On Learning English

By Steven Scheer

This is basically for students who are learning English as a second language. As most of you who visit this site know, I happen to be Hungarian by birth. I left my country just days before my 16th birthday, but did not immediately come to the United States. By the time my mother and I arrived here as "legal aliens," I was 18 going on 19. And that's when I began to learn English in earnest, albeit I did know a few phrases already. "I love you" and "thank you very much" were among them. When I tell that to Americans I have just met, they usually have a good laugh - though not at my expense. (By the way, I have been living here 51 years by now.)

In any case, learning a foreign language is not easy. And there are certain stages that you have to go through one stage at a time. First, if you are learning from a book, you understand words that are written down and you can see. Next, you understand the spoken word, words that you can hear, if you can have access to people speaking the language you are beginning to learn. Then you may be able to begin to write a few words of your own. The very last stage is when you can speak words - or some sentences in the new language.

The most difficult part during the first stage comes from the fact that at first you still think in/with your native language. So some formulations in the new language may simply strike you as nonsensical. And when you use the words of the new language with the ways of your native language, then your formulations in the new language will sound nonsensical - at first. Since I don't know Persian, I can't give you an example that would make perfect sense to you, but I can try to show you one anyway. Here's a typical English expression:

"I want you to have this."

The way my native language (Hungarian) works, if I were to translate that with absolute literacy into Hungarian, it would sound like it came from the mouth of a hopeless idiot - if it made any sense at all. Yet it's perfectly "natural" in English. The Hungarian equivalent (or translation) would be:

"I want to give this to you."

The problem with the English version is that "have" in Hungarian is always a matter of possession. But to say that the literal Hungarian translation would sound like: "I want you to possession this" is not even close to how bad the actual literal translation would sound in Hungarian. But you can begin to see that "have" in Hungarian functions very differently than in English. You say in English "I have to go" (where "have to" means "must"), but translated into Hungarian - literally - that would sound like "I possess to go," and that would (again) be nonsense.

I know I have taken a long time with this point, but it needed to be made to make clear the importance of not being able to think in the new language independently of your own - in the beginning. And getting to that other stage may take a long time - or a fairly long time. When I use English now, it's only English that I am thinking in. I am not even conscious of the fact that I also know Hungarian (just as well as English). Well, I can stop to think of that fact any time I want to, but my knowledge of Hungarian is simply not necessary for me to speak or write English anymore. My knowledge of English alone will suffice - that is, it will be enough. It's like English was my native language (it's like it was - that's actually not correct English, strictly speaking - the correct English version is this: "it's as if English were my native language" - but "it's like it was" is how many Americans would express the idea these days).

So, if you students find this kind of "talk" on my part helpful, I can do it again and again. Or could even answer questions you may have.