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To Learn a Language, Find Your Rosetta Stones
Learning a foreign language is often finding your ‘Rosetta Stones.’
· What Is a Rosetta Stone?
· The Bible
· Songs
I studied several languages in my lifetime including English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and French, apart from my native tongue Korean. Of these languages, I was able to speak English and Chinese fluently. One trick I used successfully in mastering a foreign language was finding my ‘Rosetta Stones.’
What Is a Rosetta Stone?
What is a Rosetta Stone? The original Rosetta Stone was a piece of stone with inscription texts in three ancient languages: two Ancient Egyptian scripts called hieroglyphic and Demotic, and ancient Greek. Linguists were trying to decipher Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for centuries to no avail because they could not find parallel texts that provided meaning and sound. The Rosetta Stone was the long sought-after parallel text as ancient Greek was known to scholars already.
When I was learning a foreign language, I found that studying it through a parallel text was quite helpful. Such a parallel text was what I meant by a Rosetta Stone. It is a body of text whose domain is so familiar to you that you do not have to spend…
