When I was in my early 20s, I had a friend who was in the same linguistics program as me and was also a self-proclaimed language nerd. When I found out he spoke Korean and Russian (two languages on my to-learn list), I jumped at the opportunity to have him tutor me in those languages. The way he was able to break down the language and teach it to me in simple, logical, digestible parts blew my mind. He was able to instruct me how to correctly pronounce Korean and Russian sounds (ones not found in English) using descriptive language, like “pronounce the final sound of the word ‘garage,’ but with your mouth shaped like you’re pronouncing an ‘l’ sound.” He listed out all the ways to apologize in Korean relating them to situations, like “use this one when you’re walking through a crowd, and this one if the person’s pet gerbil just died.” It was like he was picking the language apart and showing it to me piece by piece. From that moment on, I knew I would never learn language the same again.
Why a linguist?
If you like languages, and truly desire to exceed in learning a new one (or multiple), learn from a linguist. Linguists see language in a way most people just don’t think to. Linguistics is the study of language as a science. It looks at language as a set of knowledge systems and studies how these systems work, the patterns they follow, etc. This gives linguists unique insight into how to break down language and teach it from the ground up.
While children are language sponges and soak up linguistic information without consciously knowing the difference between a noun and a verb or a dependent or independent clause…adults are, well, different. We have our first language deeply engrained in our system. We hear a new language and immediately recognize how different it sounds from our own. As learners, we see a new language written down and not only want to know what each piece means, but also how everything compares to our own native language. Adult learners, while we may not realize it, yearn to know the science behind a language. This is where linguistics comes in handy.
Linguists can focus in on specific aspects of language such as phonetics & phonology (the native sound inventory of a language and the way a learner aims to produce these sounds), morphology (the units of meaning within words), syntax (sentence order and structure), semantics (interpretation and meaning), pragmatics (real world language use), and sociolinguistics (cultural or social information attached to language). This all may sound big and scary, but in reality it helps you as the student because it helps you to see every aspect of the language as something “break-down-able” and achievable. Now if all those fancy words were too confusing and you’re happy enough to know that you’re in good hands while learning from a linguist, great. You can stop reading. But if you’re curious, then keep going…
Take the following for example:
“¿Los tiquetes? Dáselos a Pedro; él se encarga de ellos para que tú no los pierdas.”
(natural translation: The tickets? Give them to Pedro; he’ll be responsible for them so that you don’t lose them.)
(literal translation: the.plural ticket.plural? give-to.him-them to Pedro; he to.himself loads of them for that you-informal don’t them lose.)
If you don’t know Spanish, it may look intimidating. But there are some interesting things we can pull out of this string of words, looking at it from different linguistic aspects, which we will do below. Of course if we were teaching this sentence and these specific points, we would assume our student knew or recognized at least most of the words (for those who do not, refer to the translations).
Break it down like a linguist
If we teach this utterance from a phonetic standpoint, which has to do with sounds, we can tell the learner about how the “b” in spanish is pronounced somewhere in between an English “b” “v” and “w.” Phonologically, we can hear how the student will probably pronounce the “d” in “Pedro” as a hard English “d” when in reality it should be more like the “th” sound in the word “this.” Now for a beginning learner, these subtleties are probably not important. However, for someone intent on “perfecting” their accent, they are good tips to know.
From a morphological aspect, we can explain how certain word endings carry vital information. Take the “-es” at the end of “tiquetes” makes the word plural, just like it would for many English words (“fox” “watch” and “class” all become plural with the addition of “-es”). We could then explain how sometimes a simple “-s” can make something plural (same as English right?). Handy little comparison for a beginning learner.
Syntax deals with word order within sentences and clauses. We can use the middle piece “él se encarga de ellos” and the last little piece “[para que] tu no los pierdas” to illustrate that the typical word order in a Spanish sentence/clause is either Subject (“él“) Verb (“se encarga de“) Direct Object Noun “ellos“) OR Subject (“tú“) Negation (“no“) Direct Object Pronoun (“los“) Verb (“pierdas“)… We could compare this to English, where the Direct Object, whether it is a noun or a pronoun, will almost always come after the verb: (He) (will take charge of) (them); So (you) (don’t) (lose) (them). If you want to go even deeper, syntax looks at a literal and very scientific blow-by-blow translation of the phrase (see literal translation, though that’s not exactly how it would be labeled syntactically.)
Semantically, we can explain what all the words “mean” (see natural translation.) We can talk about how the phrase “se encarga de” literally means “to load oneself with” but in English a natural sounding translation would be “take charge of” or “take responsibility for.”
Through pragmatics, we look at the context around a sentence or phrase or utterance, to assign further meaning. In our example, the sentences would probably produced in some time of travel setting, and directed at someone who typically loses things and who would be better off giving tickets to Pedro.
Finally, we could take it one step further and talk about sociolinguistics; or the intersection of language and social / cultural norms. Maybe you do know something about Spanish and you’ve been dying for me to mention how I used the example “tiquetes” instead of a more standard “boletos.” This was an intentional example of how real world usage doesn’t always line up with “textbook language.” In some regions of the Spanish-speaking world, the word “tiquetes” has made its way into the lexicon (speech community’s vocabulary) after being borrowed from English. In other regions, this word would not be understood, or maybe it would be, but it would have a stigma attached to it. This is all sociolinguistic information that would actually be of great help when it comes time to applying what you’re leaning in real time.
Okay. Still complicated?
Does that still all sound scary? Here’s the thing, we linguists will probably never tell you words like “syntactically” or “phonologically;” but the fact that we know all these inner workings of language is what matters. We can break down language into manageable chunks and show you sets of predictable patterns. Then you, the learner, can see how the language works from the ground up. If you’re seeking to learn a new language, learn from a linguist.
For more information on Spanish language programs in the Northern Virginia area or about bilingualism in general, visit our home page at www.bilinguitos.com
