Some advice from a language learner

Over the last few months, many across the world have turned to learning a new language to productively use their time. I offer my own reflections from my over two decades experience of learning languages.

Recently, I came across a youtube video featuring a hyperglot (someone who speaks 11 or more languages fluently) who was making a point that the ability to learn a new language was not a function of age. Majority opinion holds the view that the ability to learn languages is strongest in infants and young children and that beyond a certain age, humans lose the ability to learn new languages. This is not true. In fact, the hyperglot in question was saying that it was only because infants and children are more motivated (failure is not an option if you have to understand and be understood by your parents, teachers and so on) that they succeed in learning a language. Adults often have lower levels of motivation and therefore give up when they face obstacles. Let’s face it, if trying to understand whether you have to use the preterit or the imperfect doesn’t crush your soul, trying to choose between the Imperfect subjunctive and the perfect subjunctive certainly will (at least in Spanish).

Another interesting point he brought up was the fact that often the more the languages you learn, the better you become at learning them because your brain has established a kind of neural pathway (I might be paraphrasing but you get the gist) that makes it easier for you to superimpose and crack other languages. For example, once you have learnt one language from a group - French say for example, you have gained at least two out of the four numbers for the combination lock that will give you access to that language. I could totally relate to that.

People who know me also know that I speak a smattering of a few languages. It is one of the things I have enjoyed since my college days. But I wasn’t always good at languages. In fact, when I was in school, I was positively an abhorrent failure when it came to languages. I was permanently close to just about average in Tamil, my mother tongue. The diglossia (distinctly different spoken and written languages) made it especially hard. I was so bad in Sanskrit in the first year I started learning it that I had to be enrolled for special lessons during the summer. My performance the following year improved but only slightly. I didn’t score spectacularly in Hindi either. English was the sole and spectacular exception where I scored near the top always. 

Extrapolating that trend, you would think that I would never have been able to learn another language given that I had already crossed that age threshold. But something changed. In the summer of 1998 between school and college, my mother started teaching me French (we had decided that doing Tamil as a second language at university was no longer sustainable and languages such as French and German were seen as an easy choice as these were taught at beginner levels). My mother is a major source of inspiration for me in that she first went for French classes in her 30s at the Alliance Fran?aise of Madras and she took to it quite well despite the fact that she was running a busy household with two growing children. She had on an earlier occasion, tried to introduce me to French through a children’s course during the summer when I was about 9. To say that I gained nothing from it might be too harsh but once again learning a language seemed beyond me. Thankfully the experience of the children’s course was far enough away from our memories for my mother to optimistically start teaching French once again. This time though, it all made sense. And I loved it. So much so that I took to studying more French than Physics which was supposed to be my major. In India, the education system does not allow you to change majors once you start your course, otherwise there is a good chance I would have majored in French. I signed up for additional classes at the Alliance Francaise during the weekends and weekday mornings. Between 1998 and 2005 and then once again between 2008 and 2010, I was attending one language class or the other over weekends.

Once I reached a certain level of proficiency in French I started diversifying to other languages- Italian, Spanish, Japanese, German, Latin. Although I’m not fully proficient in any of these languages, it is not because of my inability to learn but more because I have not invested the effort which will net me that full proficiency. This is due to a number of reasons – one being the fact that often for adults, your work or other life commitments such as family come in the way (this could be another reason why children succeed in learning when adults don’t). Also, I keep getting distracted every time I come across a new language and start learning its or even start reviving an old language that I haven’t touched for a while. So instead of focusing all my efforts on Spanish, let’s say, I’d start throwing in a few more languages in there in a scatter gun effort during the little time I have and as a result everything suffers. But this doesn’t matter to me as I don’t have a specific aim or a deadline that I’m working towards.

I wanted to share a few things that might help you in your pursuit of learning languages and I think I’m qualified to speak after having spent a good chunk of my learning languages.

1.      Being born with a gift to learn languages isn’t a thing: Whenever people realise I speak more than 2-3 languages they immediately go “Oh, you must be so gifted in learning languages.” Actually, this is only the second worst thing someone can say to me after “You’re so lucky to be able to travel.” (at least in pre-Covid times) I don’t have a gift for learning languages- in fact I must have the opposite of what must be a gift. However, what I have done over the years is to learn how to learn a language effectively. Learning French involved hundreds if not thousands of hours of effort learning the vocabulary, grammar, absorbing the language through listening to news reports, books and other sources. In short, brute effort. Although learning French made it easier to comprehend Spanish or Italian you still have to invest hundreds of hours learning how that particular language works- languages are not photocopies of each other. The more you learn, the more it becomes easier to learn.

2.      Language learning is hard work: Leading on from the point above, there are absolutely no short cuts in the long term for language learning- it is hard work. But because it is a function of a fully controllable factor (effort) it also makes it accessible to anyone.

3.      And it is for the long haul: No one can learn every aspect of a new language and be fully proficient in it for a few weeks. Learning a language takes years and even then, there is always something beyond. Take French for example, I consider myself fully proficient in it but I was recently reading a novel in French and made a list of all words whose exact meanings were unfamiliar to me (that is I could sense their meanings from the context or still get a good idea of the flow of the story but did not know their exact meanings) and the list ran to four pages (the novel was about 200 pages). I consider it a lot. The only way to remedy is to keep reading so you can keep working on your vocabulary.

4.      The plateau is real but it is not infinite: Almost everybody hits this stage after a few weeks or months of learning a new language. What seemed exciting and easy in the beginning slowly starts to look like drudgery and feels like whatever you do, it is impossible to progress. In these times keeping up motivation is essential. Maybe try a different approach- maybe watch online videos with subtitles on youtube or listen to music from that language if you feel bored with your textbooks. Things will soon fall into place and you will go back to learning again.

5.      Don’t stop going back to it: When not used, languages melt fast. Especially the ones that you haven’t mastered. But even languages that you were once very good at can be eroded away if unused. Constant practice/ learning is what helps you retain it.

6.      Don’t ask why: I cringe every time I sit in a language class and somebody goes “why?” when confronted with a particular nuance or a rule of grammar. If I have one rule for someone learning a language it is this- don’t try to fathom why a language works a particular way. Languages have evolved over hundreds, if not thousands of years and not even specialised linguists can parse out why a language develops the way it does. “Whys” are useful in a lot of educational pursuits but not for language learning. Keep an open mind and absorb the language as is instead of trying to fight it or analyse it.

7.      Immersion is great, but for those of us who can’t afford it, the internet is there: A lot of people swear by immersion- where you go live in a country where the language is spoken and there is no doubt that this speeds up your learning process. But if you can’t do immersion (I haven’t) you can make use of the plethora of resources that you have online. Whether it is listening to a particular news report or listening to a podcast, there is so much available for free and for a moderate cost that language learning is possible anywhere. It is so much easier these days than in the 90s when it was very hard to find material beyond your text books.

8.      Find your own technique for learning: It takes a few trials and errors but over a period of time you will find that doing some things and not others helps you learn faster. Some people like group role play and conversation activities to learn. I hate them, but I love grammar exercises and passive listening and copying out texts. What works for me might not work for you so you’ll have to find out what you like. Once you do, you can replicate this for every language.

As the years go by, I find that I have fallen further behind in my pursuit of languages than I would have liked. For example, in my early 20s I wanted to be fluent in 10 languages by the time I hit 30. I have hit the mark of 10 languages but I am nowhere close to being fluent in all of them in my late 30s. But I remain motivated. Language learning for me is a pursuit of a pleasure- of decoding something that was just gibberish or squiggles or being able to access a people and their culture in a pure unadulterated form. I have never considered my language capabilities as a revenue stream though my French has saved me from employment on at least three occasions in the past. Whatever may be your motive for learning a new language, the key to mastering it is to remain motivated. It’s ok to take a break and come back with a fresh perspective, just don’t abandon your efforts completely. More than 15 years since I started learning Japanese my proficiency is still very lower intermediate, but I’m committed to it and won’t give up. Who knows? Maybe in another 15 years I might be able to read a normal piece of text and not balk at the kanji. Oh and by that time I hope to be fluent in at least 15 languages and be a true hyperglot.