Heinrich Schliemann Language Learning

Heinrich Schliemann Language Learning

Since the world getting closer and smaller with the dramatic technological growth, learning the second language become one of the requirements to communicate with others. It only takes 14 hours to go to Asia from America, and there is no guarantee that neighbors moving into the next door will speak in English fluently. Since living in a college dorm in the United States, I have a roommate from China, and I myself also come from South Korea, outside of the United States. Not only communicating with the worldwide people, but also speaking in foreign languages may help to understand various cultures and thoughts all over the world with its own unique characteristics that cannot be translated. With globalization, speaking more than two languages become the ordinary expectation; however, language learning is not an easy process.

Even though in the outside of the United States spends much time and money to learn English and tries to invest a new striking and easy method to get a language more quickly and more accurately, it still remains as the national problem. Despite extreme cases due to these two countries highly concentrating on education and being sensitive about globalization, in Japan, there is a political debate on making English as the national language along its own language, and in South Korea, preschools speaking in only English get more popular and more competitive to get into every year. In my case, I have learned English since being fourth grade, started to learn Japanese as the second language after being in a middle school, and also learned Spanish in a high school in the United States; however, compared to time I spent on studying foreign languages, the result was not fully satisfaction.

In the world history, there was a man who could speak eighteen different languages fluently, acquired by his own language learning method. His name is Heinrich Schliemann, the well-known archaeologist and excavator of Troy. When he became twenty-two years old, he was able to speak, of course, in German, his mother tongue, and in English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese, and at the age of forty, he also made himself fluently speak in ten more languages including Greek (Jahn). With his fame of discovering Troy, his extraordinary language skill also got spotlighted and his own language learning method became an interesting subject to research among linguists.

It is based on reading, writing, and memorization of the target language. There were three roles before starting;

“a) the value of language acquisition - “every new language one acquires is a new life …” b) the desirability of learning a number of language, but only at a time - “man’s head which is continually constrained by the study of too many languages at once falls into an incurable chronical confusion …”

c) the right method of study - “to read much aloud, never to make translations, to write always dissertations on subjects that interest us, to correct them under the eye of the teacher, to commit them to memory and to repeat them word by word in the lesson of the following day”. (Carvalho).

The way of learning his first foreign language, English, well showed how he acquired many languages by only his self-instruction. First, he spent at least an hour a day with a native speaker. He read with his voice and wrote about his interests. His writings were corrected by a native speaker and he memorized a correct version of his writings. He tried not to waste his time and in every minute, he tried to memorize the target language, even while waiting for falling asleep. He went to two English church services, one for exposing himself to the target language and the other for repeating what he had heard. After getting English and training memorization by his language learning method, the period of getting new languages became shorter and shorter, and later he only needed six weeks. For six months, Heinrich Schliemann exposed himself to English about 1350 hours, as same as seven years of traditional language learning method (Jahn).

Speaking in eighteen different languages made Heinrich Schliemaan as a linguist genius; however, Jurgen Jahn stated that he is “a self-motivated and self-directed second language learner (Jahn).” He knew what he wants and its economical benefic of language learning, which was enough to make him motivated, and he knew how to study efficiently. In 1863, to his brother Ernst, he wrote a letter saying, “Man endowed with energy can easily learn a language merely from books and without any assistance from a teacher. Talent means energy and perseverance and nothing more.” Acquiring new languages might not be as hard as expected and it only requires for more energy and passion to get into the target language. In the article, How Much Comprehensible Input did Heinrich Schliemann Get? By Stephen d. Krashen, brought Honer’s statement on Heinrich Schliemann’s language learning method and said, “Heinrich Schliemann was this kind of learner, a person who was able to transfer linguistic knowledge “from the conscious to the unconscious stores.”

Works Cited

Carvalho, Elizabeth. "Heinrich Schliemann, the linguist." Aegeus Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov.

2013.

Jahn, Jurgen. "A Self-Motivated and Self-Directed Second Language Learner: Heinrich

Schliemann." The Modern Language Journal 63.5/6 (1979): 273-76. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.

Krashen, Stephen D. "How Much Comprehensible Input did Heinrich Schliemann Get?" System

19.3 (1991): 189-90. Web. 4 Nov. 2013.