that you would become fluent in that language? Did you ever try it? What about the one where if you memorized a scripture a day (or was it two?) that after a year you would have a photographic memory?

I just thought about those lovely, FPR's today as I was reading Twilight in Spanish. (Hey, it needed to be something easy so I didn't have to stop and look up the big words - my Spanish is still less than perfect, despite reading the BoM through in Spanish five times on my mission.) Anyway, I noticed that after a chapter or two of Twilight, I was starting to think more in Spanish and put my head back in that space, grammatically speaking. So maybe it's the reading of any subject matter in a foreign language that boosts your language skills, not the super special magic of the Book of Mormon. Imagine - Reading Twilight is as good for you as reading the Book of Mormon.

I already have a somewhat photographic memory so I didn't care, and the vocabulary of the BofM is not broad enough or relevant enough to gain fluency. How useful is "And it came to pass....." for the hundredth time?

Nobody needs a broad vocabulary to gain fluency. Check out Chomsky's argument on the "poverty of stimulus." Another term to check out would be Dell Hyme's poorly named concept of "strategic competence."

Basically, we have the ability to learn language despite receiving very little language. Chomsky would argue that it is because we receive so little language that we are able to define the parameters of that language so easily.

Read in any language, including your native language, and you will improve your skills in that language. Who would have thought!

Though I doubt there is much value in learning "And it came to pass" in Spanish. Not exactly a phrase that comes up in everyday conversation...

I learned Castillian Spanish in high school, but I could never speak it as well as I could read it, and I read the BOM in Spanish. Since I was the only mother in our entire little town, I was asked to tutor some Mexican kids that didn't speak any English. I had to jump in immediately, without any time to prepare. The kids laughed really hard at my Spanish, which was different from Mexican, and very old fashioned. After a few weeks of study, I realized that must have sounded like the BOM, using the formal "you." "Please, wouldst thou open thy epistle and recite thy knowledge...."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2012 03:03AM by forestpal.

Yep, read it in Spanish and still no habla muito español, but I do falla portuguese and I haven't read the BoM in years. Just saying....

If you were to read, memorize and rehearse any book in a foreign language, combined with a decent amount of conversation every day in that language, you would become fluent fairly quickly.

It helps that on a mission, those missionaries are usually using the memorized passages from the BOM in conversation several times a day.

However, even if you aren't immersed in a language, there is almost no better way to learn vocabulary.

When I was learning my third language, I read ancient poetry daily in that language and it helped just as much and I was conversationally fluent very quickly.

Like everything else, the Morg stole this idea. The British General Wellington was said to have learned Spanish by reading a chapter a day from the bible in both languages, right before his Iberian Peninsula Campaign. Note, that this was in the early 19th centaury, possibly before Joseph Smith was even born, so he did not steal the idea from them.

Mormons aren't claiming that Joseph Smith, or even their religion, came up with the idea.

There is no need to draw strawmen when there are plenty of other reasons to dislike Mormonism.

I heard both of them. I read th BoM in French and to this day I cannot understand more than a few words in French. =)

As for memorizing the scriptures... well I did memorize the scripture masteries from the BoM in both English and Spanish, but I guess it was because I was already able to memorize fast. However, they are fading away in my memory.

I also heard that if a woman attended RS meetings faithfully for 10 years she would have th equivalent knowledge as if she had attended a regular university and obtained a PhD. I think I even saw a program called celestial univeristy several years ago, targeted to RS sisters.

Read the Book of Mormon on my mission like everyone else. What really help my Spanish was reading the newspapers. If you were on a Spanish speaking mission and want to keep up your Spanish I highly recommend the soaps on the Spanish TV channels. Lots of cleavage, and story lines that border on being pornographic. Oh, did I mention lots and lots of cleavage.

I was a German major, hoping to learn German without actually going there. I finished the BoM as helpless as I was when I began, German-wise, and didn't learn German in earnest until I lived there for 13 years.

My advice: Read on-line newspapers and watch on-line TV shows and news programs. If you want to really up your abilities in any foreign language, get hold of comic books.

Try reading it in reformed Eqyptian.