12. A Strategy for the Street: Eliciting

If you have taken language classes in school then your understanding of how to pick up new vocabulary may be a little distorted. It probably involves memorizing endless lists of words out of context then regurgitating them for exams where you are penalized for minor spelling mistakes that native speakers make even though the essence is intact (think “seperate” vs. “separate”). Afterward, the vocabulary you “learned” grows fuzzy and harder to recollect as you move on to the next list of arbitrarily selected “useful” words and phrases.


At the tender age of 18 I ended up on the streets of Malaysia and realized that 99% of the language that I had studied was not going to get me very far. I had never learned the name of that exotic fruit which looked like nothing I had ever seen before. How was I supposed to bargain for a pair of sandals or a tube of toothpaste? What in the world was the word for diarrhea – and the medicine that I needed to stop it? No, the typical language class doesn’t stray as far off the beaten track as I had. How would I ever pick up the language that I needed?


I presently teach in a technical university, working with students from a range of engineering backgrounds. I do not delude myself into believing that I can provide them with all of the language they will need to function should they end up in a workplace overseas. What I can give them, however, is a strategy for collecting language. I call it eliciting and it works like this.


The first stage of eliciting is to recognize when you don’t know a word and need help. This may seem obvious but a surprising number of second language learners just don’t do it. Why? Because they have been conditioned to show what they do know in class and on exams, not what they do not. To suggest their knowledge of a new language is incomplete is considered “bad”, a reflection on their limited ability. Which is very ridiculous. How in the world are you going to improve, especially on site, if you don’t ask those around you for assistance?


Once you admit that a word or phrase is not at your fingertips, you send up a warning flag to the person you are talking with and make them aware of your predicament, psychologically setting them up to help. In English, you might begin with “How do you say...?” or “What do you call...?” Next, you focus their attention on the type of word you want, for example, “How do you say a thing used for…?”, “What do you call a person who…?”, or “What is a place where you…?”


Finally, start throwing out ANYTHING that will get your meaning across. You want the other person to understand and give you the necessary language. The explanation does not have to be grammatically correct, or spoken at all. Gestures can often convey what you want much more effectively than words.


After a struggle of this kind, the language will probably be much more memorable than if you had looked it up in a dictionary, not to mention the other person will have remained engaged in the conversation. There is nothing worse than having a conversation with someone armed with a dictionary. Key words are painfully located by the endless flipping of pages as eyes glaze over and other engagements are suddenly remembered. Dictionaries are fine for writing essays or love letters, but disastrous in face-to-face encounters. They cut the conversation into pieces generating words that, given the time lag, lose their meaning and may be incorrect by local standards anyway. One man’s “spatula” is another’s “fish slice”... or “lifter”!


Instead of being “book-based” (or “battery-based” in the case of electronic dictionaries) in a conversation, I use the words I have already learned combined with gestures to elicit the words that I need from the other person. It can be challenging at first, but you will be surprised at how willing people are to help. The more you go out on a limb to get your meaning across, the more successful you will be at building up your vocabulary.


Many years ago, my youngest aunt, Gwen, visited me in Japan along with my mother. During the course of their visit, Gwen became afflicted with constipation. As we passed a pharmacy, she suggested picking up some medicine to relieve her uncomfortable condition. She dragged me up to the counter where I stood stupidly staring at the pharmacist. At the time, I had some spoken Japanese but didn’t know the word for “constipation”.


Oh, sure, I managed to blurt out “How do you say... a kind of sickness... you travel... too much rice...?” The pharmacist was completely engrossed by my babbling but had absolutely no idea of what I wanted to say. Suddenly Gwen said something like, “Oh, for goodness sake!”, pushed me aside and began to gesture. She did a remarkably authentic rendition of someone seated on a toilet and straining to produce... well, you get the picture. And so did the pharmacist and a gathering crowd of onlookers. There was a spontaneous chorus of “Bempi!”, the word in question, which I have never forgotten.


My first realization of the importance of asking for words took place when I was about thirteen years old. My youngest brother, Keith, was about one year old and sitting on my lap. I was testing to see how many words he could remember by asking, “What’s that?” and pointing at assorted objects in the living room. Suddenly he interrupted, pointed at a ladybug crawling across the table that I had not noticed at all, and said “Whazzat?” I stared, then blurted out, “A ladybug.”


Although he had absolutely no idea of how many words he had just stated, Keith (or Keithie as I called him in those days) sounded like a native speaker. He had learned this key question as a “chunk”, or “formula”, and was now armed to pick up the words HE wanted to learn, not what others intended to “teach” him. A question like “What’s that?” or “How do you say this?” can be easily introduced and learned from the moment you start studying a language. I know because I have done it many times in a range of languages, and have incorporated it into my language training website.


Asking for the language I needed in Malay when I was 18 served me well and I still remember many of the words that I picked up to this day. And, if I don’t, I can very easily get them again by eliciting.

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, www.sulantra.com, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German and Korean!)

11. Food for Thought

When I arrived in Malaysia at the tender age of eighteen, I was totally unprepared for what I encountered. The climate was too humid, the smells around me too intense, and the food was like nothing I had eaten before. For someone who had never tasted a chili before, the spicy heat of my first local dish was brutal. The burning sensation seemed to scorch my tongue, shred my throat and melt my very toenails! I ended surviving on a steady diet of bananas and lost about 15 kilos in my first few weeks. Finally, I was told by the coordinators that, if I didn’t start eating properly, I might as well go home.

This was the magic bullet. The idea of heading back to a gray winter on Vancouver Island was even more terrifying than the local cuisine and, after  surprisingly little effort, I soon found myself in love with the spices, eating with my hands, wearing sarongs and sleeping on the floor. In other words, I had adapted and gone native.

I once taught in a small college at the base of Mount Fuji which had a study program with a school in Bulgaria. When they arrived from Sofia, the young women who attended our college impressed everyone with their linguistic skills. Not only could they understand the lectures and carry on a reasonable conversation in Japanese, but they were competent in the written language as well. They had even studied the tea ceremony for several years before arriving in Japan! But there was one hitch: the Bulgarian ambassadresses had trouble with Japanese food.

In all of the years that they had studied the language, these young women had not really had a chance to try Japanese home cooking and the ingredient that seemed the most repugnant for their Slavic tastebuds was dashi, the fish stock ubiquitous to most Japanese dishes. They didn’t like the smell of it and passed judgment on food which contained it long before a morsel had reached their mouths. Dashi was for them what chilies had been for me in Malaysia  repulsive.

As things turned out, the women from Sofia eventually grew accustomed to the Japanese version of fish stock. Now when I visit them in Bulgaria, they request the instant version as a souvenir. And as for my aversion to chilies, I carry around a bottle of hot sauce with me at all times.

I feel sorry for those “ex-patriots” who wrap themselves in the safe cocoon of friends from the homeland while dining primarily on familiar foods just like mom  or Macdonalds  used to make “back home”. These same people more often than not never make an attempt to learn the local language, pleading its complexity as an excuse while creating a quasi version of their home away from home that is safe, secure, and ultimately limiting.

If you obviously enjoy the cuisine of a country, you have opened a very large door to the culture. People feel good when you show an appreciation for their typical diet. I now realize that refusing to sample a dish that someone has gone to the trouble of preparing for you can be very offensive. To me, there is nothing ruder than saying “No, thank you.” before even giving something a try. Some of my students do this when I invite a class to my home for dinner. It leaves a bad taste.

So, if you are heading to a country, prepare yourself by tasting the local delicacies in advance on your home turf, either by going to a restaurant or finding recipes online that you can prepare in the safety of your kitchen. The effort may be more valuable than you can imagine.

After returning from Malaysia and before coming to Japan, I began to explore the dishes of Asia with friends in Canada. Fortunately, I first lived in Ottawa where the presence of embassies guarantees a steady supply of exotic ingredients in the local market. Later, I moved to Vancouver, a city which seems to have a restaurant from every corner of the globe on each street. Among the dishes I discovered, sushi was one of my favorites. And this love of raw fish and rice helped me land my first job in Japan.

A friend was in the final stages of being hired for a job in Japan but developed cold feet. Instead of going to the last interview in Los Angeles, he handed me his ticket (you could do things like that in those days) and said, “You have more experience. Go instead of me.” So I did.

When I walked into the interview, the three men sitting across from me in business suits were nonplussed. When they realized that the young man in front of them was not the person they had intended to rubber stamp and hire, they held a rather tense discussion in Japanese at the end of which they suggested we go for lunch. This plan suited me fine since I was starving. As we ate, I extolled my virtues, explaining that I had much more teaching experience than my friend, all the while stuffing myself with succulent morsels of raw fish and rice. And I got the job!

I discovered the truth about a year later when one of the men who had interviewed me showed up at my workplace to see how I was doing. We went out in the evening and, over drinks he confessed that I had presented them with a major headache that day in Los Angeles. They needed a teacher badly, but were mortified since I was a complete stranger. Then they decided on the plan of taking me for lunch. It seems my predecessor was not a fan of Japan’s cuisine and made life miserable for his superiors. In my case, I might turn out to be a mediocre teacher, but at least I wouldn’t starve and create problems for the Personnel Section.

Yes, food can be an excellent entry to another culture  and a new job!

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)

10. Malaysia: Sensory Overload!

In my 18th summer, I was notified that I had been selected to join the inaugural year of Canada World Youth/Jeunesse Canada Monde, an exotic exchange program to develop international understanding between my homeland and the rest of the world, and would soon be heading to Malaysia. I had really wanted to go to Mexico and improve my nascent Spanish and was not overjoyed with the new destination. I didn’t even know where Malaysia was on a map! But after putting in a little time at the library I realized that, of the five possible CWY/JCM destinations, Malaysia was the furthest away, hovering above the equator on the other side of the planet. That was enough incentive for me.

As it turned out, the coming year was life-changing. I made friends who would last a lifetime and fell in love with Malaysia, a country that was off the beaten track and like nothing I had experienced thus far. But it wasn’t all easy going. Sure, I had wandered the streets of Montreal and Paris babbling in broken French. But there was still some familiarity, the feeling that you weren’t too far from home. When we touched down on the tarmac of Kuala Lumpur International Airport in January of 1973, it was like landing on the moon!

Although many instructors approach language training with neat and tidy formulas in self-contained boxes, the reality is a lot messier. With language comes the wild card: culture. Food, fashion, feelings are all part of the loaded package you receive when you take those first shaky steps in a new tongue. In the case of Malaysia, simply getting there opened the door to “culture shock”.

In the good old days direct flights didn’t exist to Southeast Asia. Our group of eighty participants left Canada in the freezing winter, spent a day in the cold drizzle of London, England, refueled in the middle of the cool, dry desert night of Dubai then landed in the intense mid-day heat of Kuala Lumpur. The acclimatization process had been put on fast forward and none of us was prepared for the dense humidity of KL. Disembarking the plane, it felt like walking into a wall of steamy dampness, a wet sponge that pressed against your face and seemed to smother you. Just breathing was a struggle as the tropical world surrounding us moved in slow motion.

And it wasn’t only the climate. We were whisked away on a bus to spend our first evening in a kind of training camp where we partook of our first real Malaysian meal. Sure we had practiced “makan dengan tangan” – eating with our hands – during orientation in Ontario and had tasted a watered down version of the local food, but nothing could prepare me for that first meal.

We sat on benches at long tables as local staff placed oversized bowls of a suspicious yellow liquid in front of each person. With a tense smile glued to my face, I dipped my spoon into the smelly broth (which I now recognize as curry) and from the depths of the murky liquid, a grotesque creature emerged – literally! My spoon had dredged up the large, bulbous-eyed head of a fish, its mouth hanging open with the curry broth dripping from between the rows of little teeth. For a boy from the Prairies who only knew fish as something that came in a can, that first meal was like being cast in a horror movie!? Listlessly moving my spoon around in the bowl so as not to disturb the contents, I eventually pushed it away mumbling something about not being hungry.

As it turned out, all Malaysian food was a challenge for me because the main ingredient seemed to be chilies. By the end of the first week, I was surviving on bananas (fortunately, Malaysia has an amazing range of them). Between the heat and fear of the local cuisine, I was soon losing drastic amounts of weight – about 15 kilograms in my first month.

Then there was the language. In fact, Bahasa Malaysia was surprisingly easy, particularly the version used in the marketplace, called pasar melayu. The pronunciation was painless (no exotic tones like Chinese) and the grammar was a breeze – put the word “telah” before the verb and you were speaking in the past tense, say “akan” before the same verb and you were discussing the future. Even plurals were simply formed by saying the word twice. Two scripts were used, the ABC’s and “jawi”, or Arabic script, and the writing system was phonetic with many words from English. “Teknoloji” (technology), “sains” (science), “sekolah” (school) – with a little effort I could soon figure out the signs in the marketplace or read a restaurant menu.

When I tried to communicate the real hurdle was my lack of vocabulary. I just didn’t have enough words for the things I needed to do each day. I was forever pointing and asking “Apa cakap ini?” – “How do you say this?” But little by little, the words came, the sounds and smells grew familiar, and I became more comfortable walking about in my sarong than in the long trousers I had brought from Canada for official functions.

Language is only the wrapping paper for an amazing gift – the chance to enter another world, to grow and move in new directions. Years later the first group of CWY/JCMers still has reunions to celebrate our youthful adventure, to acknowledge the road we wandered down so many years ago. Some of us went back to our hometown with a deeper appreciation of who we were and where we came from. Others, like me, became gypsies, wandering from country to country, culture to culture. But later experiences have never been quite so deep, disturbing or delightful as that first time in Malaysia.

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)

9. Have an Attitude

In the spring of my final year at high school, I discovered a poster taped to the door of the counselor’s office announcing a new and intriguing exchange program called Canada World Youth, or Jeunesse Canada Monde. It seemed a wealthy philanthropist was undertaking an unusual social experiment with 240 young people from across Canada. The lucky participants would be trained for several months then sent off to one of five different countries for six months. Upon their return, they would then live in Canadian communities with participants from the exchange country, introducing their culture to others while learning more about their own country. The details were vague, but the prospect of spending a year on the road was thrilling and soon the school halls were buzzing with excitement.

Once the initial euphoria died down, however, the general consensus of my peers was of the “I-don’t-have-a-chance” variety. Many of my friends picked up the application form but put down their pencils after answering only a few questions. They seemed to be saying, “What’s the point?”, passing a personal verdict even before entering the arena. What was the big deal? I simply filled in the form, dropped it in the post, crossed my fingers, and moved on to my math homework, forgetting about the application until a few weeks later when I received an official reply. I had passed the first stage of the selection process and would attend an “evaluation session” in Vancouver!

CWY/JCM was looking for a cross section of the population: male and female, rural and urban, well-off or of limited means, francophone, anglophone, kids from every province and territory – I wasn’t sure where I fit in but I apparently filled a niche and made it past the first screening. A few weeks later, I found myself in a cavernous hall in Vancouver along with about one hundred other youths being observed by serious looking “evaluators” in lab coats with clipboards and pens. We were divided into small groups, herded on to large plastic sheets, handed a box of clay, and left to our own devices without a single direction. Just silence.

Some individuals started muttering about “guinea pigs” and/or “a bloody waste of time”. I was just excited to be in the big city. I opened the box, took out the clay and suggested we start building something, a diorama with a volcano erupting and dinosaurs roaming about (my Alberta roots were showing!). If I was going to be stuck with four other people on a large plastic sheet for two hours, I might as well have some fun. As we formed triceratops and smoothed out lava flows on our plastic sheet, the “evaluators” were frantically taking notes. It seems they were identifying people who could deal with limited direction, cooperate with others, and take the lead. I just wanted to finish my diorama before the time was up and have a good time in the process.

Some people might think that I am an eager beaver, constantly optimistic about the outcome of every activity I join in. This is not the case. I can be as miserable as the next guy. On the other hand, once I have made the decision to take that first step into unknown territory, there is no turning back. I do it with all of the energy and attitude that I can muster. In for a penny, in for a pound. To be honest, people who procrastinate drive me crazy as they analyze the pros and cons (usually the latter), all the while building a wall of self-defeating doubt. For God’s sake, just do it!?

Every year I coordinate short survival courses in a new language then drag the participants overseas to test their communication skills on the streets of a country where the language is spoken. At the beginning of each course, I interview participants to determine what their personal goals are. Why do participants want to spend twelve hours learning basic skills in a new language then subject themselves to testing in a foreign land? Inevitably, some people begin with a statement like, “I don’t know why I’m here. I’ll NEVER learn this language...” What an awful way to start a new learning experience!

This lack of confidence is depressing but understandable. If you have had a series of negative experiences trying to learn another language, you begin to think that only the “gifted” (i.e. freaks) can learn another tongue. Or maybe you’re a little stupid... Too often language teaching in schools is approached as an abstract exercise, grammar tables and tests, the stuff of academia. For the average Joe, this is intimidating or boring. It destroys the psyche, planting seeds of doubt that bloom into a defeatist attitude. When someone tells me at the start of a course that there is no possibility he or she will ever be able to communicate in the target language, my job has just become twice as challenging. I am dealing with a “classroom casualty”.

But there is no such thing as an “average Joe”, and the fact that someone has agreed to join one of my test courses suggests that he or she still has a glimmer of hope. It is up to me to make the new language accessible, to make the training experience enjoyable. Language learning, as with many things in life, should be fun! And it can be as I have learned over and over in these short, intense courses conducted over the past thirty years. I see fear turn to hesitant enjoyment then slowly build into self-confidence. By the third lesson most learners start to think, “Maybe I will be able to communicate.” They start to believe in themselves.

And this change in attitude is not just on the part of the learners. It happens with the instructors, too. For my courses, I use native speakers as teachers, many of whom are foreign students studying in the Tokyo area. I give them a short orientation and training session then throw them into the lion’s den. Although all have experience learning another language, most have never taught before. They arrive as nervous as the participants, convinced they will do an inadequate job. Furthermore, these instructors believe the participants will be unable to speak the target language in so few hours of training. Fortunately, instructor attitudes can also be changed and the excitement is palpable as teacher and learner begin to interact in the target language.

I could go on forever about this positive energy, this change in attitude on all sides, but I won’t. If you are interested in reading about the experience of one young Thai man I recruited to train a mixed group of six strangers heading to Bangkok, check out his blog at http://mynameistoey.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/teaching-thai/. Suffice to say that a change in attitude is often necessary for everyone in the classroom.

And what of CWY/JCM? I was in Quebec City studying French on yet another government scholarship when the acceptance letter arrived. I had ticked off Mexico as my country choice on the application. I frantically tore open the envelope thinking, “Campeche, here I come!” only to discover that I was being sent to... Malaysia?

But that is another story for next week’s blog.

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)

8. Copy Correcting (or the case for karaoke)

By high school, I was flirting with French, German and Spanish and had managed to visit a few corners of the world using my own resources. Not bad for a kid from the foothills of Alberta who had only seen the ocean once in the first 15 years of his life. And I was observing how my attempts to communicate could succeed or fail miserably. These observations began to gel into concrete learning strategies that I would apply and hone then later teach to my own students.

Perhaps from the earliest days of my attempts to speak, I had noticed that people were truly trying to understand and willing to help with the communication process. If I made an effort, they would, too, rephrasing my words in a more natural order (think grammar) or micro-correcting my pronunciation to make it sound more native. Sometimes they would take my verbal contortions and physical gestures then turn them into simple sentences that didn’t feel so intimidating. It was up to me to seize the new language and imitate it. I called this self-correcting process copy correcting. Even today, I find this strategy incredibly useful since it can be applied to all languages, no matter what the level. This stragegy lets me modify the way I speak without a textbook, teacher or classroom. In other words, it gives me independence.

There are clear stages involved with copy correcting. First, you have to say something – anything – in an attempt to communicate. This would seem an obvious step, yet it is surprising how many non-native speakers will wait for the world to come to them and it often doesn’t. In this case, silence is definitely not golden!

Once your words are out there, the listener becomes part of the strategy. In other words, the process is interactive. If your information is more or less intelligible, the other person will probably let things continue as they are. But if the words are a little too garbled or your pronunciation leaves something to be desired, the local will most likely clarify and/or repeat what you have just said in a more native-like fashion. Your job is to be an active listener in order to catch those changes.

In fact, studies have been around for a long time which show that non-natives recognize correct language even though they may have trouble producing it. Logically, our listening skills are usually higher than our speaking skills (you need a lot of input before you get output), and non-natives know when what they wanted to say has been repaired and repeated by a native or higher level speaker. The problem is that that’s not enough. Most learners nod and say, “Yes, yes!” when they hear the corrected language. A good learner does more.

There is one final step if you really want to take advantage of the context and improve the way you speak: copy what you have just heard. Your imitation of the corrected language may not be exactly the same, but slight variations on a corrected version make a lot more sense than your original, sometimes garbled utterance.

Good learners automatically copy correct without thinking about it. The strategy is part of their unconscious behavior when they use another language. Perhaps the most startling example of copy correcting in action that I have ever seen was in a karaoke bar in Japan. It was the end of an intensive English course for a group of Japanese businessmen and their teachers. Everyone was out celebrating over drinks with the braver ones singing karaoke songs for their captive audience.

A song came on that all of the foreign teachers loved but didn’t understand. (恋人よ, or Koibito yo, by Itsuwa Mayumi. Google it if you’re curious.) It had a lovely melody but complicated lyrics that none of us could figure out. Suddenly, a new teacher, Elizabeth, grabbed the arm of the lowest student in the group and demanded, “I LOVE this song. Translate it for me, PLEASE!” The student looked mortified. He then reluctantly began to explain the meaning as each line dashed across the TV screen.

Terrified student: “Lover... near here be...”

Sincerely interested Elizabeth: “Stay with me?”

Student:“Yes. Stay with me!” “Cold me... beside stay.”

Elizabeth: “Stay beside me. I’m cold?”

Student: “Yes! Beside me. I’m cold.”

This struggle continued for the entire song, line by line painstakingly produced and repaired. But what struck me the most was that, by the end of the song, the student’s rendition of the chorus was almost perfect. He had literally corrected his language production in one song by copy correcting!

That’s it. Don’t worry so much about mistakes and try to speak; listen and catch any changes; then do your best to copy the improved version. Sounds easy, but for the less confident this process can be a challenge, especially the last step of copying. Also, for higher level learners there is the danger of coming across like a parrot. You definitely do not want your sincere attempt to improve your phrasing or overall intonation to sound like you’re mocking the other speaker!

Still, the results are worth the risk. And you can use this strategy in any language with anyone. The world becomes your classroom and every person you talk with is a potential teacher.

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)

7. The Travel Bug

By the summer of my 16^th year, I had already traveled to Montreal, inflicting my fractured French on a Quebecois family, and was heading into my second summer of working at the Calgary Stampede where I intended to hone my German skills and dabble in Spanish, my newest language leap. But I had some other plans, too.

I had been bitten by “the travel bug” and become a dangerous creature: a teenager with a mission. I figured that, if I worked hard and saved every penny, I could afford a trip to Europe. I had relatives in England who would accommodate me and my shoestring budget. But my real goal was “the Continent” - France!

My mother, however, was not overly supportive of her teenage son’s plan to see the world alone so she decided to tag along... and bring my grandmother!? It had been over 50 years since Granny had set foot in the UK where her siblings lived. My mother suddenly felt it her filial duty to haul my grandmother there. If I didn’t like this plan, I could always stay at home... I caved in and went along with the “family tour package” in order to see the world. Otherwise, I might not see it at all.

Granny had two sisters in England, Margaret and Jocelyn, my great-aunts. I had met them once or twice in Canada, but they were essentially strangers. As things turned out, Margaret was rather stodgy, forever making critical comments about my hair (too long), body mass (too thin), and clothes (too Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon).

Fortunately, my other great-aunt, “Joss”, was a kindred spirit. When she heard about my surreptitious plan to head across la Manche, the English Channel, she was immediately up to tagging along for the ride. My mother, the dutiful daughter, also had no qualms about abandoning Granny for some “quality time” with stodgy Margaret in order to join our entourage. My solo flight to France had now turned into an oddball family threesome.

Although Joss had ventured to Canada and Malta, the first trip was to visit family, while the second was on a cruise ship. Both journeys were chaperoned and safe but this expedition would be different. Joss told everyone that “the Boy” (what my English relatives called me) said he could “speak French” and was going to “take care of everything”. The words were delivered with a little humor, a lot of suspicion, and a raised eyebrow that suggested “I’ll believe it after I get back... alive!”

And we did get back alive. Of course, there were a few bumps and scrapes. Our stormy hovercraft crossing of la Manche was a roller coaster simulation complete with massive waves and passengers retching all the way to the French coast (and back!), while our budget hotel near the Sacré-Coeur Basilica turned out to be  amazingly cheap because it was located in the heart of a red light district. I was delighted by the friendly local women who took every opportunity to greet me until my mother and great-aunt pointed out the obvious to my untrained eyes.

Still, a good time was had by all. Upon our safe return to her bungalow outside of London, Joss declared to the family skeptics left behind that “the Boy” could indeed communicate in French. Over the years when I returned to her little house, Joss and I would reminisce about that first adventure in France. We groaned about the hurtling hovercraft and expressed faux shock over the “ladies of the night” near the Sacré-Coeur. Joss always mentioned how surprised she was the first time she heard me speaking French. This praise felt better than any “A” on a school language test!

Learning a new language then using it with family and friends on the road intensifies the experience. Words take on new relevance as each encounter is mentally filed away to be savored years later. Sometimes I like traveling alone, having the freedom to falter or fly while babbling away in a tongue other than my own. But using a foreign language to build new memories with others whose company I enjoy is what I appreciate most now.

I have spent over thirty years dragging relatives, students, friends and partners to all corners of the globe. As a result, I can talk about Thai tailors over tea with my Aunt Gwen in Calgary; reminisce about the backstreet bazaars of Istanbul with Apisak, a friend from Bangkok; admire photos of the Japanese cherry blossoms in full bloom with my Turkish “brother”, Özgür; or nod in agreement as Tanaka-san, my cooking teacher from a little town on Japan’s Inland Sea, comments on how clean Gwen’s kitchen is in Calgary. Circles within circles, the “remember when” moments are as endless as the conversations, woven into an intricate tapestry of mutual reference points. The realities are not divorced; the people are not compartmentalized. They know each other.

Why do I go to the trouble of hauling these innocents around the globe, often demanding they pick up some of the local language with me? My reasons are completely selfish. Traveling solo through life is not an attractive prospect. Being able to relive past journeys as you plan future ones with those you care about makes the experience – and life – more meaningful for me. Talking about my aunt’s kitchen with Mrs. Tanaka in Japan keeps me grounded, keeps me sane.

As I was leaving Gatwick Airport to return to Canada that first fateful summer in Europe, Joss insisted that the pyramids of Egypt should be next on our “places to see” list. She suggested that “the Boy” should start learning a new language, Arabic. The travel bug biting her had definitely grown in size!

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)

6. Mental Connections

When I was 16 years old I participated in a ten-day homestay program with a Quebecois family living in a suburb of Montreal. This was my first real “submersion” in another culture. After some initial bumps and scrapes, I soon settled into the routines of the family’s life. This included frequent visits to a nearby community center which had a very large indoor pool.

Some consider me hyperactive, always rushing about “like a chicken with its head cut off” as they say in Alberta where I come from. My first day at the community center pool, I was running around the edge of the pool to reach the deep end when I slipped on a puddle of water and fell flat on my derrière. The lifeguard shouted, “Faites attention! C’est glissant.” - “Be careful! It’s...”

I listened to the words, considered the situation, and was 99% certain that “glissant” meant “slippery”. Suddenly I started laughing. My homestay brother, Yvan, looked particularly nervous. This bump on the bottom seemed to have effected my mental state in strange ways. Or maybe this was just an anglais (English) thing...

In fact, he was right on both counts. At that time, there was a rotund American comedian, named Jackie Gleason, whose TV show I watched regularly. When the Montreal lifeguard shouted, “C’est glissant!” I suddenly conjured up the vision of Jackie Gleason slipping and falling on his substantial derrière. Gleason... glissant… same sound. The association was embedded in my psyche and I would never forget the word (although I still had to look up the spelling for this entry).

I now refer to this “referencing” of words in my mind as mental connections. The idea is to somehow make the new word or words memorable by linking with something that you already know, such as a similar sounding item or an image, or both as in the case of “glissant”.

There are many different ways to make mental connections. The choice is yours. In fact, that is a key aspect of this strategy. A teacher or classmate can suggest a possible mental connection, but in the end the link has to be memorable for you. The best connections are based on your knowledge and experience, not someone else’s.

Another interesting aspect of mental connections is that, the more languages you learn, the more ways you have of linking them. For example, when I studied Thai an important word was “phet” (pronounced “pet”), or spicy. Later, when I was learning Bulgarian numbers, “pet” turned out to be “five”. My mental connection was in place!

Sometimes mental connections can be bizarre. For example, one of my students came up with the image of “spanking Dracula” to remember the word “spatula”. (She said that she would spank Dracula with a spatula for being so wicked!) The next lesson, I went over the list of new words that had come up previously. Guess which word EVERYONE remembered? Yes, “spatula” - empirical evidence that weird is much more effective when making mental connections.

You might argue that this way of remembering words overloads your brain. How in the world can you store all of these crazy connections!? In fact, I find that I use the mental connection to remind me of a word the first few times I need it. After that, it becomes stored in my long term memory. In other words, it becomes a part of my language repertoire and I no longer require the mental connection to dredge the word(s) up from the depths.

In fact, there is substantial research into the ways we remember new words. In the literature, my mental connections are referred to as “mnemonic devices”. Depending on your preference, a mental connection can range from an image (remember “spanking Dracula”?), homonyms, or words that sound alike (“phet” and “pet”), or words with a similar meaning component (e.g. “centipede” and “centennial”). Also, the links can be to your mother language or another language that you are familiar with. This is particularly true if you know a Latin-based language. The English swimming pool becomes a “la piscine” in French then “la piscina” in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Easy, eh?

When it comes to homonyms being used for mental connections, the most interesting links that I have ever come across took place in a recent Khmer (Cambodian) course that I coordinated. Along with several of my Japanese students, the course included two young women from Wales, Bethan and Ffion. These women are fluent in Welsh. During the initial Khmer class they kept casting each other knowing glances even letting out small gasps on occasion. Later, I cornered them both and asked what was up. They confessed that there were identical sounding words in Welsh and, in some cases, even the meanings were related!

I would never have guessed that the sound systems of Welsh and Khmer have an amazing number of similarities. During the course, Bethan and Ffion were staying in my home along with the instructor from Phnom Penh. Each night on the train home from school, all three would compare notes, with Bethan and Ffion regurgitating with ease Khmer words they remembered. Also, although I separated them in class, both women independently came up with the same mental connections, which makes sense given their common language base.

The mind works in mysterious ways. Considering the massive number of words we “file away” in our mother tongues, it is even more amazing that the brain can handle a new set of items when we tackle another language. But I know my brain can handle the load with a little help from the mental connections I use to store new words and phrases inside my head.

Now where did I put that spatula…?

(If you are really a fool for languages, check out my language learning website, http://en.sulantra.com/, with courses from and to English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Bulgarian, Thai, German , Korean and Italian!)