Saying of the Week

Don't Put The Cart Before The Horse

A friend of mine was really determined to learn Thai. Every day he was going into shops and restaurants with his English/Thai dictionary and blurting out some phrase or other in his strong Ozzy accent.

Of course, nobody could understand a word he said. People would just smile at him and nod. And he would take that as a positive and keep talking and talking. His pronunciation was so bad, that he got louder and louder. "You have to exaggerate everything when you speak Thai," he was always saying. Funnily enough, I never hear Thais speak like that.

He was putting the cart before the horse.

When you learn a new language it's a good idea to do a lot of listening first. At AUA in Bangkok students learning Thai listen for up to 800 hours before speaking. You need to get your ear around the language. This can take some time. It's best to listen to native speakers as much as you can, before speaking. And it's the same with writing. All good writers do a lot of reading, before they become good writers. Kids know this instinctively. They listen naturally and don't try and talk too much in the new language. Eventually it all starts to flow.

The other cart, of course, is Grammar. Grammar is not language. Language is a naturally flowing and changing form of communication created by the people and culture it comes from. Then, somebody looks at that language and decides what the rules are, and calls the rules - Grammar. Therefore the grammar must follow the language, not the other way round. When I listen to second language learners with perfect grammar it sounds so unnatural, so robotic.

When you get up in the morning what do you do first? Do you put on your jacket, then your shirt, and your jeans, followed by your underwear, and go and take a shower? I hope not. Although it would be funny.

Don't put the cart before the horse.