Max Forrester Eastman - On Learning Foreign Languages 汉译

　　After spending a couple of weeks talking to Americans in Moscow, and listening through a wall to the life of the Russians. I decided to learn the language. I did not want to collect bits of second-hand information. I did not want information. I wanted the feeling of life under a proletarian dictatorship, and there was only one way to get it. I had been puttering along with my grammar and with Lhermontov and Pushkin, reading at them in the same dreadful way that we used to read at Horace and Virgil. That was not learning anything.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

　　I have my own system for learning foreign languages, which is based upon a profound knowledge of the human heart, and which I will here with some reservations impart to the reader. The first thing to do is to go to the capital of the country where the language is spoken, and buy a grammar, two little red dictionaries, and a railroad ticket. The railroad ticket should take you as far away from the capital as possible, clear out of the sound of your own language, and preferable to a summer resort. The reason for this is that you are going to have a good time, and you need company.

　　On the train, on the way to your summer resort, you have some hard work to do. It is the only work called for by my system, and it has to be done thoroughly. You have to learn the name in the language under consideration for “noun,” “adjective,” “verb,” “participle,” “conjunction,” “pronoun,” and “preposition.” And if you do not know in your own language just what these wonders are, you have to find out. And then you have to learn to say, “What does that mean?” and “What is the word for this?”, and a few handy remarks like “Do you speak English?”, “Do you speak French?”, “Do you speak German?”, “Do you speak Italian?”, “It’s too bad.”, and “Let’s take a walk.”

　　With that equipment you go into the dining-room of the principal hotel in your summer resort, and pick out your teacher. You may do this quite boldly, if you have equipped yourself as I direct, for you have a power to ensnare that teacher which reaches beyond the charms of your personality. Moreover, it is advisable to have an eye to her physical beauties, for you are going to spend a good deal of time gazing on them in comparative silence.

　　After dinner you may go and lean up against a pillar, or the railing of a little foot-bridge in the garden, or somewhere—I need not be too specific about this—and when she comes by, you will say in your poor broken tongue and with a forlorn expression, “Mademoiselle, do you speak English?” When she says “No,” you will heave a sigh and say, “Do you speak German?” At a second “No,” your expression will become disconsolate, and you will say, “Do you speak French?” At a third “No” you show real consternation, and offer to speak Italian, or Bohemian, or Chinese, or what you will. If God is with you, she will decline all these offers, and you will find that she is at once seriously distressed over your plight, and in a somewhat humbled condition as to her own talents. You will find, if I am not mistaken, that you are already taking a walk with her, and you may assume that her next statement is, “Too bad you haven’t a Russian dictionary,” or something to that effect. At the sound of these words—-no matter how bad they sound—you will produce your two little red books, and hand her the one marked “Russian-English”.

　　Here the work, properly so called, comes to an end. She will be very curious to see what the words in your language look like, and she will examine the little red book and pretty soon point to a word, probably the word “hot”, or something equally uninteresting under ordinary circumstances. Under these circumstances it acquires the charm of an incantation. It begins to open just by something less than the shadow of a hair’s breadth the gate of a possible romance. You both know that that gate will be a long, long time in opening. And you both know, if you have reached years of some discretion, that when it is once wide open, the romance is gone. For there is no such thing as romance—it is only the expectation of itself.

　　And so, in a gentle fever of delight, you look up the word for “too” in your dictionary, and you say, “Too hot?”

　　It is one of the signs of our human kinship, and a blessing we never pause to appreciate, that in all languages, however the words may change, the vocal inflections have substantially the same meaning: You do not have to learn how to melodize a question in Russian, or a doubt, or a suspicion, or a declaration, or a declaration, or a caress. If you did, this industrious romance would probably run on the rocks in the first three minutes.

　　To your question, “Too hot?”, she will no doubt answer rapidly and at some length, forgetting your limitations. Perhaps she will say, “Not if we could find a shady tree to sit under.”

　　She will be a little shocked at your inability to grasp this simple proposition. A flicker of impatient contempt will cross her face. She has forgotten about your magnanimous offer to speak English, French, German, Italian or Bohemian. She has forgotten that there are any such languages. She just primitively and quite naturally feels that a person who can’t talk is a fool. And here you must bring forward the second part of your equipment. But use it gently. Use it sparingly, for it is possible the experience may be too bitter, and her pride not strong enough to hold her to the task.

　　You may, I trust, have been able to isolate one word in that insane rush of syllables that came out of her mouth. Look for it in your dictionary, and while you are looking, murmur somewhat abstractedly, “Is that a preposition or a participle?”

　　You will see that look of contempt upon her features give place to a flush and a catching of breath, and your companion will wrinkle her brows, and lean over your shoulder to watch you find the word in your dictionary, and her hair will brush your cheek helpfully, and her voice be all gentle sympathy as she says, “Why, now, let’s see, that must be—there it is! You understand?”

　　By this time no doubt you will have arrived at a shady tree, and at something far better than understanding, a consciousness of your power. You are in the peculiar position of knowing more than your teacher about the very subject she is going to teach. And if you employ your power with delicacy as I have advised, so that she does not either run away from you in fright as from an intellectual monster, or in a fit of mad pride buy a grammar and learn her own language, you can retain this position of lofty helplessness throughout the duration of the romance. For at every stage of the proceeding your mind will know more about the language than hers; her knowledge is in her tongue.

There are only two forces in this world, love and pride, and upon these two I base my linguistic system. I do not assault you with rules of syntax, with paradigms, with conjugations, declensions, and other things appealing purely to the intellect, and to that weakly. I go straight to the heart. I put you in the position of a child, for whom life itself—that is, love and pride—demands a learning of his language. And I put your wind and the waves and the stars and the sunshine, and all the forces of nature, run to help you when you have made yourself a child. You will read your grammar in the intervals of study. It will rest and relax you from the thrilling excitement of your lessons. You will find its pages colored with the same emotion, but in a milder tone. And if you do not overdo it—-if you do not get all the most passionate words in the language whirling through your brain at a rate fatal to the tissue—I guarantee that inside of two weeks you will have communicated some of the most profound and dangerous thoughts in our soul. Inside of a month you will have said enough in that language to keep you busy regretting in English as it begins to get loose in a foreign language. Those words mean what they say, but they do not mean it seriously. They are play words. They are exercises of agility. They are not yet firmly geared in with the real world, arising out of causes and attached to consequences. They are laughing in space. Prudence would be an affectation. You say wild things and you say them with enormous and sincere enthusiasm—enthusiasm about your ability to say them. It is not only learning a language when you learn it according to my system—it is taking a little breath of the free, superficial and inconsequential life of the gods.