The phrase "mastering a language" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when talking about someone's ability to understand and use a language at a high level. Example: "After years of studying and practicing, she finally achieved the impressive feat of mastering a language that was completely foreign to her."
While there is no gainsaying the insights that come from mastering a language, it will over time become less essential in doing business in Asia, treating patients in Africa or helping resolve conflicts in the Middle East.
The addictive thrill of mastering a language leads me to suspect I won't be leaving just yet and I'm confident I now occupy a more privileged position for procuring a French job.
In using language, he says next in the lectures, in understanding each other and in mastering a language initially we do not start with a small set of words or a single word, but rather from specific occasions and activities.
And while it isn't exactly a method for mastering a language and becoming perfectly fluent, it's exactly the kind of thing that's handy for accruing small useful skills that require a lot of memorization.
§2.1 of this article introduces the idea, most closely associated with the work of the MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, that what is special about human brains is that they contain a specialized 'language organ,' an innate mental 'module' or 'faculty,' that is dedicated to the task of mastering a language.
Two individuals of different species have to master a language -- new to each -- of nudges, pulls and shifts of weight.
"I studied with some of the best linguists in the world, but how could a middle-school autodidact have mastered a language that died fifty years ago?
And of course greater investment in foreign-language teaching would have other dynamic effects: more and better teachers and materials, plus a cultural premium on multilingualism, means more people will actually master a language, rather than wasting several years never getting past la plume de ma tante, as happens in Britain and America.To be sure, everything has an opportunity cost.
The second sentence presupposes that at present or at some recent time it is or was essential to master a language in order to do business in Asia, to treat patients in Africa, or to resolve the situation in the Middle East.
At the end of the year I could read the language but by then I had come to the conclusion that people who make out that "literature is so much better in the original" are just idiots who want you to know how clever they are to have mastered a language.
"First you have to master a language as if it were your own, think in that language, talk in it, [then] fulfil the task set in the interests of your motherland over many years, suffering daily dangers for you and your loved ones, who don't even know who you are or for whom you work".
