“Call him ‘uncle!’ Call him ‘uncle!'” my neighbor urged his son as they saw me outside. Then, because his son didn’t know how to say “Uncle” in English, he asked me. The problem was…the kid isn’t my nephew, so for him to call me “Uncle” in English makes no sense whatsoever In the culture where I live, though, it’s respectful for a kid to call someone “Uncle” if the person is his Dad’s age. I explained to the Dad that even though the local word is said “Uncle” in English, you can’t actually use it in English, at least not American English, for someone to whom you’re not related.

I share that anecdote because it so aptly demonstrates why you can’t learn language by translation or even by finding equivalent meanings. Instead, if you want to be fluent in a local language, you need to learn the language by understanding usage rather than meaning. Today I’ll help you understand why you have to learn usage, rather than meaning, and give you a bunch of helpful tips you can use to better understand and learn the usage of a language.

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Why to learn usage, not meaning

The claim I’m making is that your primary need in language learning is to learn how to use a word, not what it means. That’s perhaps a surprising claim, but it makes sense if you can understand the varies ways a word has meaning and is used in communication.

The basis of communication

Language is inherently symbolic. That is, the word “cow” does not contain the meaning of “cow”; instead, it is a group of sounds or letters which serve as a symbol for the animal that we refer to, in English, as “cow.” Basic communication theory says that a speaker thinks of the animal “cow”, encodes the idea in sounds which symbolize “cow”, and then hopefully the recipient knows the sounds or letters which symbolize “cow” so that the recipient can then know what the speaker is speaking about.¹

In order for a speaker and the listener to communicate, they both have to recognize the sound (i.e. they know someone is saying “cow” and not “kapow”) and know what the sound refers to. Without that shared meaning, there’s no hope of communication.

Why meaning isn’t enough

However, saying that “cow” means “a four legged animal” is a bit simplistic, because it doesn’t always mean that. Linguists speak of two kinds of meaning: denotation and connotation. Denotation is what a word most literally means if you looked it up in a dictionary. A cow, according to Merriam Webster, is “the mature female of cattle (genus Bos).” That’s denotation.

Connotation, on the other hand, is the association that comes to mind when the word is used. Connotative meaning is important to understand because we often use words “wrong” according to the denoted meaning, and yet we still communicate when we use words “wrong.”

For example, if I say ‘John is a cow’, I obviously don’t mean that he is a female of the cattle genus Bos. Instead, I’m saying that he is similar to a cow in some way, but what way do I mean? This is connotation. Am I saying he’s holy, like cows are in India? Am I saying he produces milk? Am I saying he’s slow? Am I saying he’s a big, lumbering oaf? This is connotation; it’s what you “think up” when you hear the word, regardless of what it literally means.

This is why, when you’re learning a language, it’s not enough to get a dictionary or word list and learn language by memorizing what “cow” is in the local language. You may learn the denotation of “cow”, but you won’t learn the connotation.² The only way to learn that is by learning the word in context.³

Why connotations aren’t enough

Yet, if your goal is to be fluent in a local language, merely knowing denotations and connotations isn’t enough. You also have to know how people use the word, and in what contexts. Just because you know “cow” is a female cattle (denotation) and it can be used as an insult (connotation) doesn’t mean that you know when to use it as an insult

Just think of how radically different these two situations are:

1. I’m at dinner with a bunch of guy friends and I call John a cow
2. I’m at dinner with my family and I call my Mom a cow

The first is friendly banter that would draw a laugh and bond me together with John and the other guys. The second is an insult that would harm my relationship and for which I’d need to apologize. Merely knowing what something means isn’t enough. You have to know how to use the word in a culturally appropriate way.

A great example of this is how you greet people. Greetings are typically one of the first things you learn in a foreign language, but if you’re not careful you will assume that the way you say “Hello” is the same in your host culture as it was in your passport culture. Even if the word’s denotation and connotation were exactly the same (and, FYI, they never are), the usage differs. I realized this locally when I compared how I greeted new people with how they greeted each other. I would say “Hello” whereas my local friends would say the equivalent of “Uhh…he, he, hello, hello, helllo, hellllooooo.” That’s not an issue of meaning, it’s an issue of usage.

It’s not enough to know the meaning of a word, you have to learn how to use it.

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In fact, if I had to choose between knowing what a word means and knowing when to use it, I’d choose the latter. In fact, if you learn the way I’m suggesting, this will be common in your early learning experience because you’ll know the right thing to say at the right time, but you may not fully understand it…yet. Rest assured, though, you will.

How to learn usage, not just meaning

Hopefully by now, you’ve recognized that many ways people typically or traditionally learn language are just not helpful. Here are things I’ve observed which run directly opposed to this linguistic understanding and end up harming the learner

How not to learn

Unfortunately, a lot of traditional ways of learning a language ignore the linguistic understanding of meaning that I described above. Here are some common ways I’ve seen people study “wrong”:

• Learning words only from a dictionary. This will only get you denotations, never connotations or usage.
• Memorizing lists of words. If all you do is this, you’re never getting a chance to learn how those words should be used, and you’re probably never going to learn connotative meaning either.
• Learning by translation. If you start with your native language and ask how to say that in the local language, people will probably tell you. The problem is, they may not actually say that in the local language. I can tell my neighbor how to say “Uncle” in English, but we don’t call neighbors “Uncle” in English. Translation assumes that denoted meaning meaning is all that matters; it ignores connotations and usage.
• Flash cards with your native language. Flash cards can be a great tool for language learning, but if one side is the local language and the other side is your native language, then you’re missing out on connotations and on usage.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point. There’s a ton of really bad language learning techniques out there.⁴ Thankfully, there’s better ways, and I’m here to help you out.

How to learn for usage, not just meaning

1. Banish all language but one from your learning environment.

Don’t use your native language, English, pidgin English, a trade language, or any other language but the one you’re learning in order to learn the local language. Using any language will unavoidably introduce errors into your learning, either by understanding the wrong denotation (because semantic ranges differ), misleading your understanding of connotation, or importing a non-native idea of usage. You want to be fully immersed in the language you’re learning so that you can grasp denotations, connotations, and usage directly.

If you’re using no language but the local language, and you don’t yet know the local language, then how do you learn? It might sound like a catch-22, except that it’s not. Every person has learned a language without knowing it first. That’s how you learned your native language as a child and you can learn a second (or third or seventeenth) language the same way.

2. Use context, not translation, to grasp meaning and usage

You don’t have to rely on translation or a dictionary to understand the meaning of what you’ve heard or to ask how to say something you don’t know. Instead, use context in order to understand meaning or inquire about how to say something. You’ve probably already done this yourself if interacting with someone who doesn’t speak your language. With pointing and pictures and pantomimes, you can communicate your meaning even if you share no language. That’s context, and it’s how our brains naturally learn a language. A mother says “look at the bird” and points at the bird; a baby doesn’t know what “bird” is, but there’s plenty of context for their brain to work out the meaning. The same is true for adults.

Entire language learning systems are built around this approach and are worthy of your study,⁵ but as your skill in the language progresses, the amount or kind of context you need to learn is different. Roughly speaking, here’s the progression of context you’ll need to follow:⁶

• Level 1: Objects and pictures that you can point to provide context for getting a foundation of nouns. Total Physical Response (TPR) activities help you understand verbs.
• Level 2: Storybooks (do wordless ones to keep an immersive environment!) provide context to see the progression of story. Because you can see the story progress, you can guess the meaning when a helper tells you the story.
• Level 3: A story that you both know can give you context to understand meaning. For example, if you and your helper both watched Avengers or both went to a park, then you have a lot of context to understand the story if they retell it to you. This is like the above one, but now it’s without the visual aid.
• Level 4: A simple explanation in the language you’re learning can provide you enough context to understand meaning.
• Level 5: You can understand a complex explanation of the word in the language you’re learning.

The last level is the level that native speakers have. We’re always learning new words and don’t need pictures or stories—we just need an explanation of the word, using words we already know. Thus, if the word “diglot” is new to you, I can tell you that it means a book printed in two languages and you know what it means. A beginner would need to be shown the book in order to understand, but higher levels require less context.

3. Always ask for usage, not meaning

When you encounter a new word, hopefully you can derive the meaning by ample use of context. If so, then you don’t need to ask your language helper or teacher to tell you what a word means—the meaning should be apparent, through context. Instead, ask your helper to give you 3-4 examples of a situation when the word might be used.

By hearing examples of how the word is used instead of asking its meaning, you gain understanding in several crucial areas. First, by hearing the word in a diversity of contexts, you’ll better understand its denoted meaning. Second, the examples will help you understand connoted meaning as well. Third, you’ll immediately gain insight into how the word is used in that culture.

A common question I ask is “When would I say this?” Fascinatingly, your helper may respond and say “You wouldn’t! That word is only for _ people to say.” That’s a good thing to know before I, a middle-aged man, say a word that only a teenage girl would say.

4. Learn situationally, not textbookally

Yes, I made up that word. You don’t want to learn via textbooks because they provide very low levels of context and tend towards translated meanings. Instead, you want to learn in highly situational settings which provide lots of context for you to grasp meaning. Here’s a few examples of what I mean:

• Go shopping with your helper. Point to, say, vegetables and learn how to say them. You may even find out that locals use more than one language in this setting or say words “wrong” in this situation. That’s awesome! You want to communicate with locals, so it doesn’t matter what the textbook says, learn what people actually say. It may be grammatically incorrect, mix multiple languages together, or have ‘incorrect’ pronunciation, but it is what they actually say in that situation! If you’re just learning from a textbook, you won’t learn any of that.
• Ask your helper to narrate a situation. I finally “cracked” understanding greetings when I asked my language helper to tell me what to say when I’m sitting in a tea shop and someone walks in. He narrated 4-5 different greetings and initial conversations that were different based on the age and relationship of the person entering the shop. I knew all the right words, but what I didn’t know was how the usage differed based on the age and status of the person entering the shop.
• Use Google Images, then ask your helper. Sometimes an image search will reveal that a word is used in a way different than you would have guessed. For example, if you’re learning the English word “green” and do a search for it, you’ll quickly realize that the word means more than just a color. These searches provide a good way to see more context of how a word is used so that you can ask your helper to explain more of the range of meaning of a word.
• This is a bit more technical, but it’s a great technique described on the Tip of the Tongue language blog. You can use the Verb Network Strengthening Training method to better understand how verbs can be used.

These are only some suggestions of things I’ve done—what are others that you’ve done and how did they go? I’d love to hear more in the comments so I can expand this list with other techniques for situational learning rather than textbook learning.

Conclusion

Mastering a language isn’t as simple as knowing the meanings of a bunch of words. True fluency requires not just knowing what a word means, but what it connotes, and how local people use it natively and naturally. If your study methods don’t enable you to grasp connotations and usage, though, your language learning will be handicapped from the start.

By immersing yourself in the language environment and learning through context, your language learning will be supercharged so that you can ensure your meaning is actually communicated across language and across cultures. While traditional language learning methods can still be helpful, adjusting your study style to reflect the linguistic understanding of denotations, connotations, and usage, will reap dividends in your path towards fluency.

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Footnotes

1. Here’s what this communication chart typically looks like, if you’re not familiar with it. ↩︎
2. Gabriel Wyner lists a good example in his book, Forever Fluent, of the Russian word devushka (девушка). Its denotation is “girl” but if you search Google Images for девушка, you’ll get dramatically different results than if you search the English word “girl.” both mean the same thing, denotatively, but the connotations are dramatically different. ↩︎
3. The context differs dramatically, too, not just between countries, but between regions or cities or between generations. “Boomer” may connote nothing to a 60+ year old, but it’s laced with negative connotations to a millennial. ↩︎
4. I did my Master’s thesis comparing different language learning methodologies that have been developed. What’s most interesting is that most of these really bad language learning methods are rooted in the Grammar-Translation Method, which was a method used for learning primarily Latin and classical Greek. But these are dead languages, surviving only in written form! People learning the languages are usually learning so that they can read the language in ancient literature, sometimes to write it, even more rarely to speak or hear it, and never to have a relationship with someone through the language. That makes the Grammar-Translation Method poorly equipped to enable people to speak and live in a language they’re learning, yet most language learning traditions have their roots in this Grammar Translation Method. ↩︎
5. The most well-known method is The Natural Method, developed by Stephen Krashen. Another helpful method based on this approach is called the Growing Participator Approach (GPA). ↩︎
6. The “levels” below don’t correspond to any specific language ability metric like ACTFL, though they do roughly follow the “phases” of the GPA method. ↩︎