Learning a foreign language: the lesson of ventriloquists'

From one point of view, ventriloquists are poets: what matters is not just what they say, but how they say it. To master a foreign language, adopt the attitude of the ventriloquist.

The main feature that you have to master, to call yourself a ventriloquist, is to speak without moving his lips. Not so difficult. There is a trick, of course. The sounds M, L and P to move his lips, like the sounds V and F, but to a lesser extent. So, to be a ventriloquist, you should ban any word with m, bop inside and avoid to pronounce words FV. If your name is Mabel or Patrick, choose a stage name!

Try to say where you come from. Try now. It 's the best way to understand how it works. "I come from ...". No, your lips move. Try again: "I was born in. .." Much better! You are almost a ventriloquist.

There is a competition of this kind between teachers, for example: How to express "I lost my phone and my credit card at the garage 4WD" in Latin. (I agree, Latin teachers are, well, Latin teachers.) Is very similar to the game you played in the schoolyard: you had to answer many questions using the word as requested, but avoiding others. Remember! It was not easy to "Rhinoceros" and avoid "zoo" when asked: "Where were you on Sunday?" However, you could! You were a gifted ventriloquist MBP avoided the word "zoo".

In your language, you use circumlocutions to exclude certain words. In a parallel passage, who speak a foreign language is to learn to use circumlocutions to avoid some words: those who do not know.

Think about the words you do not know how your words MBP.

Do not try to pronounce words MBP without moving his lips, you should spend valuable time for nothing. Do not fight against obstacles, get around them. Ventriloquists not master the movements of their lips, choose their words. Whatever the chosen language to learn, there are always several ways to express something.