Learning French in 1782
Advice from an accomplished autodidact
In 1782, in the first issue of the first magazine that he edited, Gerhard Scharnhorst, a German-speaking subject of George III, described the technique that he used to improve his command of French.
After I had learned a little about the spoken language, and, especially, how to pronounce it, I studied French in the following manner. Every day, I translated, from French into German, a conversation from my grammar book. At first, I kept the German version close at hand. Later, I limited myself to a dictionary, which I used to look up verbs I had yet to learn.
Several hours after this work, I read the French version (of the dialog provided in the grammar), identified words I didn’t know, matched them with their German meanings, and underlined them. On the following day, in the hours I set aside for the study of French, I reviewed the underlined words, and, if I didn’t remember their meanings, I underlined them a second time, and went over them again before I began my reading for the third day. This caused them to stick in my memory.
Each week I recited the underlined words, and noted in the margin the ones I had forgotten, and looked up their German meanings. I then reviewed the words from the previous week.
When I had worked through half of the conversions in the grammar, I read somewhere that a person would be able to understand French newspapers if he could make sense of the five volumes of the Adventures of Telemachus.1 This inspired me to redouble my efforts. I dove into French and German copies of that work, as well as the dialogues in my grammar. At first, I only managed to work through a single page each day. Soon, however, that number grew to two, and, in the end, somewhere between four and six.
I found these exercises so interesting that I carried these books with me wherever I went and that, as a result, I achieved my goal within two months.
I continued my study of the French language in the following way. I obtained French and German editions of Diderot’s The Father of the Family.2 Every day, translated a scene into French, compared my translation to the one that had been published, and underlined mistakes. I placed my translation in my copy of the original, and carried both with me wherever I went. I often revisited the underlined places in my translation so that I could remind myself of them without reference to the original.
By the time that I had worked my way through The Father of the Family in this way I was able to write a short letter in French without making a mistake.
Later, I used the same method to learn, without too much difficulty, the English language.
Source
Gerhard Scharnhorst ‘Von dem Studieren Selbst, und den Auszügen’ (‘On Self-Study and Summaries’) Militair-Bibliothek (Military Library) Volume I, Issue 1 (1782) pages 31-32
For Further Reading
Charles Edward White Scharnhorst: The Formative Years, 1755-1801 (Warwick: Helion, 2021)
Bruce I. Gudmundsson ‘The Education of the Enlightened Soldier’ Marine Corps University Journal Spring 2008
François Fénelon Les Aventures de Télémaque, Fils d’Ullyse (The Adventures of Telemachus, son of Ullysses) and François Fénelon (Benjamin Neukirch, translator) Die Begebenheiten des Prinzen von Ithaca, oder: der seinen Vater Ulysses, suchende Telemach (Adventures of the Prince of Ithaca, or, Telemachus Searching for his Father Ulysses)
Denis Diderot Le Père de la Famille: Comédie en Cinq Actes (The Father of the Family: A Comedy in Five Acts) and Denis Diderot (Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, translator) Der Hausvater: Ein Schauspiel im Funf Aufzügen (The Father of the House: A Play in Five Acts)