I recently came across an often advised suggestion* in Routledge’s Essential Portuguese Grammar. “Avoid at all costs thinking in your mother tongue and then translating into Portuguese”. Avoid at all costs is quite a strong suggestion. Wow, it must be really bad for me to think in English then go into Portuguese!
Except that, well, it just isn’t, is it? I see very few drawbacks to thinking in your native language and then going into another. Only if you are the kind of absolute moron (aka ‘linguistically challenged individual’) who would apply English syntax and vocabulary directly to the foreign language should be given this kind of advice (though better advice would be not to learn a foreign language in the first place in this case). However, most people, even language learners with no experience (we all were once upon a time) do not fall into the category of this kind of stupidity. Most people do not find this kind of condescending advice helpful. Language learning is a very long journey with no end destination. With time, you develop a feeling for the language, and can begin to say things more and more automatically. Your instincts for the language improve and you know what ‘sounds right’.
Essential Portuguese Grammar believes the advice of not thinking in your native language to be ‘particularly important if you are a beginner’. What?! I can, begrudgingly, see the point in trying to avoid your native language once you are at say, C1 level. But A1? What are they talking about? If I could already think in Greek, I wouldn’t need to learn Greek.Capeesh? So why prevent me from thinking in English?
I find this suggestion at best ill-advised, at worst misleading, discouraging, and absolutely fucking pointless. Everyone finds their own way of learning a language. Certainly, there are tried and tested methods, but giving a naïve, innocent language learner the impression they will fail if they follow a way which seems natural to them and helps them progress, but which deviates from the path of absurdity often preached in language books, should surely not be the goal of helping people to learn a foreign language?
It is total nonsense. Thinking, generally, isn’t an active choice. Even when you’re not thinking about anything in particular, you are generally thinking. Even if you think about it simply, try thinking now about absolutely nothing. Cleeeear your mind. It’s quite hard. Do you know what’s harder? Thinking about nothing whilst speaking to someone, and hoping that foreign words tumble out of your mouth with some kind of vague logical coherence and in syntactically correct manner. Because I mean, it would just be terrible if you actually thought in English for a couple of seconds about the grammar and vocabulary you’ve assimilated to be able to produce an accurate sentence in the target language.
Additionally, I don’t see what is soooo awful about sounding a bit odd in a foreign language. Most people don’t require or even want to be perfect; they just want to make friends, help business meetings run a bit more smoothly, or just be able to communicate on holiday. Language is, after all, and above all, about communication.
This blog entry, admittedly, comes from a recent event in a French class, when I encountered the expression prendre les rènes. It’s not difficult to make a leap from that to ‘to take the reins’. Moreover, it is pretty impossible not to. I was however scolded and told I should think of synonyms for it in French instead. Again, why? (Don’t worry though- I managed to explain (slowly, so he would understand) to him and his stupid jumper that that is the worst advice you could possibly give someone who has to produce translations and who interprets).
I wonder what Routledge’s authors would think of thinking in a language which isn’t your native language, but similar to the one you are learning? For example, learning Polish after experience of Russian, one could think, how would a Russian say that? What aspect would they use? And, voilà! We have the correct Polish verb. You’d probably be euthanised.
So, dear people, I implore you...GO NATIVE!
*I use the word ‘suggestion’ with great reluctance. The zeal with which these ‘experts’ advance the idea that thinking in English when speaking a foreign language is practically a crime on a par with paedophilia would suggest to the more inexperienced language learner that this is an absolute must, and behaving in any other fashion will result in complete lack of linguistic success.
