seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7120 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek
| Message 1 of 7 05 September 2013 at 4:38am | IP Logged |
I've been looking for a citation (or, even better a scan) of a booklet that was
published in the 1930s or 1940s about foreign language learning, possibly written by
Bloch and Trager. I can't find it, (I've tried Worldcat and jstor and many other
places) but I bet someone in these forums already knows about it.
Now for the background. For the past year, I've spent Saturday mornings talking to a
fascinating guy. He is 80+ years old and was a paratrooper in World War II. At the
end of the war he was in China where he was arrested by Mao Tse-tung's government and
spent a few years in prison. When he was finally released he went to Berekely where
he studied Chinese with such famous sinologists as Boodberg and Shafer. His Chinese is
much better than mine--he recites classical poetry while I'm sipping my coffee. He
also knows a number of other languages. He likes to tell a story that people thought
he was good with languages but, he says, he's not. He was just lucky enough to have
read a pamphlet by Bloch and Trager that outlined the steps to successful language
learning. He credits his polyglottism to this book and said everyone he recommended it
to also made great strides. He can only remember a few of the step--don't learn words
in isolation, for example.
So, if anyone knows of this booklet, I'd love to learn more and he'd get a kick out of
seeing it again.
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Snowflake Senior Member United States Joined 5947 days ago 1032 posts - 1233 votes Studies: Mandarin
| Message 2 of 7 05 September 2013 at 4:46am | IP Logged |
Are any of these possibly it? Remember to take out any spaces.
www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&field-author=George%20L.%20B loch%20Bernard%20Trager&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AGeorge %20L.%20Bloch%20Bernard%20Trager
Edited by Snowflake on 05 September 2013 at 4:52am
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5853 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 3 of 7 05 September 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged |
I found this:
Outline Guide for the Practical Study of Foreign Languages - Leonard Bloomfield
Outline of Linguistic Analysis - Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager
...two of the books (pamphlets) listed on Amazon.
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osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4724 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 7 06 September 2013 at 12:23am | IP Logged |
The Bloomfield text is very interesting! A real gem. If only it were in a target language
of mine!
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Crush Tetraglot Senior Member ChinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5853 days ago 1622 posts - 2299 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Esperanto Studies: Basque
| Message 5 of 7 08 September 2013 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
You can download them here (PDFs):
Outline Guide for the Study of Foreign Languages - Leonard Bloomfield
Outline of Linguistic Analysis - Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager
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seldnar Senior Member United States Joined 7120 days ago 189 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, French, Greek
| Message 7 of 7 10 September 2013 at 6:29am | IP Logged |
Thank you everyone! I really appreciate your help. I think my friend may have confused
the Bloomfield with the Bloch and Trager. The former seems more like what he was
describing.
The links were great too--however, I may be doing something wrong, as regardless of the
link I click on I'm always taken to the Bloch and Trager and never the Bloomfield. Any
suggestions?
I figured if you guys couldn't find it, then it didn't exist. My friend will enjoy
seeing this again after so many years.
seldnar
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