How to REALLY Know a Language
Like many people, I started to “really learn” a second language in high school. After four years of Spanish, I did “learn” Spanish. By “learn”, I mean I understood the grammar, how to write sentences in the proper order, when to use certain words, how to conjugate verbs, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I truly enjoyed learning Spanish in high school and it gave me a GREAT foundation of Spanish. Again, I love grammar, but I realized that it wasn’t allowing me to fully “know” Spanish.
Let’s take the Spanish verbs for “to know”. There are two: saber and conocer. Saber means to know facts. Conocer means to know and to be familiar with.
I realized I know (saber) many facts about Spanish: when to use ser vs. estar, when the adjective goes before or after the noun, when to use what preposition, etc. I then realized I truly want to KNOW (conocer), to be familiar with, Spanish.
How do you REALLY know a language?
It wasn’t until college when I realized the answer. In order to truly know Spanish I had to be comfortable with all the aspects of Spanish: reading, writing, listening, and most importantly SPEAKING.
How do you become comfortable with a language?
Pronunciation. That is why learning the sounds of the language first is so important.
Knowing how to properly pronounce the language will make you have more confidence in speaking. That does NOT mean having the “perfect” accent, because let me tell you that EVERYONE has their OWN accent, no matter what language you speak. Everyone needs to realize that.
Being able to communicate with people in different languages through speech is a major goal of many people. It is important to study pronunciation for speaking, but also for every skill in a language.
Once you know how to pronounce words and sound out words, you will be more confident reading, writing, and listening. For reading, it could be easy to not know how to pronounce the word, but still get the gist of what is going on. When you do know the pronunciation though, the words carry more meaning, and you become more confident. For writing, it is important to know correct pronunciation so that you can sound out words to write them. For listening, pronunciation is important because it allows your ears to recognize what the other person is saying. With all these skills, they also naturally support the grammar of language, which is how it is possible to learn a language without formal, intensive grammar lessons. These skills also allow for vocabulary to build so you can learn more and more of the language.
Ready to REALLY know a language?
Try learning the pronunciation first and see what happens.
Also, check out this free course about Spanish conversation. It gives you the insight of how to have fulfilling conversations in Spanish.
