How to Learn the Basics of a Language.

I am your humble linguistics teacher, and today I will be teaching you the basics of how to learn ANY language!

Many languages use the Latin alphabet such as English and all of the Romance languages. However there are also many exceptions. Korean, Russian, and Arabic are notable examples of common languages that follow a different script than we are familiar with.

If the language you are learning has a different alphabet, you must learn the alphabet first before you do anything else. No exceptions. You cannot fully learn unless you cannot read and write in the alphabet. Children’s songs on YouTube are a great resource in learning the script. Memorization styles of your choice will work as well. I suggest having an entire notebook dedicated just to the alphabet where you can practice writing the uppercase and lowercase letters.

Expanding your vocabulary before learning to conjugate verbs in my opinion is exceptionally important. Create a list of common nouns you see in your day to day life in English, and then translate them to your language of choice. Study these words. Do not overload your mind with new information otherwise your brain will not accept all of it. I suggest learning nouns such as ‘boy’, ‘girl’, ‘apple’, etc. It may seem silly learning such basic vocabulary, especially if you are an adult, but the simple vocabulary is necessary to learn before you start to learn more complex words.

This step is where things start feeling more like a linguistics course in college rather than a fun language learning experience, but it must be done. Native speakers of the language you’re learning are subconsciously aware of the grammar structure because of their familiarity with it. English speakers are the same way. We know that adjectives come before nouns and that we must start a sentence with the subject, blah blah blah. It’s little rules like these that we learned in elementary school and now never think about. “I before E, except after C” is another example. Every language as their own quirks that we must learn ourselves because we are not native speakers.

To start, you must familiarize yourself with the parts of speech. There are 8 parts: nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, verbs, prepositions, conjunction, and interjection.

Familiarize yourself with their meanings, and then determine what structure your language falls into. For example, English is a Subject + Verb + Object (noun). Hawaiian on the other hand is Verb + Subject + Object.

Learn what structure your language falls under and learn accordingly.

An infinitive verb is the unconjugated form of a verb. Conjugations are the variations of the form a verb is in. For example, “to run” is an infinitive verb. “He runs” is the conjugated form using the pronoun “he”.

Learning to conjugate regular verbs in the present is one of the most important things you can do when learning a language. This step is absolutely impossible to skip.

First, recognize the pronouns of the language. In English they are as following:

I

You

He/She

We

They

Translate the pronouns in your language and learn the conjugation for 5 common regular verbs.

For example, the conjugations for “to run” would be:

I run

You run

He/She runs

We run

They run.

Your language will have different verb endings for each different pronoun. Many languages have multiple forms of infinitive verbs with different conjugations. For example, French has 3 different infinitive forms: verbs that end in -ER (Parler), verbs that end in -RE (Tondre), and verbs that end in -IR (Choisir)

You must learn all of the conjugations for each different infinitive if your language has more than 1.

A preposition is a word that connects two nouns together. For example, “underneath” is a common preposition. “The cat is underneath the table”. The word underneath describes the relationship between the cat and the table. What that sentence also had are articles. Articles are words that slightly modify nouns. They don’t do much in the grand scheme of things but the articles in English are, “The, A, An”.

“The cat”

“A cat”

They are words you will run into on your language journey but don’t stress. In many languages the articles determine whether or not the noun will be masculine or feminine which is really important to know if you’re learning a gendered language such as Spanish.

Back to prepositions, for your language journey I suggest learning 10 common prepositions in order to make your sentences more complex. Make sure to research where the prepositions fall at in the order of the sentence!

In English there are 7 question words:

Who

What

When

Where

Why

How

How much

These are used when forming every single question in any language, so they’re a must to know! Many languages just have one word for “how much” but English is a silly exception. Memorize these words and add them to your vocabulary. By now, you will have a amazing basis of the language you’re learning!

Now is the time to practice all of your skills you’ve learned on this journey!

There are 4 aspects to language learning:

reading

writing

listening

speaking

Practice using children’s television shows, books, or nursery rhymes to practice all of these areas! Good luck! Make sure to learn more vocabulary.

By this point you will be able to move on to the intermediate stage of language learning where you will learn different tenses and how to conjugate accordingly.