The Prejudice is that Pronunciation Must be Perfect, It is Important to Communicate

When adults embark on learning foreign languages, and today it is difficult to be a manager without knowledge of at least English, frustrations typically arise and many believe they simply lack talent for languages. However, this is not true. Anyone can learn to use a foreign language quite well; the condition is to understand, not to just memorize.

written by Zrinka Friganović Šain

At a time when I, as a professional translator, accompanied many of our well-known craftsmen and entrepreneurs in their efforts to establish themselves in often very hostile and unfamiliar environments, I realized how important it is to understand each other well when making any business agreement. The hardest part was translating for people used to running their own business, that is, to speak for themselves about everything. They are generally suspicious of the translator who should not only accurately translate their words but also sense what is not said but is implied by the way it is said. Recognizing these small nuances sometimes really helps interlocutors to understand each other better and more completely.

But once, I went on a business trip to Milan with another client. In the middle of the trip, I realized that she actually spoke Italian quite well, and I was surprised to ask her why she had brought me along at all. She told me that the time while I translate serves her to think about how and what she will do next, that is, to give her more time to strategize her own moves, while at the same time she wants to appear completely serious. I must admit that I often thought about her words afterward, and every time one of my students annoyed me with the question ‘why do I even need to know foreign languages’, I would remember that person. Words are important. Whether spoken or written. How we say or write something, or how much attention we pay to it, speaks primarily about ourselves. I teach my students that they will not be able to be good leaders if they are not capable of assessing whether something is well expressed (written) or not.

Understanding, above all
During my teaching practice, students in foreign language courses from the business world often told me: ‘Professor, I can’t do it. You know, foreign languages just don’t work for me.’ Or: ‘Professor, why are you so upset about what I don’t know? Who says I have to know a foreign language?! I will just pay someone to speak on my behalf in whatever language I need!’ Or: ‘Come on, why is it important to know how to write an essay properly? That is something the person I will hire should know. That is their job, that’s why I pay them.’ A large number of people, in fact, have the prejudice that they cannot learn a foreign language at all. Because they have, like, tried, and it didn’t work for them. The results were disastrous, and they were frustrated.

Experience tells me that most people who think ‘foreign languages don’t work for them’ do not realize that learning foreign languages primarily involves the mental ability of people to express themselves (in writing or orally) in some language. The number of people who lack that ability is very small, considering that we all use, more or less successfully, some language. If we are aware of that ability, we should understand that the other ability, the ability to pronounce beautifully and shape different sounds, usually comes only with practice. Sometimes, for some of us, it doesn’t come at all.

But is it really that important?! Do you think your problem in learning English is the inability to pronounce the ‘th’ sound correctly? You are wrong! Have you ever heard some of the greatest minds of today speaking English, assuming it is not their native language? Their imperfect pronunciation has not diminished their intelligence or their ability to convey their ideas to the masses or simply to send a message. What is the basic premise of communication? The desire to communicate, of course. And to understand in the process. I believe we are all aware that the mere fact that we speak the same language is not a prerequisite for good and meaningful communication. Often, the words themselves are not enough to convey the message. The problem becomes greater if we need to express ourselves in a language whose structure we do not know well enough.

The Whole Wonder of Rules
The greatest frustration for foreign language teachers, but also for the person learning a foreign language, is certainly the fact that despite years of (more or less strenuous) work, students still fail to use grammatical structures correctly that they have repeatedly learned over the years. The paradox is in the fact that most high school students should have already mastered almost entirely the grammar of the English language by the time they reach college, yet a large part of them in reality confirms that they do not know how to apply what they have been taught, often not even the basics necessary to speak at all.

Why? Because we cannot learn foreign languages if we only try to memorize writing and/or pronunciation rules, endings, regular and irregular verbs, and all those ‘wonderful things’ that make up a language. Because even if we master everything neatly, the end result is often disappointing: we simply do not know what to do with that pile of memorized knowledge. We simply do not know how to apply all those rules. Eventually, we manage to get a good grade on some test due to well ‘crammed’ material – and that is all. Only when we find ourselves in a position to apply that same knowledge will we realize that we actually do not know what to do with it. Why? Because we have not learned to use our own native language in a way that we think about where and how to place certain endings, when to use regular and when to use irregular verbs, or which case to use in a particular situation.

Hearing Can Deceive
When learning a foreign language, the hardest part is learning to apply the rules in something we are trying to express or write. It is not enough to just know the rules, to ‘memorize’ irregular verbs and a pile of endings; it is necessary to understand what a particular rule serves or, for example, why a certain article is used somewhere and why not. Thus, we come to the fundamental problem: how to make a person think about what they want to say before they say it. By doing so, we become aware of the framework into which we can then fit the rules. When my students make a completely nonsensical mistake for the nth time (which they are aware of after my warning), their response to my ‘And why now that?’ is almost always: ‘Well, I did it by ear!’

If you were not born in the country whose language you are learning or have not spent a long time there (during which you could have acquired the ability to ‘sense’ some things by ear), it would be better for you to set ‘hearing’ aside at this stage of learning foreign languages. Until you become more aware of what you are actually doing when you speak or write in a foreign language. That is, until you are able to not draw a parallel in your head between what you want to say and/or write in your native language and that same thing in a foreign language. The answer to the question ‘How to draw that parallel faster, more painlessly, and more successfully’ holds the secret of an individual’s success in learning a foreign language.