Head into your target language like a moth to the flame, like a politician to the vote. Is the gentleman you've just been introduced to from France? And is French the language you happen to be studying? Then attack.

Don't you dare offer a lame chuckle as you explain in English that you're trying to learn French but you're sorry, you're not very good at it yet. That's like giggling and telling the mugger who ambushes you in an alley that you're learning karate but sorry, you're not very good at it yet.

It's okay to tell him you're just a beginner, but tell him in French. Learn enough utility phrases in whatever language you're studying to profit from every encounter. Comb through your phrase book (the Berlitz For Travellers series is excellent) and make it your priority to learn phrases such as "I don't speak your language well," "Do you understand me?", "Please speak more slowly," "Please repeat," "How do you say that in your language?", "Sorry, I don't understand," and others that together can serve as your cornerstone and launching pad.

Most phrase books offer too few of these "crutch" phrases. When you meet your first encounter, pull out pen and pad and fatten your crutch collection. Learn how to say things such as, "I'm only a beginner in your language but I'm determined to become fluent," "Do you have enough patience to talk with a foreigner who's trying to learn your language?" "I wonder if I'll ever be as fluent in your language as you are in English," "I wish your language were as easy as your people are polite," and "Where in your country do you think your language is spoken the best?" Roll your own alternatives. You'll soon find yourself developing what comedians call a "routine," a pattern of conversation that actually gives you a feeling of fluency along with the inspiration to nurture that feeling into fruition.

Hauling off and speaking the language you're studying versus merely sitting there knowing it makes the difference between being a business administration professor and a multimillionaire entrepreneur.

It's time to apply the parable of the Parrot.

A man looking for an anniversary present for his wife after fourteen years of marriage found himself in front of a pet shop. In the window was a parrot, not particularly distinguished in size or plumage, but the price tag on that parrot was a whopping seven thousand dollars because that parrot spoke, unbelieveably, fourteen different languages.

That was more than the man intended to spend but he figured, "Fourteen years, fourteen languages!" So he bought it.

He went home, mounted the parrot's perch in the kitchen, and then realised he'd forgotten the birdseed. He ran back to the pet shop, bought the birdseed, and then ran back home, hoping to have everything in readiness before his wife got home.

Alas, she'd already returned, and when he appeared she flung herself upon him in sizzling affection, shouting, "Darling! What a marvellous anniversary present! You remembered how much I love pheasant. I've got him plucked. I've got him slit. I've got him stuffed. He's in the oven and he'll be ready in about fifty minutes."

"You've got him what? " cried he. "You've got him where? That was no pheasant," stormed the husband. "That was a parrot, and that parrot cost seven thousand dollars because that parrot spoke fourteen languages!"

"So," replied his wife, "why didn't he say something?"

And indeed, why don't you? Put it in Writing

 

We don't know if a peacock is impressed when he sees himself in full display in a mirror. We do know that you and I are impressed with ourselves when we behold something we've written in a foreign language.

Try it. If you do nothing more than copy an exercise from your grammar book onto a piece of paper in your own handwriting, you'll enjoy looking at it. You become like a kindergarten child so enraptured with his paint smearings that he can't wait to take them home to Mommy and Daddy.

That's strange, childish, egotistic — and supremely helpful when you're learning another language. Go ahead and write. If you can write letters and cards to someone who speaks that language, so much the better. If you can write your dinner preferences for the waiter in an ethnic restaurant, do so. As soon as you feel sufficiently advanced, write a note to the editor of the foreign publication you're learning to read and tell him how helpful it is. Write a letter to the ambassador of a country that speaks your target language and congratulate him on representing a culture sufficiently appealing to make you want to learn his language.

Carry a special little notebook with you at all times so you can jot down your new verbal acquisitions if you happen to meet native speakers of your target language.

As a student of Chinese I used to experience a high energy lift by writing the Chinese characters I'd learned on a blank piece of paper, preferably in red ink. I still get a kick doodling Chinese characters, randomly or in coherent sentences, on the margins of the newspaper I'm carrying or in the blank spaces on the display ads.

Write! Conquer and consolidate by writing. The ability to understand a word when it's spoken or written, to use that word correctly with good pronunciation, and to write it correctly makes you the battlefield commander of that word.

 

Knowing

 

Jack Benny was one comic who remained beloved, even by his peers, despite his well known inability to come up with original material.

Once at a Hollywood roast when another comic laced into him with a devastating salvo that demanded a retort in kind, Benny won the moment by pausing and then saying, "You'd never get away with that if my writers were here."

Cute for Jack Benny at a roast, but not really anything we can borrow. When you're in language action and you stumble and lapse into uhs and ahs while the native speaker is patiently hoping you'll come through, it doesn't do to say, "I'd never be in this fix if I had my dictionary and phrase book with me."

Everybody who's ever tried to master a foreign language knows the frustration of needing the right word or phrase, knowing that you know it, but being utterly unable to come up with it at the moment. Just as golfers sometimes break their clubs in frustration, at some point you'll want to smash your cassette player and throw your books into a shredder. You've mastered a neat set of phrases; they flow glibly off your tongue; you

sing them in the shower, repeat them as you dress, review them as you put on your coat — and suddenly all recollection vanishes in a poof when you run into a friend five minutes later who happens to be with a native speaker of the language you're learning and you try to remember how to say "Pleased to meet you."

Having the revolver is one thing. Drawing it quickly is quite another. To take set piece knowledge you've acquired and have it pop up automatically as instinct under real game conditions calls for a whole separate discipline.

Coaches stage scrimmages that simulate real game conditions as closely as possible. Pilots can now train in complex simulators that use some elements of computer games to achieve the effect of genuine flight. You, the language learner, can play little discipline games that will make your knowledge more readily retrievable in live language action.

First of all, why wait for the real life foreign language encounter to spring into retrieval practice? As you go through the motions of daily life, ask yourself, "What would I be saying here in the language I'm studying?" How would you greet the person headed toward you? What would you say to the friend she introduces you to? How would you thank her? How would you tell her "You're welcome" or not to bother or would she please hand you the fork? It's fun and helpful to dub everyday situations in the language you're learning.

If you come up short in your practice with words and phrases you've already learned, jot them down on a pad and look them up when you get back to your books.

As you review your cassettes, try to come up with the foreign word during the pause before the next piece of English. Put artificial pressure on yourself "Can I come up with the expression before I hear the next word on the cassette?" Or if you're listening as you're walking, "Can I come up with it before I get to that sign, that lamppost, the corner, the curb?" Victory is being able to take an entire cassette of what were recently nonsense syllables to you and throw back the foreign equivalents without hesitation.

You'll be glad you didn't smash your tools when your friend approaches you by surprise to introduce you to her friend from a country that speaks the language you're learning and you respond with a crisp, correct "Pleased to meet you" in that language!

 

Commit Language Larceny

 

There are interesting lessons coiled up inside ordinary greetings in different languages.

The Estonian greeting Kuidas (kdsi kdib) literally means "How does your hand walk?" An old Chinese greeting is Chr bao le, mei lo? which means, "Have you had food yet?" — no small achievement in the China of some periods. A charming greeting in Yiddish is "Zug mir a shtikel Toireh, " which means "Teach me a piece of Torah," the Torah being the five books of Moses and the holiest document in the Jewish religion.

Language learners can use the spirit of that last one to good advantage.

When you encounter a native speaker of your target language, and when you start a conversation in that language, three things are certain. You will be stuck for words you need but don't know. He will use words you don't understand. And you will make mistakes. Get into the habit of exploiting those moments to the hilt!

When you don't know a word, ask him for it. When you don't understand a word he uses, ask him what it means. Ask him to do you the favour of correcting your mistakes. You may not have much luck with that latter request; he may be too polite or too impressed that you're making an effort in his language to criticise you. If you feel he's letting your mistakes slide by, pick a fairly long sentence and ask him to help you hammer out your mistakes in just that one sentence. Write that sentence down on one of your blank flash cards. Ask him to check it again. Milk the moment. As the Latin goes,

Carpe diem!

Don't ever enter into anything as precious as a conversation in your target language with a native speaker and leave knowing no more than when you started. You've got a repertoire in that language. He has a larger one. Reach in and help yourself.

 

At No Extra Cost

 

You may think you have a good idea precisely how your life will improve once you've mastered your target language. You're wrong. It will be much better than you think.

Unexpected good things happen to you when you learn even a little of the other guy's language. A chapter detailing some of those things may seem like preaching to the choir, when you consider that anybody likely to be reading this has already decided he wants to learn. So what? Who more than the members of the choir deserve the inspiration?

All the case histories that follow were culled and corroborated by members of the Language Club who were asked to be alert to all the nice little extras that come your way when you speak another language. Many of them happened to me personally and continue to happen almost daily.

In New York and some other major cities a huge percentage of the cab drivers are from Haiti. Try this, just to get a taste of the power of another language. If your driver is Haitian, lean forward and say (phonetically), "Sa (rhymes with "ma") pass ("pasta" without the "ta") sAY (as in the English "say"), pa-PA ("papa," but accented on the last syllable). Sort those sounds out and try it. "Sa pasAYpa^pA? " It means something like the French Comment qa va? ("How are you?"), but it's not French. It's his native Haitian Creole slang and he may never before have heard that utterance from the lips of a non-Haitian.

That one line is guaranteed to get you reactions ranging from a long, slow smile to a cheery "Where did you learn that?" to loud and joyous laughter to the exclamation, "You must know Haiti well!"

Don't get the idea that Haitians are the only ones susceptible to the charm of hearing a few words of their language. They just may be more demonstrative than most in showing it. Romanian cab drivers have turned off the metre and given me a free ride in return for my "Good morning" in Romanian. A Soviet Georgian cab driver refused to take my money and invited me to Sunday dinner at his home, one of the tastiest treats and most interesting evenings I've ever enjoyed. An Indonesian cab driver screamed – that's all, just screamed – upon hearing "Thank you" in his language.

I've long suspected there's a memo posted in the kitchen of every Chinese restaurant in America instructing all personnel not to let any American who exhibits any knowledge of Chinese go unrewarded. Try this experience, just to taste the power.

The Chinese term for "chopsticks" is kwai dze. The first word is pronounced like the Asian river the American war prisoners built the bridge over. The second word sounds like the ds in "suds."

The next time you're in a Chinese restaurant, smile at the waiter and say "Kwai dze. " When he brings the chopsticks, smile again and say, "Shieh, shieh " ("Thank you"). Pronounce that as you should "she expects," making sure you never get as far as the x and accentuating the "she". The immediate payoffs on this one can range from a free plum brandy cocktail at the end of the meal clear over to a stubborn refusal to let you pay. The more subtle, and satisfying, payoff is that they will assume you know not only the rest of the Chinese language but the Chinese cuisine as well, and they'll probably give you no less than the absolute finest the house can produce every time they see you come in.

Your rewards for knowing even a paltry few words of a language vary in inverse proportion to the likelihood that you'll know any at all. A German baker isn't likely to endorse his whole day's profit on strudel over to your favourite charity merely because you enter his shop with a big "tauten Tag" ("Good day"), but an Albanian baker might if you enter with "Tungja jeta. " You won't knock French socks off with a "Comment allez-vous? " ("How are you?"), but you may set winter gloves flying in Helsinki with a correctly pronounced "(Hyvdd Pdivdd)" ("Good morning").

Don't overdo it. I've known cab drivers from obscure countries almost drive off the road when they're surprised with a burst of their native tongue from an American passenger, and once I had a Chinese waitress in a Jewish delicatessen (honest!) get so rattled when I ordered for our party in Chinese that she messed up our order beyond redemption.

I have many times ignited what looked like spontaneous street festivals by hailing groups of people on the sidewalk in the language I heard them speaking. They frequently stop, return the greeting, and then start hobnobbing with the people in my group, leading to laughs, the exchange of addresses, dates for later on, and, I suspect, even more! I've never understood the joy of bagging a bird or a deer and watching it fall to the ground. My joy is bagging strangers from other countries with the right greeting in the right language and watching them come to a halt and become old friends at once.

The material payoffs of learning foreign languages are many and predictable, though perhaps a bit surprising in their scope. In early 1990 a friend told me he was looking to fill a job paying $650,000 a year; qualifications: attorney, knowledge of Russian, and willingness to relocate to Moscow. I prefer the psychological payoffs of studying foreign languages – pleasures so keep you could almost call them spiritual.

They joy of a true mathematician escalates as he moves from algebra to trigonometry to calculus. Likewise, the joy of the true language lover escalates as he advances from what I call "Foreign 1" to "Foreign 2." Foreign 1 is interpreting or translating (interpreters speak, translators write) from your native language to a foreign one. Foreign 2 is doing it from one language that's foreign to you to another one that's foreign to you.

You are permitted to feel like Superman when you pull off such a feat. You are not permitted to act like Superman, nor are you permitted to let on that you feel like Superman. You mien should approximate that of a bored New York commuter telling a stranger how many stops there are between Grand Central Station and New Rochelle.

The best Foreign 2 feeling I ever had was interpreting for Finns trying to communicate with Hungarians. Finnish and Hungarian are widely hailed as the most difficult languages in the world. They're related to each other, but not in any way that's