How long does it take to learn a language?
How long does it take to learn a language?

In some ways, it's similar to asking, How long is a piece of string? It depends on the situation, it depends on the individual piece of string, and it does depend on the individual language.

If you're going from — most of us are going from English to another language. If you're going from English to a Romantic language, you may find that it can be a relatively quick transition because you have some basis to work from. If you're going to a language that has no connect points, no ways that you can go from I understand why this word in English is the equivalent of that word in, say, Japanese. We found that with Japanese the grammar structure is exactly inverted. So, there aren't any reference points in there, that you can understand how that all relates to the English sentence. You have to think through the whole concept and then make it into a sentence. Different building blocks for words, the ways that it's written, are completely different. So, Japanese, in order to get a degree of fluency, you can figure it's going to be two years, and then a lifelong process of continuing to learn new structures, new vocabulary words and things of that nature. Other languages, probably around a year.

So, I would say a year to two. Some are quicker. And again it depends on the individual doing the learning as well. What I would say, if I had to give an average: Probably a year to two years.

All the vocabulary words you learn, in most instances, in the early stages of language learning, are concrete matters. The dog walked across the street. The car is red. That sort of thing. And it's pretty far into your language learning process before you begin to deal with more matters that are not so concrete. And that really is why we're there, is to share spiritual matters. And sharing spiritual matters is talking about emotion, and heart. And sometimes it will take a special vocabulary, but even more than that, if there's not a special vocabulary that's required, there's a more nuanced grasp of the language that's required to be able to share things that are not concrete in nature — and spiritual matters are of that nature, they're not concrete matters. You have to be able to talk about things from a different perspective.

So, I think it's very important to go in with the mindset of, my ministry is learning the language. After I've learned the language, I'll be able to do some other things that we see outwardly as being language. But during that language learning period, to protect yourself from diving in and saying, I can talk about dogs walking across the street, so to speak, or I can talk about the car is red, therefore I can carry on a conversation. Maybe you can, in a grocery store, or order everything you need to do, carry on a conversation on the street. But you need to make sure that you protect yourself, that you have time available to study the language to the point that you can talk about things that aren't concrete in nature, and therefore you're able to share deeper spiritual matters. That's why I think it's very important to be fluent in the language before you get heavily involved in ministry.


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