How to Learn Grammar Fast – How to Learn a Language on Your Own (Part 4)

Learn grammar fast

Can you feel it? We're going on an adventure! By now, you should have everything we need to start learning. 

If you've read the first part of this guide you should have some grammars book. Internet sources are also acceptable but book is always more reliable.

But before we start, just a small disclaimer.


THE SMALL DISCLAIMER


The process which I'm about to present work like a charm for me. But we're all different, so remember that your approach might vary from mine. That's why you should consider tweaking them a little bit so they're more tailored for your needs.

This part of the guide will seriously get you started but of course, it's not possible to cover all complexities of particular languages. I'm selective.

I don't give a damn about being 100% correct at the beginning because nobody cares. You know what is really tiring? Stuttering with perfect grammar every second word.

Sure, you'll make mistakes but it rarely happens that they are serious.

- "I really do love rapes officer!"
- "Pardon me? You are a sick and twisted person! Oh, wait! Did you mean grapes?"
 - "Oh yeah, me thanks and love you long time!"

You see? At least you're politely making a conversation.


TWO MAIN BRICKS OF YOUR LEARNING FOUNDATION


There are two things which you should know before learning anything - your baseline and general outline of the subject you're about to learn.


So what's baseline?


This is the manner in which you can refer what you already know to the material you want to acquire.
It's possible most of the time. However, sometimes you have to be really creative!

When you learn a new language, you can, of course,  compare it to the ones you already know.


General outline


You should know more or less what the given language consists of. Why? Very important part of learning is knowing what you don't know.

Skimming through a grammar book can give you a pretty good picture of the language. You can learn how many tenses there are or conjugations.

Now the real art is to pick grammar constructions which are the most useful to us and will enable speaking as quickly as possible while maintaining a relatively high level of grammatical correctness.

I'll stress just for clarity's sake - you need a general outline of a language. You're not learning at this stage.


WHAT'S THE MAIN GOAL?


How to Learn Grammar Fast


I'll try to describe in as many details as it's only possible how I usually approach learning languages.
Once again - my goal is to start speaking as soon as possible.

If yours is only to read or write - it's still the approach I would choose as it helps you to build a grammatical scaffolding where you can later set vocabulary.

Grammatical correctness usually follows quickly once you start speaking. To depict the said process, I'll use Esperanto as an example.

It's much easier than most languages and that's precisely why it is perfect. Just like scientists who use simple organisms to understand more complex ones. I'll use an easy language as an example so you can later transfer this knowledge to more complex ones.


HOW TO USE THIS PART OF THE GUIDE?


I suggest the following - go through it (more or less) step by step. It'll set you on the right path.

But the most important advice which I can give you is - ignore ALL the other things from further steps until you cover the ones you're actually trying to learn. It takes the burden of overthinking off of you.


When should you move to the next step?

Once you can use the structures from the current one with confidence.
Of course, feel free to change the order of these steps and adjust them to you if you feel it suits you better.


FIRST BABY STEP- Personal Pronouns


The first question which we have to ask ourselves is: what elements of language are the most important? The answer is - the ones which you can't substitute with anything else.

That's why I always start with personal pronouns (subject pronouns). For the sake of brevity, I'll limit my examples to a singular form.

mi
I
vi
you
li
he
ŝi
she



Step 2 - PRESENT TENSE


Once we get a grasp of subject pronouns we can move to present tense. This choice begs the same question as before.

Why present and not past or future tense? Assuming that we have really little time at our disposal, we can always say something like:

"I eat dinner yesterday"
"she goes there in 3 days"

Sounds terrible - I'm pretty sure we all agree here BUT It helps you to get your message across! If there are more than 1 present tense in your target language, it's better to choose the one which's used for general events


Step 3 - CONJUGATION


Esperanto makes everything simple. All verbs in present tense have endings -AS.

Obviously, in a language of your choice, you'll face more conjugations. And the great thing is that you know how many because you learned beforehand what the grammar outline of your target language looks like. (You READ it, right?)

Now we have to learn how to construct:

  • affirmative sentence
  • negative sentence
  • questions

Questions are least important as you can always ask one using an affirmative sentence and changing your tone of voice.


AFFIRMATIVE SENTENCE (in present tense)


POSSIBLE TRAPS: In many languages the order of the sentence is fixed - e.g. The conjugated verb is always the second sentence element in German.

Be aware of it.

Let's select some verbs, so we can start creating sentences.

Short list of the most useful verbs:

an = povi
must / have to = devi
should = devi
might / may = povi
have = havi
be = esti
get = ricevi
give = doni
take = preni
want - voli
need = bezoni
buy = aĉeti
sell = vendi
go = iri
come = veni

and 3 nouns

money = mono
time
= tempo
book
= libro

Now the best part - building sentences:

mi prenas libro = I take a book
ŝi vendas mono 
= she sells money
vi havas tempo
= you have time

Please note that these sentences are incorrect (we should add -n to nouns in this case) - I'm trying to show the process of grammar acquisition as precisely as it is only possible.

As for now, we know nothing about declension. Nevertheless, such sentences can be understood without any problem.


NEGATIVE SENTENCE


Typically, we can negate either a verb or a noun. The most important for us is how to negate verbs. In English, we use the adverb "not" to do so. In Esperanto, we can do it using "ne" before verbs.

Examples:

Mi ne havas mono = I don't have money
 ŝi ne vendas mono = she doesn't sell money
vi ne havas tempo = you don't have time


QUESTIONS



Close-ended questions


Some most popular ways to form a yes-no (i.e. close-ended) question in many languages is to use intonation, inversion (present in English), inflection, auxiliary verbs (do, have, etc. in English) or a grammatical particle.

The latter is true in, among others, Polish, Esperanto and French.
In Esperanto, we use the particle "ĉu".

Examples:

love = ami
Do you love money? = ĉu vi amas mono ?
Do you have a book? = ĉu vi havas libro?


Open-ended questions


If we want to learn some more details, it's great to know the most popular interrogative words:

List of interrogative words

which
what
whose
who
whom
where
when
how (much, many, often)
why

Examples:

Who = kiu, what = kio
Who do you love? = Kiu vi amas?
What does he want? = Kio li volas?


Step 4 - OTHER USEFUL PRONOUNS


The final step to make our sentences clearer and fancier is to learn some more personal pronouns

POSSIBLE TRAPS: You have to be aware that in some languages you can encounter many categories of pronouns depending on the case.


POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS


my - mia
your - via
his - lia
her - ŝia

Examples:

Let's add two adjectives to spruce things up a bit:

big - granda*
cheap - malmultekosta*

* All adjectives in Esperanto end with -A

My book isn't big - Mia libro ne estas granda
His time isn't cheap - Lia tempo estas malmultekosta



OBJECT PRONOUNS


me - min
you - vin
him - lin
her - ŝin

She loves you (yeah, yeah, yeah) - ŝi amas vin
Do I need her? - ĉu mi bezonas ŝin?


DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS


Why are they so great?

Because you can simply learn them, point at some object and grunt:

"This!"
"Not this, that!"

Lovely, right?

this - (ĉi) tiu
that - tiu
these - (ĉi) tiuj
those - tiuj

This person is stupid - Tiu persono estas stulta
He gives that money - Li donas tiu mono*

* I still make mistakes on purpose. It should read "li donas tiun monon".


INDEFINITE PRONOUNS


List of indefinite pronouns:

enough
little
less
much
more
most
several 
few
fewer
many
more
most
no one
nobody
neither
none
everybody
everyone
all
both
someone
something
some
anyone
anything
either
any

Examples:

Someone = iu, everything = ĉio
She knows everything = ŝi scias ĉio
Someone wants you = iu volas vin

I've decided to skip reflexive pronouns. But feel free to read about them.


Step 5 - CONJUNCTIONS


Long and (almost) complete list of conjunctions:

after
although 
as 
as far as 
as if 
as long as 
as soon as 
as though
because 
before
even if 
even though 
every time 
if 
in order that 
since 
so 
so that 
than 
though 
unless 
until 
when 
whenever 
where 
whereas 
wherever 
while 
and 
nor 
but 
or 
yet 
otherwise 
so 
either...or 
not only...but (also) 
neither...nor 
both...and 


whether...or 


just as...so

The ones that are the most important to me at the beginning are:
because, and, but, or, after, before, that, that's why, to, although, if, until, since, although, otherwise

Conjunctions give us this nice feeling of confidence when we speak. They combine two or more sentences and add a great touch of logic and cohesion to them.

Examples:

because = ĉar
I love you because you're pretty = Mi amas vin ĉar vi estas bela

understand = kompreni
I understand that's why I sell = Mi komprenas tial mi vendas

That's it when it comes to grammar basics. More to come!


REMEMBER:


You can create your own context and the world within a language. You'll have time to adjust the accuracy later.

As long as use logic and try to avoid any idiomatic expressions you should be understood.


CONCLUSION

  • Know the general outline of grammar before you start
  • Learn grammar step by step, once you feel quite comfortable within some grammar structure - move on
  • If you want to start speaking as fast as possible, learn the thing which can't be substituted with anything else first
  • Your brain craves sense and meaning - create your own context, have fun, start saying some silly stuff!
  • Embrace imperfection, we all have to start somewhere

Why Context Is No King of Mine. Rebel!

context is no king

How many times have you heard it? Context is the king. It’s so important. You simply cannot ignore it.

But it’s no king of mine! Why?

Well, using this metaphor, I can only arrive at one conclusion. Most kings are evil bastards and don’t want you to succeed it in life. Just stay where you are a stable boy and scrape the dung off my shoes!

I strongly believe that when you start learning you don’t need and you should not use context-rich learning materials. I think that the there is a fundamental flaw in reasoning that the context is that important

We are cognitive misers. We follow the path of least resistance. Such is our nature. We may choose to oppose or we can accept it and use it in our favor.

How?

When you start learning a new language, the priority is to be able to express yourself clearly as soon as it is only possible. Diving into too many contexts taxes us immensely. There is no denying it. If we are to pay the price, shouldn’t reward be at least satisfying?

And it is not. Not for me anyway. Why should you spend hours and hours reading texts and listening to things which you can’t make sense of?

You can’t because you don’t know the vocabulary, and learning from context at the early stage of language learning is not always possible, nor is it pleasant. Such approach is not efficient.

WHAT’S DICTIONARY FOR ANYWAY?

My philosophy of learning is drastically different. If my aim is to get to B1 level as quickly as possible, I very often neglect extensive reading.

Why is that?

Because that’s always been a purpose of dictionaries. If I provide myself with a small, good dictionary I get an immediate access to the most popular words in a given language.

Good (yet still small) dictionaries are also characterized by other important features: they include pronunciation, the most important meaning of words and popular phrases and collocations.

If I want to get the most out of, say, 4 hours of learning, I’ll spend roughly 70% percent of this time trying to learn vocabulary from a dictionary.

This way, I can rapidly learn new vocabulary without spending a lot of time on thumbing through texts.

Provided of course, that I already know at least basics of grammar. Thus, my means of communication are greatly increased.

CONTEXT IS ROUGHLY THE SAME IN MANY LANGUAGES AT A BASIC LEVEL

There. I said it. Have you ever tried to listen, really listen, to many of your everyday conversations?

Are they really that complicated? Is the language really that bombastic? It is not.

You don’t usually use flowery expressions to impress anyone. I don’t deny that if you truly want to master the language, you need a lot of practice and a lot of materials and contexts.

But it’s not half as important as many people and polyglots claim if you want to learn to communicate.

How wrong can you be when you use words “eat”, “drink”, “assume”, “bad”, “good” (etc.) and their counterparts in other languages?

Speaking from my experience, not very wrong. Sure, sometimes you get the context wrong. Sometimes, some collocations simply do not exist.

But because you’ve learned quickly enough how to communicate, you can now start adjusting what you already know to the real-life situations.

Just to be clear – I don’t advocate abandoning other activities and sticking only to learning vocabulary. I simply believe that in order to speak as quickly as possible such an approach works fantastically.

I spend about 70% learning vocabulary and 30% listening on my journey to B1/B2 level.

If anyone wonders – yes, I haven’t mentioned grammar on purpose. That’s a topic for another article.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF SUCH APPROACH?

I start speaking very fast, imperfectly though. Extensive vocabulary practice gives me a huge advantage when I start listening.

The answer to “why? is obvious – it’s much easier to listen when your vocabulary is big.
Reading also becomes easy, once I start doing it.

I try to keep an open mind about my abilities and every time when I can confront my knowledge with real-life context, and I see that I’ve been wrong so far, I revise my outlooks.

I’m sure that it doesn’t sound like fun for many people. But the question I always ask is: do you learn for fun and you or do you want quick effects?

I want effects – but we’re all different in that manner. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have fun while learning!

I’m aware that for many people my approach is quite ludicrous.
But it’s always good when we read something that triggers our emotions as long as we approach them with an open mind and curiosity.

How often do we discard theories and opinions of others because we can’t seem to look at them differently than through the lens of our biases?

What do you think about the importance of learning? Let me know.