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 A guy whose methodology I admire is Heinrich Schliemann. He lived a hundred and fifty or a couple of hundred years ago. The man learned about 14 languages in his lifetime, using basically one technique.

He'd have two books side by side. It was the same book but in different languages, one of which he knew, and the other which he wanted to learn. He'd go through, word for word, sentence by sentence. By the time he got to the end of the book, he would mostly know the vocabulary and structure of the second language.

I'm doing that with a difference. I don't do every sentence. I just do the sentences that I can manage quickly and skip the rest. I believe that this will give quicker results.

The book that I am using for Māori is Hare Pota me te Whatu Manapou. You can probably guess its title in English. Anyway, it is not an easy book. But I am ready to tackle it a la Schliemann!

609

Finish the book, I thought to myself. Finish reading this Harry Bosch novel in Dutch, then go on to another, in another language if you want. Show some decorum. Show some respect.

It is possible to flit about from one language to another. It can be done. It can be managed. But is it wise?

Heinrich Schliemann claimed to learn a new language in 6 weeks, during which he went through an entire book twice. He’d spend a couple or so weeks on the one book, on the one language therefore.

Maybe it’s time for me to act less unseemly.

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On the 9^th day we get down to it. The whole module is about Heinrich Schliemann. I describe his two-books-in-parallel system. For practice, I give people a try. And in 100 words they write whether they think they could do the same. So all up a nice, compact module.

I too had a satisfying day in that I added 10 books to my foreign books collection. $1 each. 3 Dutch, 3 German, 3 French and 1 Arabic primer. I regret now not getting one Danish book too, but I may return for it!

Oh, and HP1 Spanish in the morning.

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I’ll concentrate on parallel texts for a while. I’m pulled to return to the basic method used by Heinrich Schliemann. And so I fooled around a little with Polish.

I chose to start small. In English, ‘I’ and ‘a’ are the only one-letter words. In Polish there are at least 6: w, i, z, a, o and u. Cute. And from the first page or two of the 7^th chapter of HP1, I find a total of 22 two-letter words. (If I listed them I’d go over my 100-word limit.)

With Polish, small words are a fun place to start.