Paint a Language

Many people have said that learning a new language is like putting a puzzle together. All of the pieces seem to come together, not in order, and at first, don't make sense. But as the pieces get put in, you can start to see the bigger picture, and more pieces fall into place more easily.

But for me, I feel like learning a new language is more like painting pictures, and here's why.

Why Learning a New Language is Like Painting Pictures

There are three main parts of language: language form (grammar/syntax, morphology, phonology), language content (semantics/vocabulary), and language use (pragmatics/social use, cultural norms).

Let's start with language content, since this is usually what we learn first: the words.

(So far, this is a blob.)

What part of the painting would this be? This would be the shapes, or figures in the picture, because they hold the most meaning. If you want to communicate to someone "apple," but you draw a picture of a bear, they probably will not get your message, so this is a very important piece of the painting. As you learn more and more of the language, your painting gets more and more detailed, such that "bear" now turns into "polar bear" or "panda bear" or "big, brown, fuzzy bear."

Next is the form, and I'm going to mostly be sticking with syntax and morphology for this point.
The most basic thing you learn about grammar when you start learning a new language is the word order. For example, do we say "want apple I" or "I want apple" in English? This could be the position and size of the shapes in the painting. If our figures are upside down, sideways, or tucked in the corner, the viewer may get confused, but it's likely they will still get the main idea. As we progress into higher level grammar structures, it could be such that the eyes of the panda are too far apart and it looks funny (kind of like a language learner using the wrong structure might sound funny to a native).

The other part of language form is phonology. This comprises the sounds produced in a language (or signs in sign language) and the systematic relationships or organization of those sounds. I tend to think of this part as the color that you use in the painting. You might know that to say the /l/ sound, you need to keep an open mouth posture, and have your tongue lifted somewhere. This might be considered "blue" for your painting. But as you perfect the pronunciation, your shade of blue becomes mixed with other colors or black/white to get things like "navy blue" or "sky blue," (your desired shade) and this would be considered as curling the tip of your tongue up behind your alveolar ridge (that bumpy spot behind your upper teeth) for a nice, crisp /l/. Of course, there are way more shades of color than there are sounds that can be made, but you'd be surprised by the
amount of different sounds I've heard my little clients produce trying to get to /r/ or /s/. 😳😕

Finally, we have language use. I like to think of this part as HOW we use our words. Do we say please in order to be polite? Do we use more formal language with some people and less formal with others (think Usted vs Tu)? This for me, would be the techniques and the medium (type of materials) of painting. You might use flat, linear brushstrokes to make one sort of appearance and pointillism (all the tiny dots) to give off another type of appearance or texture.You are still communicating the same thing, but in a much different way. It can affect how your viewer understands your intention.


So as we are learning a new language, we are learning all of these different pieces that can help us communicate our ideas in the best way possible. Our paintings may be very basic at first, with preschool paint, primary colors, a single paintbrush, and unrelated ideas scattered around the page, but as we progress and learn more, we start to create paintings that are more detailed, tell a story, and really let our viewers (our communication partners) understand our thoughts.

So what do you think? Do you agree that learning a language is like painting pictures? Let me know in the comments below!