Before diving into study: familiarization with the language

Before you dive into learning your chosen language, take a moment to get to know it. This post will outline some suggestions on what to learn about before actually starting a study program for any language.


Last updated: January 2023


Before you dive into learning your chosen language, take a moment to get to know it.  Think of this as taking a moment to consult a map before going on a journey to generally know where things are, or skimming through a book's chapter names to get an idea for what sort of book it is.  Having a general idea of what you're getting yourself into gives you a sense of perspective and a feeling for the "landscape", so that you know what to expect later on.

This post will outline some suggestions on what to learn about before actually starting a study program for any language.

General information

Start by skimming the language's Wikipedia page, "[language] language" (for instance "French language").  This will give you a bit of background on the language, with information like:

  • the number of speakers
  • the geographic distribution
  • main dialect and accent groups
  • how vocabulary is formed
  • basic structure of the grammar
  • overview of the writing system

This allows you to start to get to know your language and will help provide you with context as you start learning it.

Phonology

Next, read about the phonology of the language at "[language] phonology" (for instance "French phonology" on Wikipedia.  

It's very important to know exactly which sounds a language consists of, because you might otherwise have an imperfect mental picture of the sound system.  This can result in miscommunications, or just general mistakes that could have been easily avoided.  For example, for the first 4 years that I was learning Spanish in school, I was convinced that the letter "z" made the /z/, like the English equivalent.  As it turns out, Spanish actually doesn't have that sound (they say /s/ or /θ/ for the letter "z"), but no one had ever told me, so I had an incorrect picture of the Spanish sound system that mistakenly included /z/ as a possible phoneme in Spanish.

These pages can also give you valuable pronunciation tips from the get-go; if you take a look at the vowel chart, for example, it becomes much easier to visualize the differences between the vowels that might otherwise sound very similar.  

The section on consonants also gives you valuable information regarding their realizations and possible allophones.  Just reading a page on a language's phonology is a huge step towards having an excellent accent.

Here are the key charts to be on the lookout for (examples taken from the page on French phonology):

Vowels Consonants
french-vowels french-consonants

At the very least, take a look at these charts and make sure you know what's called the "phonemic inventory" of the language in question (simply put, know which sounds it has and which it doesn't).

Make sure to also consult the "Help:IPA/[Language]" page as you do this to start figuring out which sounds correspond to which letters.  You can also take a look at WordReference for your language (or any other online dictionary that uses the IPA such as Wiktionary) and look up IPA transcriptions for words you encounter.  The end goal here will be to eventually be able to break down any word you see into a correct IPA transcription on your own, so that whenever you see a new word, you can already pronounce it correctly.

The next thing to be on the lookout for is a list or chart of "minimal pairs" or example words that illustrate phonemic contrasts.  Usually, these take the form of a list of simple one- or two-syllable words that have similar shapes with just one small difference.  For example, some such words for French might be:

  • "si": /si/
  • "su": /sy/
  • "sot": /so/
  • "ce": /sə/
  • "sous": /su/
  • etc.

As you're reading these, pronounce each word out loud, then look up the pronunciation on Forvo (or any other resource you may have with native speaker recordings).  Compare what you said with the recording, and adjust as necessary. You can also record yourself and listen to the recording, which can often be even more helpful than just saying the word.  See my post on "Why you should learn the IPA" for some more on this technique.

You shouldn't be aiming for a perfect accent right away; just focus on pronouncing the different sounds differently, so that a native speaker would be able to tell the difference between what sound like similar words to you.  You don't want to be like that person learning English who pronounces "bat" and "butt" the same way, so don't skip this step.

Continue this sounding-out practice with other words you encounter as you keep learning the language.  In time, you'll notice that you'll start subconsciously making small adjustments that improve your pronunciation further.

For now, however, your focus should be on being able to identify the phonemes a word consists of.  In other words, if you see a word you haven't seen before, the idea is that you can use your knowledge and experience gained from reading this Wikipedia article and learning about the sound system to break it down into the correct sounds.  For instance, if you're learning French, you should be able to look at a word like "brin" and immediately know that it can be broken down into /bʁɛ̃/, and so on for any other word.

Don't worry so much about the actual phonetic realizations (the sound you're actually physically producing), as being able to actually pronounce the word perfectly will come later with practice (and if the words "phonemes" or "phonetic" are unfamiliar to you, check out my "Phones vs. Phonemes" post).  Just try to focus on developing the ability to understand how a written word corresponds to its IPA transcription.

This may all seem like a lot of work, but it's totally worth it.  If you put in just a bit of time working on your pronunciation before you start learning anything of the language, you'll have laid an extremely helpful foundation for the future thanks to setting up the correct mental categories and avoiding sound miscategorization.

Working on your pronunciation early on is extremely helpful in avoiding future miscommunications.  Everyone will have an easier time understanding you, and if you put in the work learn a language's sound system, you'll have an easier time hearing otherwise difficult distinctions between sounds.  It's a win-win for everyone!

Grammar

Here again, I'd recommend you take a look at the "[language] Grammar" Wikipedia page if there is one.  Alternatively, find a good reference grammar; either in textbook form or a website, it doesn't matter.  The idea is that it should be a resource with most of the language's grammar consolidated in one place, with concise explanations, charts, and a system to look things up.  The resources section has some suggestions for you to check out.  Note that reference grammar textbooks and general learning textbooks are very different.

Here are some sample table of contents for you to understand the difference:

Grammar reference General textbook
1. Verb conjugations
2. Noun phrases
3. Adjectives and adverbs
4. Word order and sentence structure
5. Moods and tense
6. Focus marking and topicalization
7. Speech registers
1. Greetings
2. Self-introductions
3. Ordering food
4. Meeting friends
5. Going to a concert
6. Studying in school
7. Hobbies

As you can see, a grammar reference doesn't follow the traditional thematic structure of a typical textbook, but rather just focuses on specific technical documentation for how a language works.  Of course, general textbooks have their place to, as they help provide structure to your learning, but they're not as helpful when you're just familiarizing yourself with a language because they're hard to skim through.  On the other hand, if you just flip through the table of contents of a grammar reference textbook, you'll already have an idea for the kind of grammar you'll encounter as you learn the language.

Culture / History / Etc.

Lastly, depending on your personal interests, I recommend that you read about things like:

  • the history of the language and the countries its spoken in
  • the culture of its speakers
  • what cultures it's been influenced by
  • any dialects or accent groups
  • what languages it's related to
  • famous music groups or cultural icons
  • politics of the countries it's important in
  • etc.

Just learn about whatever you personally find interesting that draws you to the language - the goal here is to learn more about what you're curious about and also to start developing some personal connection and fascination with it to help create some goals for yourself (e.g. understand a famous pop song, or maybe follow along with a political debate on an issue you care about) and stay motivated as you keep studying.


Once you've done all this, you've given yourself a huge head-start.  Now, you can really dive into your studies!  

If this post has been interesting to you, check out my other posts on tips for pronunciation, resources, grammar, and much more!

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