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Chapter 1
Introduction: Stab, Stab, Stab
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. —Nelson Mandela
Americans who travel abroad for the first time are often shocked to discover that, despite all the progress that has been made in the last 30 years, many foreign people still speak in foreign languages. —Dave Barry
Language learning is a sport. I say this as someone who is in no way qualified to speak about sports; I joined the fencing team in high school in order to get out of gym class. Still, stabbing friends with pointy metal objects resembles language learning more than you might think. Your goal in fencing is to stab people automatically. You spend time learning the names of the weapons and the rules of the game, and you drill the proper posture, every parry, riposte, and lunge. Finally, you play the game, hoping to reach that magical moment when you forget about the rules: Your arm moves of its own accord, you deftly parry your friend’s sword, and you stab him squarely in the chest. Point!
We want to walk up to someone, open our mouths, forget the rules, and speak automatically. This goal can seem out of reach because languages seem hard, but they’re not. There is no such thing as a “hard” language; any idiot can speak whatever language his parents spoke when he was a child. The real challenge lies in finding a path that conforms to the demands of a busy life.
In the midst of my own busy life as an opera singer, I needed to learn German, Italian, French, and Russian. Out of those experiences, I found the underpinnings for this book. My methods are the results of an obsessive need to tinker, research, and tinker again. My language-learning toolbox has, over time, turned into a well-oiled machine that transforms fixed amounts of daily time into noticeable, continuous improvement in my languages and in the languages of every person I’ve taught. In sharing it, I hope to enable you to visit the peculiar world of language learning. In the process, you’ll better understand the inner workings of your mind and the minds of others. You’ll learn to speak a new language, too.
Beginnings
So far, my favorite moment of this crazy language-learning adventure took place in a Viennese subway station in 2012. I was returning home from a show when I saw a Russian colleague coming toward me. Our common language had always been German, and so, in that language, we greeted and caught up on the events of the past year. Then I dropped the bomb. “You know, I speak Russian now,” I told her in Russian.
The expression on her face was priceless. Her jaw actually dropped, like in the cartoons. She stammered, “What? When? How?” as we launched into a long conversation in Russian about language learning, life, and the intersection between the two.
My first attempts to learn languages were significantly less jaw dropping. I went to Hebrew school for seven years. We sang songs, learned the alphabet, lit lots of candles, drank lots of grape juice, and didn’t learn much of anything. Well, except the alphabet; I had that alphabet nailed.
In high school, I fell in love with my Russian teacher, Mrs. Nowakowsky. She was smart and pretty, she had a wacky Russian last name, and I did whatever she asked, whenever she asked. Five years later, I had learned a few phrases, memorized a few poems, and learned that alphabet quite well, thank you very much. By the end of it, I got the impression that something was seriously wrong. Why can I only remember alphabets? Why was everything else so hard?
Fast-forward to June of 2004, at the start of a German immersion program for opera singers in Vermont. At the time, I was an engineer with an oversized singing habit. This habit demanded that I learn basic German, French, and Italian, and I decided that jumping into the pool was the only way I’d ever succeed. Upon my arrival, I was to sign a paper pledging to use German as my only form of communication for seven weeks, under threat of expulsion without refund. At the time, this seemed unwise, as I didn’t speak a word of German. I signed it anyway. Afterward, some advanced students approached me, smiled, and said, “Hallo.” I stared at them blankly for a moment and replied, “Hallo.” We shook hands.
Five insane weeks later, I sang my heart out in a German acting class, found a remote location on campus, and stealthily called my girlfriend. “I think I’m going to be an opera singer,” I told her in whispered English. On that day, I decided to become fluent in the languages demanded by my new profession. I went back to Middlebury College in Vermont and took German again. This time, I reached fluency. I moved to Austria for my master’s studies. While living in Europe in 2008, I went to Perugia, Italy, to learn Italian. Two years later, I became a cheater.
Cheaters Occasionally Prosper: The Three Keys to Language Learning
This book would not exist if I had not cheated on a French test. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. First, some background. The Middlebury Language Schools offer five levels of classes: absolute beginner, “false” beginner (people who have forgotten what they’ve learned), intermediate, advanced, and near fluent. At the time of the test, I was an absolute beginner in French, but I had already learned a Romance language, and I wanted to be with the “false” beginners. So, for my third stint at Middlebury, I cheated on the online placement test, using Google Translate and some grammar websites. Don’t tell Middlebury.
A month later, I received my regrettable results. “Welcome and congratulations!” it began. “You have been placed in the intermediate level!” Shit. I had three months to learn a year’s worth of French or look like an idiot at the entrance interview. These interviews are serious business. You sit in a room with a real, live French person, you chat for fifteen minutes about life, and you leave with a final class placement. You can’t cheat; you can either speak French or make sad faces and wave your hands around like a second-rate Parisian mime.
As I was in the middle of completing master’s degrees in opera and art song, the only free time I had was an hour on the subway every day and all day on Sundays. I frantically turned to the Internet to figure out how to learn a language faster. What I found was surprising: there are a number of incredibly powerful language-learning tools out there, but no single program put all of the new methods together.
I encountered three basic keys to language learning:
1.Learn pronunciation first.
2.Don’t translate.
3.Use spaced repetition systems.
The first key, learn pronunciation first, came out of my music conservatory training (and is widely used by the military and the missionaries of the Mormon church). Singers learn the pronunciation of languages first because we need to sing in these languages long before we have the time to learn them. In the course of mastering the sounds of a language, our ears become attuned to those sounds, making vocabulary acquisition, listening comprehension, and speaking come much more quickly. While we’re at it, we pick up a snazzy, accurate accent.
The second key, don’t translate, was hidden within my experiences at the Middlebury Language Schools in Vermont. Not only can a beginning student skip translating, but it was an essential step in learning how to think in a foreign language. It made language learning possible. This was the fatal flaw in my earlier attempts to learn Hebrew and Russian: I was practicing translation instead of speaking. By throwing away English, I could spend my time building fluency instead of decoding sentences word by word.
The third key, use spaced repetition systems (SRSs), came from language blogs and software developers. SRSs are flash cards on steroids. Based upon your input, they create a custom study plan that drives information deep into your long-term memory. They supercharge memorization, and they have yet to reach mainstream use.
A growing number of language learners on the Internet were taking advantage of SRSs, but they were using them to memorize translations. Conversely, no-translation proponents like Middlebury and Berlitz were using comparatively antiquated study methods, failing to take advantage of the new computerized learning tools. Meanwhile, nobody but the classical singers and the Mormons seemed to care much about pronunciation.
