"Polyglot - How I Learn Languages" by Kató Lomb

Kató Lomb (1909-2002) was a Hungarian translator and a simultaneous interpreter. She has had a great influence  on how others learn languages.

She herself spoke 10 languages and was able to "translate technical documents and enjoy fiction in 6 more, and understand written journalism in 11 more or so".

I've found her book "Polyglot - How I Learn Languages" very interesting, I like her point about how useful is to know a language even at a low level: "We should learn languages because language is the only thing worth knowing even poorly", because "well-intentioned sentences full of mistakes can still build bridges between people. Asking in broken Italian which train we are supposed to board at the Venice railway station is far from useless".

About her METHOD, some main points are:

• devote 60-90 minutes a day
• time spent in language learning is lost unless it reaches a certain -daily and weekly- concentration
• "one should connect language learning with either work or leisure, and not at the expense of them but to supplement them"

Some of her thoughts on conversation, grammar and vocabulary:

CONVERSATION

She says that doing "autologues" is very useful. "Autologue" means a conversation with oneself. She uses the term "autologue" because neither "monologue" nor "dialogue" covers the concept.

Her advice: to warm up it's useful to learn some "launching expressions":

• The fact is that...
• I would like to specifically point out...
• Let's consider especially...
• That reminds me...
• On the other hand, however...
• Of course I know that...
• It's also true that...
• Not mentioning the fact that...
• We should not forget that...

The role of these launching expressions is to make the delivery of the more important parts of a message smoother and more acceptable.

GRAMMAR

According to her, two things to take into consideration:

• language learning consists of internalizing patterns (that's her way of adquiring grammar)
• a rule you have realized for yourself will take a much deeper root in you than a rule ready-made by the course book or by the teacher

VOCABULARY

Reading, reading and reading was her way of adquiring vocabulary.

Kató says you need 3000 words to understand at least 95% of a simplified text before you can efficiently learn from the context the other 5%. The expressions deciphered by context -when you read- stay more in your head.

For learning words we need "reliable sources of knowledge", and we need to learn sentences instead of words. In order to understand what's the difference between learning words and learning senteces, she says that a word is not a reliable source of knowledge because its meaning may depend on its context but a sentence provided by a dictionary (for instance) can be considered a reliable source.

The sentences we learn should be short, texts can be reliable sources but are too long to be learned.

Kató Lomb recommends learning words in "bunches", the relationships between words define the meaning better. For example:

• an obstacle is overcome
• a duty is fulfilled
• a news report is announced
• a message is delivered

Finally, she also talks about her vision of teacher guided learning:

Advantages

• the reliability of the linguistic information
• the regularity of the lesson

Disadvantages

• inconvenience (need of commuting, for instance)
• often a slow pace
• less opportunity for "selective learning" ("Interesse ist stärker als Liebe")

Definitely, this book is a must for "linguists".

The first edition is available on line for downloading (http://www.tesl-ej.org/books/lomb-2nd-Ed.pdf)

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