Language learning is not an intellectual activity.

Language learning is not an intellectual activity. Insofar as a learner treats a language as a puzzle to be solved, instead of a set of habits to be learned as automatic reactions, he is wasting his time and failing to learn the language. The "concepts" that any adult has are simply the meanings that he connects to the words of his native language. They serve only as stumbling-blocks in the way of his learning another language. The only way to clear the road for learning another language, with its inevitably different structure and meanings, is to disregard and forget as much as possible the words and meanings of one's native language.

— Robert A. Hall "Language and Superstition"