Mastering a Language

The mystery that comes to me now and then is that many Moroccans write and speak French, Arabic, English, and other languages, but so few of them really master these languages. We have to bear in mind that there is a marked difference between knowing a language and mastering it. Knowing it merely lies in writing and speaking the basics; in other words, conveying a message at all costs is what matters to most. Mastering a language mainly lies in speaking and writing it as perfectly as possible. That is, one has to write grammatically and semantically correct paragraphs in the language he or she think they master. Also, they have to speak the newly-learnt language authentically and with intelligible pronunciation. Personally, accuracy and fluency are what guarantees real mastery. Without these two criteria, we are eluding ourselves. Recently, I began to learn French, and when I informed some people of this, they were surprised to death. " How come you haven't learnt French yet, " they wondered. Here, it is a pity that they mistake learning a language for conveying 'silly' and 'basic' messages in the same language via SMS. In response, I said that I began to learn French so that I would write in it and speak it as accurately and fluently as possible. Also, I set out to learn it so as to read some of French literature. This misconception of a mastery of a language has led some learners astray; now they are master at none; in other words, they are jack of all trades.