Key to the First French Book: Containing the Pronunciation, Translation and Grammar of the French Text, With Explanation of Idioms (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

M. D. Berlitz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0282889191 ISBN 13: 9780282889197

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Key to the First French Book: Containing the Pronunciation, Translation and Grammar of the French Text, With Explanation of Idioms

In a book designed for self-instruction, it may seem ah surd to state at the outset that a speaking knowledge of a language can hardly be obtained from books.

It is evident that a language consists of sounds and that one can no more learn a sound from an explanation than one can get a correct idea of a flavour from a description a sound must be heard, a colour seen, a flavour tasted, an odour smelled. There are hardly any sounds in one lan guage perfectly identical with those of another language; there is merely a more or less close resemblance between them; you must therefore hear the foreign sounds before you can produce them correctly. Phonographs will not do for this purpose, not only because their reproduction of at least some sounds is rather imperfect, but also because the ear makes the foreign sounds similar to those with which it is familiar in your mother tongue, unless a teacher draws your attention to the peculiarity of that' particular sound and drills you until you hear it and utter it correctly.

Furthermore, in order to understand and speak a lan guage, the sounds reaching the ear must be so intimately connected with the mental impressions (ideas) that the lat ter are spontaneously and immediately made or awakened as soon as the former 1s heard, and the ideas in their turn must, through direct connection with the organs of speech, cause the proper expression to be immediately on your tongue's end.

The normal way of learning a foreign language is, therefore, to have a native teacher (or, still better, several teach ers alternating) who speaks to you and makes you speak the foreign language only, teaching the expressions of concrete meaning by object lessons, those of abstract meaning through association (context), grammar and idioms through examples and practical drill. These principles form the basis of the Berlitz Method.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0282889191
• ISBN 13: 9780282889197
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 135