot of them are quite obscure, so you might find stuff there that you really like but won't see mentioned on your average '10 places to learn French before you die' list, all such lists being pretty much generic.

https://frenchalone.wordpress.com/

And yes, this is six years after first writing about this book.

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I must confess that I started this book at chapter eight, magical memory aid, only to discover it was about making up stories to remember words. Instantly my back is up as I recall a childhood of people trying to make you remember things by having to remember other things. This book gives the bizarre example of setting about a method to recall the letters of the music staff. Like it doesn’t go in alphabetical order? Honestly. I’m shaking my head. Aren’t words pictures and patterns? I still don’t in the least understand why they aren’t sufficient.

On the other hand, walking back from coffee today, I asked the person I was with if he’d ever used this practice and he said he’d been raised on it by teachers. And he gave me an example, which I’m ashamed to say has stuck in my head every since and that’s been 7 hours.

Roy G Biv

Don’t tell me. I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t know who this is. Or didn’t until earlier today. And now after many hours of this and that, I still know who he is. And I’m pretty sure that if I were to have sex tonight, which I mention purely in a theoretical kind of way, it’s Roy who would be occupying my thought during it. He’s probably there for life. I’ll end my days with dementia and everybody around me will wonder about me and Roy G Biv.

Can I make myself use this technique? I just don’t know.

There are other things that bother me. He wants you to fill up all those empty times in your day, wasted now, with language learning. Standing in a queue, taking the escalator. But don’t we all already use that time?

The author of this book is certainly a wanker, but it might be that this is just because he needs to fill up the book with something. It could be a list which was a few pages long. But there is padding like you wouldn’t believe. A blow by blow account of every language he’s ever learned. He even gives a detailed account of when he decided not to learn languages. And yet, fairly early on he says something which is just SO true that I have to put that in italics as well. SO true.

He is discussing at which point you might say you have learned a language:

p.40

My standards are less exacting. I’ll confess to ‘speaking a language’ if, after engaging in deep conversation a charming woman from a country whose language I’m studying, I have difficulty the next morning recalling which language it was we were speaking.

This strikes me as exactly correct. It is the point where you are no longer conscious of the language you are speaking.

I guess I like to think that in a sense even people like me who are linguistically bereft nonetheless in a certain sense have learnt a bunch of languages in their lives. For me I’d include the language of conventional economics, that of Marxist economics, music, knitting, bridge….the wonderful language of cooking. When you first cook there are all these expressions, merely words which one has used a million times before which suddenly seem completely mysterious and a source of great consternation. ‘A splash’, ‘a handful’ ‘turn up’ ‘turn down’ ‘put some’ Then at some point you find that you think in these words without realising that you are. The language and therefore the concepts are now yours.

Then again just along a bit and he comes out with another profound concept:

p. 43-4

You don’t have to know grammar to obey grammar. If you obey grammar from the outset, when you turn around later and learn why you should say things the way you’re already saying them, each grammatical rule will then become not an instrument of abstract torture disconnected from anything you’ve experienced but rather an old friend who now wants you to have his home address and private phone number.

When the grammatical rule comes first, followed by its pitiful two or three examples in the textbook, it seems to the student like an artificially confected bit of perversity rolled down upon his head like a boulder.

When the grammatical rule comes after you’ve got some of the language in you, it becomes a gift flashlight that makes you smile and say, ‘Now I understood why they say it that way!’

So, you are right now and forevermore warned not to bridle or to question, ‘Why is the word for ‘go’ in this French sentence vais and in the very next sentence aller?’ Simply embrace the faith that both sentences are correct and learn them….

The more shaken you become by grammatical storms, the more tightly you must hug the faith. I vow it will all become clear.

How often have I given the same advice to bridge students. Do it as an act of faith, trust me, and eventually you will understand. This really works. After a while, instead of doing the things I’ve set down as rules ‘just because’, it becomes clear why. But why couldn’t possibly come first. Maybe this is because language rules, like good bridge plays, aren’t necessarily demonstrable as true. I’m not sure that one needs to follow chess advice in the same blind way, though I rather think if I’d done more of that as a kid I would be a better player.

If ever there was a person whose role in life is to test this book it’s me. I have a talent for not speaking languages which might be envied if there was in fact any point to the knack. There are a couple of aspects to the whole business that don’t scare me the way they scare other people. This thing about getting too old to learn a language. I was always a slow learner, so I shan’t even notice that I’m lagging. And I don’t know a thing about grammar so it isn’t going to upset me that it’s done differently in another language. I’ll be blissfully unaware of the offending practices.

It’s going to be French. This is what a bad person I am. A few years ago I taught myself to speak English with a French accent because the thing I especially like about French is the sound and I realised that all you have to do to sound French while speaking English is to put the stress on the opposite syllable from the one we do in English. A generalisation, no doubt, but pretty much true. For a while I thought the easiest way to do this was to use only two syllable words as long words can get a bit confusing, but I didn’t persevere with this theory. Suddenly I’m full of enthusiasm for the idea that I might as well learn the darn language and be done with it…though I must admit I still have an idea it will be easier to speak English with a French accent than French with a French accent.

I’d say give me a day to finish the book first, but that is against the spirit of the thing which is to get on with it. Tomorrow. I’ll get on with it tomorrow. And report back.

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Update a couple of years later: I'm starting to wonder if the whole language thing is overrated. I'm in a French-speaking country without a word of French to my name and it doesn't seem to matter that much. I find the Swiss are pretty much like the French. They may hate Englishmen. They may hate that thing where Englishmen think if they speak English slowly and loudly nobody in the world won't understand them.

And even if you ask them sweetly 'do you speak English?' they reply back 'non' which, to be honest, I find just a little suspicious as an answer...

But if you say 'Bonjour' in a particular way, and now I'm referring to how I say it, they will absolutely insist that you speak not another word of their language, the English will flow from their lips and honestly. Why on earth was I ever thinking of learning French?

Oh yes. Hmmm. I forgot. To read fabulous French writers in the original. Hmmm. Yes. Excusez-moi.
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