I have to get some sort of grip on Manx Gaelic (Gaelg) in a month and two weeks. For three weeks of this time, I’ll be in Japan, struggling with a language I have a novice’s grasp of, at best. I need a way to grasp the basics of Manx, and fast. How?
Learning is different for everyone. It all depends on what “clicks” for you. What makes it engaging, what makes it fun, and what makes sense. For me, learning a language is a game. It’s a backwards puzzle: you’re given a set of correct answers, and you have to figure out the rules by coming to understand the grammar and syntax. With that in mind, I decided to invent a puzzle for myself.
I’m calling the method Deconstruction. It’s an uncreative name, but it offers the sort of self-explanatory simplicity the world tends to lack. It works like this:
Find three or four sample sentences in the target language. Try to find “to be” sentences: that is, a sentence that contains a subject, the verb “to be,” and an adjective. (ex: “The boat is big.”.
Analyze the words. Look at what words are the same, what words are different, and what words “morph.” Construct a micro-lexicon from these sentences.
Create a few sentences from your lexicon, and run them by a (preferably native) speaker to see if they work. Be mindful of gender and number!
At this point, you’ll have at least a vague sense for the sentence structure of the language as well as its gender behavior. You’ll also have a lexicon that will serve you well in the following step. Be sure to have the verb “to be” (conjugated in its singular, present indicative), a noun, an adjective, and the verb “to give.”
Now, we’re going to come up with some English sentences that will highlight important features about your target language. You should know the answers to some important questions about your language before you get started on putting in hours of effort learning it. In no particular order:
Are verbs conjugated based on the speaker? The speaker’s (or speakers’) number? The speaker’s gender?
Does the language use declensions? That is, are nouns “marked” with their part of speech, or is the part of speech demonstrated through word order? Or both?
Where are indirect objects and direct objects placed within sentences?
How do negations work? Is the negator a single word, or must you negate using a conjugation?
Do the nouns have cases? Genders? (Remember, not all languages are limited male” and “female” genders; “gender” simply means “type,” and some Native American languages have up to 16 genders.)
So, let’s construct some sentences that help you figure this stuff out. I’ll use Japanese as an example. Let’s say I’ve constructed the following micro-lexicon (transliterated into the Roman alphabet):
teeberu - table
otokonohito - man
ookii - big
chiisai - little
sasageru - to give
I have a couple of adjectives, a couple of nouns, and a verb. I’ll make some English sentences with them, and ask a native speaker for translations to these sentences. Note that they won’t all be logical, just grammatical.
The table is big. (Simple sentence with a subject and a verb “to be”).
It is Mary’s table. (Is there a genitive? This tells you about cases.)
I give the table to Mary. (First person with a direct object and indirect object.)
He gave the little man a table. (Masculine, third-person with a human indirect object and an inanimate direct object. Also tests the past tense, along with articles.)
She does not give it to him. (Feminine, third-person with a pronominal direct object and a pronominal, indirect object. Also tests negation.)
Let’s see the answers.
Teeberu wa ookii desu.
Mary no teeberu desu.
Watashi no teeberu wo Mary ni sasageru.
Kare wa teeberu chisai otokonoko ni sasageta.
Kanojo wa sore wo sasaganai.
The presence of “wa” in the sentences indicates noun cases. In this case, these are particles that serve the same function as a declension would. “No” appears to act as a genitive. “Wo” appears to act as an accusative, and “ni” appears to act as a dative. The verb does not change according to gender or number, but does change in the past tense. The word order is Subject Object Verb, which is different from English’s Subject Verb Object. The verb conjugates differently to negate the sentence.
This is a fantastic start to learning a language. Whereas most language techniques would not approach many of these grammatical features for quite some time, reading this post has already taught you more about Japanese grammar then most students would know in their third week of instruction. Delving immediately into the syntax and logic of the language helps my mind create a pattern with which it can further construct (or deconstruct) samples of the language it encounters later, and provides a framework with which I can use the word-lists and verb-charts I learn later. Being confined to thirty nouns and thirty adjectives with only the verb “to be” to marry them makes language acquisition no fun. Being able to play around with grammar and more complex sentences makes learning vocabulary an engaging activity.
I’m not claiming this is the end-all method to language acquisition. In fact, some might be confused irreparably by this method. For me, however, working backwards is a fun challenge. It keeps the sport in language learning, and it makes sure it stays the way it should be: fun.
In the meantime, I’ll be doing this with Manx. If all goes as planned, I’ll be able to work myself up to deconstructing increasingly complex sentences until I have a good grasp on the major tenents of Manx grammar, and I’ll be ready to begin my journey with the language.
