Language Acquisition Through Pronunciation?

Polyglottery pointed to a piece the other day about a Chinese man who learned English by pronouncing it out loud. A lot. I thought it sounded like a neat idea and tried it with an Uzbek manual. Now I can say "Siz bilan tanishganimdan khursantman" and know exactly why it means "Pleased to meet you." Before, I could neither pronounce the damn thing nor remember it, much less figure out what was happening after the "tani-" part. About the tenth time I read a sentence with the main elements in place, I realized that "korushguncha," "tanishganimdan" and "ko'rganimdan" all had common elements that meant something to me, just not in a way I had previously understood. Since then, I've had a few other revelations about just how far the whole agglutinating thing can go and other phrases of ungodly lengths have also revealed themselves to be both perfectly comprehensible and elegantly logical.

It is my guess that you do need to know a little about what is going on with the language and with the meaning of what you are saying for this to work. Still, in trying the exercise, I was surprised by how much Uzbek I knew that I didn't know I knew and didn't know how to make use of. It seems like such a great idea that you'd think someone would have tried it before...

...lisez d'abord le texte latin, phrase par phrase; comparez-le, mot par mot, avec la prononciation, puis avec le texte français. Relisez ensuite le texte latin à haute voix.

Arrivé au bout de la leçon, relisez encore une fois le texte latin, toujours à haute voix... Si vous avez dû trop souvent vous arrêter, n'hésitez pas à recommencer toute la lecture, autant de fois qu'il le faudra pour être complètement familiarisé avec le texte...

...first read the Latin text, sentence by sentence, compare it, word by word with the pronunciation, then with the French text. Re-read the Latin text aloud.

At the end of the lesson, re-read the Latin text one more time, again aloud... If you have to stop too often, do not hesitate to do the whole reading from the beginning, as many times as necessary to become completely familiar with the text. [their bold, my translation].

You're reading here about the old-style Assimil method. The quote is from the introduction to le latin sans peine. In addition to the Uzbek experiment, last night, I also did the first two lessons from this book. This time I did them the proper way. The last time I didn't, and I didn't get too far either. But now I know such useful phrases as "I am a mailman" (tabellarius sum) and "Please give me a cup of coffee" (da, quaeso, poculum kaffei). I'm poking a little fun here, but there is something to be said for what you might call the sound it out, speak it out method. If you can't get your head around a new piece of language - a new phrase, a long word, or just some everyday language that won't stick - why not try getting your mouth around it first and see where that takes you.