Before traveling around the world, I hadn’t imagined learning the Cyrillic alphabet, or Hebrew, a little Russian, German, and a little bit of Serbian language. While moving from one country to another, new horizons expand and we learn many new things, including different languages.
Years ago, I was satisfied knowing English and Spanish, maybe learning another language that would be professionally useful in the future. On my first trips around the world, I could manage everything using English. However, keeping touring around the world, I ended up in Serbia and got interested in the local culture in the Balkans, and got impressed by how Balkanic people are good at learning languages from Portuguese to Greek.
As long as I had learned the Cyrillic alphabet and some phrases in Serbian, I could understand a little bit of Czech, Polish, and Russian, which made a lot of difference during my backpacking trip crossing Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia.
From the moment I stepped into the Ukrainian territory, I had my first contact with the Russian language and discovered a whole new world that operates in Russian, as in Ukrainian. Curious by the songs, movies, and the new universe in these languages, I had just started my first steps in Slavic languages.
Learning a new language opens up new cultural and professional horizons, and makes it much easier to interact with different cultures. If you’re emigrating, it’s a basic need to learn the local language to integrate into the social life of the labor market, and depending on your host country’s laws, you must achieve a minimum of proficiency for your migration process.
“But I’m not good at learning languages”. It’s just an excuse. You don’t need to be erudite to learn a foreign language, neither a supergenius nor to spend a lot of money to do so. Those who grew up in the 1990s understand how easy it has become to learn other languages taking advantage of the abundance of content and platforms in audio, video, text, and apps and the chance to talk with native speakers through the channels we use daily.
Open-minded attitude, curiosity, discipline, and practicing with other speakers are the decisive factors that help you to progress in language learning. And not less important, bring interesting topics and activities that make your learning engaging and natural.
What to consider when learning another language?
Learning another language relies on a daily process, so we need to consider how much we’re motivated to learn and what actions we’re going to take every day to build familiarity with the new language. These 4 points below are crucial for any language learning process:
Motivation
Why do you want to learn the language? Whether you’re learning Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, French, Hebrew, or Mandarin, you need a strong motivation to keep up with your studies even in those rushy days full of unpredictable work, family, projects, and all daily tasks.
Learning Materials
Search for the learning materials that will help to organize your studies during your language learning. Nowadays, options of materials are abundant in the form of online and presential classes, apps, videos, and audio. Some examples of materials that you can use to immerse in the language are stickers to spread around your home, books to read, your favorite movies, and sitcoms in the language you’re learning.
Daily Practice
Daily practice is what we need to progress in any language we’re learning. Listen to the language, read, write, and, most importantly, speak! It’s not necessary long hours, the point is to maintain daily contact with the language to develop familiarity with the way the natives speak. Read news and books about your topics of interest, listen to songs, and watch those movies and series you know by heart in the new language. If you practice for a range from 15 to 30 minutes a day, how many hours would you totalize in a year?
Don’t Ignore Grammar!
Many linguists and polyglots advise to ignore grammar. In the beginning, it’s fine to ignore, it makes sense to focus on learning the most essential words and sentences like a child learning to speak step by step. However, as you advance in the language, you will need to learn a minimum of grammar to express yourself correctly and keep conversations carried with content, otherwise, your speaking abilities will be limited to small talk.
The process of language learning
As perfectly stated by the polyglot Steve Kaufmann, the first period of language learning is both difficult and satisfying. The language seems to be strange, yet satisfying because you can say a few things in a new language. In the beginning, you are not going to learn the language naturally but on a format designer for beginners and foreign students. It doesn’t matter which system you’re using at first as long as you find it to your taste. You need to spend most of your time listening and reading, without trying to master grammar.
Once you reach the intermediate stage, you face the longest and most demanding part of your task. You now want to achieve a breakthrough in fluency. You need to use the language as a practical means of communication in a variety of situations that you don’t control. To do this requires a commitment to reading and listening to a great deal of language content.
Artificial dialogues soon outline their usefulness. That comes a point in language learning when you have to read a full-length book in the new language, not only short excerpts. Conversations with native speakers are a stimulus to more effort, but it can be frustrating when you have limited ability to communicate.
It’s important to systemically relearn new words until they start to stick in your mind. Language learners should write often, and they should minimize any differences between their written and spoken language.
Language skills consist of spontaneously being able to use prefabricated phrases and phrase patterns that are natural to the native speaker. Phrases are the best models of correct practice in a language when words are combined in the natural phrases of the language they achieve force and clarity.
Useful Resources for Learning Other Languages
Nowadays, there is no shortage of useful resources for learning another language on the internet in the form of audio, video, and texts; including free content. Here, I share a list of links to channels and books that I have used:
Easy Languages: website and YouTube channel with videos in various languages such as English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, and some other languages.
eTeacher courses for Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, including biblical texts.
Italiano Automatico with practical Italian courses organized by Alberto Arrighini.
Français Authentique was created by Johan Tekfak for practical French learning.
The app LingQ was developed by polyglot Steve Kaufmann.
Deutsch lernen with German courses from Deutsche Welle.
Aprendre le français avec TV5MONDE with French courses.
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