True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates.

In learning a new language, we confront the unknown as an immediate and unforgiving adversary. Whatever took us to this place, we make a decision to speak in another way, to different speakers in basic words and sentences. We may have learned our native tongue without understanding why we spoke as we did, but we cannot learn another language without knowing what a word means and how it can be used to express a thought. As we gain fluency and ease with a language, we also gain wisdom in the Socratic sense.
It is the exchange of ideas that drives us to continue to learn our own native language and to pursue other languages. Languages contain the truth that all scholars, all learners and intellectual beings seek in life. Without language, we cannot learn more than a chimpanzee, a monkey or a bird.
Our ability to learn a language, to understand our mortality and gain the knowledge that will take us to other spheres of understanding started within the last one hundred thousand years. Before that time we exchanged thoughts with each other from birth to death, but had far less depth of understanding. We cannot say with certainty that mankind, as one of our aboriginal forebears did not understand mortality, but we do not see other primates burying the dead with property, ceremony and reverence.
Socratic Irony comes from the idea that we continue to gain knowledge throughout our lives only to find that we have not yet scratched the surface of what truth, wisdom or intellectual fulfillment. We cannot let that detract from our mission, nor can we let ourselves bathe in the pride of great knowledge. Whatever we learn, there will always be much more to add to our œuvre of knowledge.
The intellectual academy of Greece twenty five hundred years ago has given the world gifts that can never be imagined or replaced. Simple ideas from simple, yet profound discovery guided the collective intellect of that time. Greek understanding of truth and the world around them brought together men who could put the ideas to use. That, in turn gave us knowledge that still guides us today. The logic of those philosophers still prevails in how we think and how we apply that knowledge. There is no better basis than logical examination of every idea at every level every day. It takes us to the truths that we seek. I will talk about it throughout this book and through the lectures. It enables us to see the key to our intellectual growth. It takes us to language.

The task of learning a new language forces one to think about your own native language and how you use it. Grammar becomes fundamental as you learn what you need to express yourself in a foreign language. You may have gotten by with almost no knowledge of grammar in your native tongue, but all of the things that keep you current in your native languages are no longer there to assist you.
For instance, you need the constant immersion that your native language provides in daily life. Everyone you speak to or listen to speaks your native language. The television speaks your native language. The signs you read when you walk or drive are in your native language. All of this has been going on for as far back as we can remember. We are about to abandon that language and move on to something else. It is a daunting task.
You must remember some elementary ideas, however. The rules of grammar that you learned about your own language also apply to the new language. Words are the essence of the language. Whether we talk about them as vocabulary, morphology, our personal or interior lexicon or in other terms, they remain the flesh and blood of every language. If you don’t know the words, you don’t know the language. There is a corollary, however or a condition that applies. No matter how many words you learn, they mean nothing until they are put into a complete thought. Whatever metaphor we choose to use, the grammar cliché of elementary school or the derived and underlying idea of the linguists who build grammar, a sentence is an expression of a complete thought.
As we take a language apart while we learn it we find many rules that govern the language and how it may be used. I have already mentioned the governance of logic in the introductory text, Finding Socrates. The ancient Greeks discovered the ideas that led to rational thought. Without talking at length about the antithesis of logical thought, ideology, I argue that what the Greeks gave us was method of logic that explains most intellectual advancement.
First, Socrates gave us critical thought or the concept that everything must be examined for truth every day that we use it. Socratic Irony or the observation that the only thing I know for certain is that I know nothing, describes the intellectual position of all learners. If we already know something, we are not learners. If we approach a learning task with preconceived ideas of its truthfulness, we cannot easily accept another point of view.