Maybe I will find myself learning a new language one day, when I’m not so busy as a professional translator. It could be fun. And after all, this is a topic I have already covered in articles I have written in the past; here’s one example: https://www.georgetrailtranslator.co.uk/learning-a-new-language-from-scratch/
That said, though, here I intend to approach the subject from a new angle. I have a degree in French and German, and basically make a living translating material from both of those languages into English, and yet I can still recollect some of my first lessons in these two foreign languages. I just wonder how different my current life situation, and my overall understanding of things, would be today if, for example, I ended up studying Spanish rather than German as my second foreign language.
Let’s start with French. After mastering the absolute basics i.e. expressions for “Hello”, “Please” and “Thank you”, and how to count to ten, I was very attentive as the basics of my first tense, the present tense (what else?), were explained to me. Yes, I had to bear in mind that the verb endings differ depending on whether it’s first person, second person or third person, and whether it’s singular or plural; but even back then there’s no way I could have failed to notice that the same could be said in English, like “have” vs. “has”. And of course, the different noun genders – masculine and feminine – would have stood out for me back then, seeing as you don’t get this in English. Just ensure that they are acknowledged when putting forth adjectives about them!
And now German. Personally, I started learning German a lot later than when I started learning French, but it was evident that my teacher (and the rest of my class) quickly agreed that I grasped new vocabulary and grammar with ease. Still, unlike with French, I had to acquaint myself with three genders – masculine, feminine and neuter – and it wasn’t until I started learning German that I became familiar with what is meant by nominative, accusative, genitive and dative. My question here is: how were such things never explained to me in my English lessons when I was at school? (Then again, since I required some special needs education when I was at school, my presence in regular English lessons was probably not that common. Even so, look at me today!)
I had never heard of “faux amis” when I started learning French or German, and I wonder if this is an example of a language phenomenon which really should have been explained to me from the start. What else?