Tip 2 for language learners and another BUT … (text)
So now you know about learning in daily practice (Tip 1), let’s see another tip that I think may help.
I found myself in Brazil after months in Spanish-speaking countries. There, the mother tongue is Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese. I was enchanted by the sounds of the language: the nasal / ão / made at the end of nouns (comunicação); the tongue-twisting combinations like ‘lh’ (trabalhar) and nh (casinha); the ‘sh’ sound attributed to graphemes like ‘ch’ and ‘x’ (cheque, xampu); and the musicality of the sentences and phrases used to indicate questions, answers, irony, sarcasm, humour, anger and romance. I dropped Spanish and took up the Brazilian version of the European language immediately.
The grammar of Spanish was a great foundation for learning the grammar of Portuguese. The Latin base was a real lifesaver when it came to sentence structure, conjugations and inversions.
Tip number 2: finding connections to other languages (mother tongue included) can speed up language learning. BUT there can be just as many differences as there are similarities. As a linguist (i.e. language nerd), I found all this fascinating, but it may feel like just another hurdle to get over for some.
In my next tip (Tip 3), I explain how I focused on a specific aspect of language… sounds!