Language

Please forgive any heinous typos that might make it into this post as I'm not feeling so hot again, but do feel like sharing something that has been on my mid lately.

I have been very interested in Elliot language.  She watches Dora a lot, and is able to speak several words in Spanish.  I think I posted the other day on my FB page that she often says "abres" which I believe is the command conjugation for that word.  I took French in high school and college, so my Spanish isn't that great.  She also counts and says other words in Spanish.  I don't really understand her completely, but I don't always understand her English either.

Today I was noticing that she often leaves her verb out of a sentence. Saying something like "I hungry." It made me realize that while it is not perfect English, I understand what she is tyring to say, and I will get her some food as a result of her broken sentence.

I would really love to fluently understand another language.  But I think the way they always tried to teach you in a language class is to advanced.  They need kindergarten for language, where you learn how to say words, spell words, and the meaning of a word, but you don't get into all the complicated business of forming complete, grammatically correct sentences.

For awhile now, I've been thinking about labeling different things in the house, like lamps, tables, doors. . . whatever I can, and just learn the vocabulary of the language.  If I learned the word lamp, la lámpara, and that was all I knew, theoretically, if I wanted to "turn on" la lámpara, and if I were to repeat la lámpara over and over to a Spanish speaker they might eventually figure out that I wanted to turn the lamp on. 


It's basic speech.  First you learn words, and then you learn small sentence, and then you learn all of the grammar of the language.  It's that simple.  I think individuals would develop language much more successfully if they learned a new language in this manner.


I'm sure someone else has already come up with all of this insight, but I've not come across any education material that makes it so easy.  Not that I've really looked, but I really want to look into that Muzzy Language course stuff.  I keep thinking that it might be a good place to start.  Knowing a second language is essential in a place were so many people speak multiple languages.  


If you have any suggestions or would like to further expand on my topic I'd love to discuss it further!