The mysteries of language acquisition have always fascinated linguists and lay-people alike. We marvel at the ease with which children pick up languages and curse our bad luck that we did not study Swahili, Basque, and Farsi at the age of five. Frustrated, we're ready to listen (and give money) to anyone who promises to let us in on the "secrets" to success in language learning. We go to sleep with headphones on hoping that we'll wake up able to chat to Brigitte Bardot and Gerard Depardieu in their native tongue. "Let's all jazz chant" we cry, or, glued to laptops 30,000 feet over the Pacific, we follow the lady on the CD-ROM and repeat "arigato," "moshi-moshi," and "hai" hoping we'll be ordering fugu and sake like a native once we land in Tokyo.

Yes sirree, weve heard all we need to know from these language snake-oil salespeople...or have we?

Arkady Zilberman hit the headlines this summer when the media trumpeted his claims to have discovered a language "bridge." E-mail messages flew among members of the language teaching profession, most skeptical, some indignant. "Here we go again," everyone said, "yet another kook trying to pitch his miracle product." But, in the interests of fairness and a good story, we decided to contact Mr. Zilberman and ask him about his miracle cure for the linguistically challenged.

Zilberman was more than happy to speak to us. He began by explaining that after more than 20 years of performing both simultaneous and written technical translations he had come to a surprising conclusion: Each language we speak has its own speech center in the brain.

Zilberman backs his theory up with medical research. He says that the work of a group of scientists from Cornell University Medical College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center helps us to understand why adults have difficulties in learning a foreign language. Babies who learn two languages simultaneously, and apparently effortlessly, activate a single brain region while speaking two languages. But people who learn a second language in adulthood possess two such brain regions, one for each language.

This research is the keystone of Zilberman's language "bridge". He says, "The natural way to learn a foreign language is, first, to learn how to turn off the native language speech center, and secondly, how to form a new language speech center in the brain." He claims his "Language Bridge" program implements this discovery by giving adults an instrument to turn off subconscious translation into the native language and to form a new language center.

Zilberman says that turning off the "translation" mode in our brains is the key to second language acquisition. "If a language course does not explain to the students that subconscious translation into and from the native language is the main obstacle in acquiring a foreign language, then the students will face a major block on the route to mastering a foreign language. Moreover, adult students will revert to the subconscious translation into and from native tongue even under conditions when a foreign language is learned by direct or immersion techniques and all explanations are given in a foreign language."

"Speech is a mechanical process," says Zilberman, "which is initiated by our thoughts and is controlled subconsciously. We use our conscious thoughts to start the process, but speech itself is executed automatically. When adults speak fluently in a foreign language they do not have time to perform any kind of linguistic analysis or to make comparisons with expressions they use in their native language."

More specifically, he went on to say, his program employs a natural language acquisition method that does not require intervention or control by the memory: a foreign language is acquired not through memorizing information about the language but through experiencing a foreign language. His system allows users unfamiliar with the language to progressively build an active vocabulary of foreign language words and phrases based on training with links of words or word blocks, images and situations.

"I often feel frustrated when I talk to college professors and teachers of foreign languages who do not want to listen." says Zilberman who dismisses traditional language programs because "they do not address the problem of subconscious translation or recognize that people, who learn a second language in adulthood and speak it fluently, possess a second independent foreign language speech center in the brain." Zilberman is keen to stress that the speech mechanism in both the native language and the acquired language should be the same, an automatic, subconscious expression of our thoughts.

"Traditional programs," says Zilberman "do not explain that attempts to memorize foreign words as translations into the native language are fruitless because while conversing in a foreign language there is no time for conscious construction of sentences in a foreign language and retrieval of memorized words from memory." He thinks it is "fruitless" to attempt to "add" a foreign language to a native language.

"Within the conservative systems learning a foreign language is based on information plus analysis plus memorization. Very few people can do this because it is against our physiology. In our native language we don't recall words from memory nor make grammatical analysis of our speech. In other words, first learn how to speak fluently in a foreign language and only then, after you have already acquired an auditory "ring-a-bell-grammar" that will help you to speak practically without mistakes, you may start learning "more seriously" the foreign language grammar.

Students who follow his methods, says Zilberman, acquire words in a non-native language that are directly linked to images or situations. He claims his students are able to speak without long pauses between words because they are speaking without thinking about translation. These students do not "learn" language; they "experience" it, he says, by allowing their brains to do the bulk of the complex work involved in second language acquisition. "This is where language learning becomes simple," says Zilberman.

Zilberman is aware that many language teachers are not ready to accept his theories. "So you need a very sharp and powerful voice to make them listen," he says. "But the rewards are innumerable; they are pretty close to saving peoples lives. This is not an exaggeration!"

Arkady Zilberman is an ATA-accredited translator and is certified by the International Monetary Fund as a Russian translator/inter- preter. He has a Ph.D. in material science and has worked as a senior information analyst of scientific literature at Chemical Abstracts Service for the past 10 years. He was interviewed by Ben Ward.