Easy foreign language

Study to show thyself approved

I love foreign languages; I had the privilege of learning to speak Czech while in the military—47 weeks, six hours a day. Because of a bit of traveling, I also have just enough French and German in my vocabulary to be quite dangerous—just don't ever ask me directions in those languages!

It was amazing to me to discover during the time of my schooling while learning Czech just how many other languages my native-born instructors had under their belts. When we questioned them as to how they learned all of these other tongues, they shrugged their shoulders as if we were dullards and simply replied, "We read books."

This may sound incredible, but it isn't at all. In fact, I am convinced this is the best way to learn another language. But wait, there's really more to it than that.

Discovering new cultures

First of all, you need to understand basically how a language is pronounced, some vocabulary, some basic phrases and then begin to be taught about "declension" and "conjugation"—meaning the use of verbs and nouns in different "cases"—don't worry, things become more clear as you go along.

Initially, you can just print out a few passages of scripture that you, hopefully, have memorized, or are at least very familiar with—then you print these out in the language of your choice, such as German, French or Spanish.

This year we are learning French, so here are the links I am using for our studies:

Collier's Cyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information—French Self-Taught. This portion of this important book was discovered from the Cd's from Dollar Homeschool. In just a few pages they have included everything needed to begin a pretty good understanding of the French language—even the pronunciation! We are working through the vocabulary and phrases before I begin introducing the grammar portions.

Language usage tools

I have also printed out portions of scripture that we have memorized (or will be memorizing) from the Bible in French from Bible Gateway. Genesis chapter 1, Psalm 1 and Psalm 23 are all good places to begin. As we progress together, learning a few portions a week and practicing them together, we will also be attempting to translate these passages, little-by-little. I seem to remember that Corrie ten Boom and her family learned numerous languages by translating many different versions of the Bible back and forth during their devotions.

The wonderful thing about this sort of learning is that it is almost free—and it is the way most of the world (especially Europeans) learns languages anyways.

It is much easier for an English-speaking person to learn Spanish, French, Italian, and German*. Why? Because these are all Latin-based or "romantic" tongues, very similar to English. (* Special Note: Extinct branches of the Romance language tree: It is commonly believed that there were Germano-Romance languages in present-day Southern Germany, Switzerland and Austria in the 11^th century A.D.) The Slavic languages, such as Russian, Polish, Czech, etc., are all Greek based—this is a little bit more of a learning curve for us Americans. And, of course, others such as Hindi, Mandarin, Japanese, etc. are languages that are certainly worthwhile, just a lot higher on the challenge scale due to their lack of "root" familiarity for most of us.

Here are some more links for further information and encouragement:

Living Language—how one family learned French through a calendar printed with scriptures.

Language Learning—this is from the same website as above, but is a quick overview of a book (which may be worth further review) advocating a more natural approach to learning other languages.

Learning together can be fun!

I never understood English grammar until I studied Czech grammar—and I have heard the same from other folks who have become "polyglots". So if you have youngsters who are a bit tentative in the area of Grammar, this type of study may be just what they need to gain a much better understanding.

Remember, learning is an adventurous journey—one we can choose to enjoy together with our young scholars.