#languages (2 posts) I’ve had the pleasure to pick up French (for work) and more recently Spanish (for love). For me, both of these two adventures have been a great success. The other day, friends asked me for tips to learn some Spanish before a journey to Central America. Let me share with you what I told them:
The single unit of information is a phrase.
Let’s unpack this.
In the beginning, I thought that the single unit of information in languages is a word. At school, we had to learn lists of word-to-word correspondences (“vocabulary lists”). You can buy dictionaries, that also translate word-by-word.
Since I came to France six months ago I made a lot of progress with the french language. What started as nearly incomprehensible stuttering is now full phrases with quite rich vocabulary and even one little joke here and there. I’ve made picking up french my personal project and it brings a lot of joy to my life. Understanding people in more and more contexts is enriching and helps with the struggles every expat experiences being far from home.