J Vernon McGee’s Series on Doctrine

A number of years ago J. Vernon McGee taught a series on doctrine. MP3 files of that series can be downloaded from:

http://cid-8916fcbd91d7e70e.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Stuff/J%20Vernon%20McGee%20--%20Doctrine

 

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Difficulties of Language Learning

The other day I was reading my Greek New Testament and ran across a verse that made absolutely no sense to me. I recognized every Greek word. I knew all the case endings and tense markers. Yet, I still didn't have a clue what the verse was saying until I looked at it in my English Bible. Learning another language is not easy! You can know all the words and still be clueless as to what someone is trying to say.

When learning another language, you need to have a good sense of humor. You will probably make a lot of mistakes and humor will alleviate a good deal of frustration. I'm reminded of a story that one of our missionaries related from his language learning days. He wrote:

I saw a man seated on a piece of wood in front of his house, so I ambled over and sat down beside him. He asked me a few things in his language that I didn't understand and I answered with a few things in his language that he didn't understand either. It was comforting to see that I was not the only one who struggled with this language.

Obviously the native speaker had no struggles understanding his own language. The struggle that he had was in understanding the missionary who was trying to learn the native language. Learning to laugh at your mistakes is a great asset for learning another language.

A common mistake in learning another language is confusing two words that sound similar. A missionary in the Philippines learning Tagalog wrote:

To say "beef" you combine the word for meat (karning) and the word for cow (baca) into, karning baca — literally "meat of cow." Well, the word for child is, bata, which sounds close to baca, right? Alas, it may be close but saying, karning bata (meat of child) elicits an understandably strong reaction!

In preparing our students for these inevitable mistakes that they will make in the language learning process, I like to remind them that:

As missionaries you bring joy into the lives of the people you meet. And some of that joy will be the result of the funny language bloopers you make as you learn another language!

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