Never Can Say

I was having a chat with someone today about language. It's a familiar chat. New people come to the island, open bar, don't know lingo, feel a bit of a prat etc. Common, very common. Some will just say, "oh, there's no way I'll ever learn this" and just give up. Some, genuinely, don't have the time, and time is an issue. Some get on ok.

A point about language learning is that it is more difficult the older you get. It's a case of unlearning if you like, because what you know in your own language is basically hard-wired and you think using that hard wire. Another side is that there needs to be a structural form of learning, which is grammar and syntax. Grammar, Spanish grammar, appears more formal than English, but the main problem is that many British people have never really learned their own grammar, or rather they lack the wherewithal to explain their own grammar. This is not the case in other countries where grammar teaching is more central to education.

So then folks say, "oh no, I can't be doing with all this grammar". Seems boring. Personally I don't think so, but that's just me. Avoiding this structured approach, people pick up (they hope) tidbits of Spanish without necessarily knowing the structural roots. I think I've mentioned this before. Something like "¿cómo estás?". It's a basic form of greeting, but it needs some explanation to point out that "estás" is the familiar you form of one of the verbs "to be".

Anyway, maybe there is some help at hand. From "The Times" recently was an article about the use of mind mapping to learn a language. Without delving too deeply into the psychology of this, the basic idea is that one uses colours and pictures to create an association with words. There is a traffic-light system, green denoting the words that are the same or nearly the same as in English. In Spanish there are quite a lot. Words that end "ción" are often just like English - "información", for example. The pronunciation is different, but the word is basically the same. What's horrible in Spanish? "Horrible". Possible - "posible", just drops an "s". But both sound quite different.

Mind mapping was developed by a Brit called Tony Buzan. To be brutally honest, I am a bit sceptical. Like a nearish neighbour of mind mapping in terms of "new age" quasi-science psychology - neuro-linguistic programming - it has its doubters. Part of the reason for this though is that there are any number of charlatans running around claiming its benefits like the old time medicine shows. The writer in "The Times" reckons that, after eight weeks of her CD-based course, she was speaking Italian with a reasonable grasp. I can see how mind mapping would help with vocabulary, but I have only her word for saying that it also helped develop syntax and grammar. I don't know how that would work.

The thing is though that, after eight weeks of two one-hour per week personal Spanish lessons, I was speaking Spanish with a reasonable grasp. I didn't have to bother with colouring pens and drawing pictures. I knew how to use the main tenses, vocabulary was quite good, I could formulate sentences. Each to their own, but if the mind mapping seems a good one for you, then Collins publish the book and CDs under the name "Language Revolution" (Spanish version). At twenty quid, maybe worth giving it a go.


QUIZ
Yesterday - The Smiths. Today's title - last word's missing, it was The Jackson Five but the best version was by which beast of soul from the '70s?

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