I have spent a lifetime studying (not necessarily learning) languages just because I like to, but I recently discovered a new reason. I am writing a novel in which one of the characters is a classicist. I stopped studying Latin 50+ years ago, retaining a little through other Romance languages, and did a whirlwind tour of Modern Greek before a visit there a couple of years ago (during that perid I was the #1 Duolingo user worldwide).
But I'm not a classicist. To get more into this character's head — well, at least with the pleasant parts — I added Latin to my Duolingo stack. Duolingo's Latin sucks as badly as its Japanese, in the same ways, but I think that puts me even more into the classicist's head.
Interesting, Jim! It's nice to know that Duolingo can be used as a research tool. Have you looked into the role that AI tools like ChatGPT can play in researching languages? (I haven't.)
I have no use for AI. I did AI research in the 1990s, and the big advance seems to have been wasting massive amounts of electricity to generate flaky results.
One of my Tai Chi classmates and I have undertaken a study of the original names of the poses. She is French but lived in China; I have studied Japanese. We compare the ancient and modern (in China and Japan) uses and constructions and pronunciations of the characters. The joy is in the process. We have big dictionaries. We don't have time for AI.
Thank you for such a thoughtful article on language acquisition! I’ve tended to learn languages in language groups and it’s really helped me be able to expand my knowledge quickly. Nothing beats the excitement of starting from scratch with something new.
Hi Kate! I'm glad you liked the piece. It's very interesting that you tackle languages in groups—most people automatically assume that that will just be confusing. Me, I'm working on a spreadsheet where I compare several of the different Romance languages, in order to highlight the similarities and differences. It seems we think alike. 😊
Fantastic post, Gregory, and there are some great comments from your readers too. I'm ashamed of myself now - you managed to convey so much in this post whereas it took me parts of 11 different chapters in my book where I waffled and pontificated endlessly about similar themes. I'll tell my existing and future readers to skip all that and read this instead!
So many excellent points here, especially regarding the permanent meatball (I'm pretty sure it's a linguistic term!). My next post will be one dedicated to language learners, the theme being different approaches/different teachers and I will be sure to link to this.
Thanks, Daniel! I look forward to reading your next post. And I kind of think you might be a permanent meatball yourself. (Takes one to know one, they say...)
I just found your Substack and I look forward to reading more. If I had known that linguistics existed when I started college I would have majored in that, but geography has served me pretty well. I remember being fascinated when I learned at age 7 that other languages existed. I didn't start learning one (French) until 9th grade, but since then I've learned several and have lived in a handful of different countries.
Immersion in the target language really is the best method for anyone really motivated to learn a language well. I tried Duolingo for the first time this year and was not impressed. Maybe I didn't get far enough, but there were no explanations of or exercises with the basics of how the language works (gender, cases, verb conjugations) and much of the vocabulary was useless. I really don't need to know how to say that my hedgehog is in the park.
Nice to meet you Jean! It’s nice to have you here. I think it’s just as well that you never majored in linguistics, as there aren’t a lot of jobs, unless of course you want to leave academia and work for Duolingo. 😉 I agree that immersion is the best method, though there are lots of things that people can do short of full-on immersion that are very useful, too (I’m thinking about reading, music, TV, films, etc.).
As for Duolingo, the genius of that platform is that it doesn’t teach grammar explicitly, because that’s the thing that turns most learners OFF. (Not you, though, apparently.) It is therefore a more “natural” way to learn language, though I agree that the vocabulary is not always useful. (Stay tuned: I am preparing a humorous post based on Duolingo.)
And for what it’s worth, I for one am relieved to hear that your hedgehog is in the park.
I have a question that you as a linguist might be able to answer. I have a jumble of a few languages taking up space in my head from decades of trying to learn different ones (French, Spanish, German, Italian). My problem is that sometimes when I’m trying to speak one of the languages that is not my first, a word or phrase from a second language will pop into my head instead. In fact, if I’m trying to focus on learning one language, I find it’s absolutely essential for me to focus on that language exclusively—even dabbling in mixing on Duolingo impedes my progress.
Also, what do you say about how the ability to learn languages changes over the lifespan? I studied French throughout high school and lived there one summer, and I was essentially fluent. I can still get by in France despite not having used it regularly for 40 years. However, I have been trying to learn Italian for the last 30 years now, but I can never hold onto it. I studied in Italy for a couple of months and lived with a family, at which point I was picking up a fairly good command of the language. But I lost most of it, and now, despite in-person learning pre-Covid and a 1,000+ day streak on Duolingo, I’m not even as conversant as I was at the end of those two months years ago. Sigh.
Hi. Thanks for writing. I feel you, but I'm not sure I can say very much that will be helpful. I am not an expert in language learning over the lifespan, but I do believe that it is definitely possible to learn languages later in life. I think that it really depends on how much you immerse yourself in the language. If you know that you won't eat tonight unless you are able to buy groceries or order dinner in Italian, your motivation will be very high! I suspect that if you spent several months in Italy, using it on a daily basis, the Italian would come. Buona fortuna!
Great article. Thanks. As one who learned French in a private elementary school from French nuns (near Boston), that's where my great pronunciation comes from (plus some innate talent).
For over 3 years now, I've been re-learning it but it's been frustrating: it's very hard to find good teachers (who really know how to teach, not just be a native speaker - lookin' at you Alliance F.) and there are almost no courses that go beyond "beginner" for older learners. Even beginner courses in adult ed. programs don't offer much, if any, conversation practice. I've also had 2 good tutors (current one is in Paris and very good).
I have been motivated for 3.5 years to stick with it because I love the language, the incremental achievements, and France (use the language as a visitor).
Just got on Duolingo thanks to your advice. Esp. for the spaced repetition.
I watch French TV. TV5 news is challenging but I like just listening and picking up bits of the story and training my ear.
You verify my sense that it takes a long time and personal commitment to really learn a language, certainly once you are out of school and doing it for the love of it. This idea these days that "20 minutes a day" is enough is not realistic!
Thanks for this thoughtful reply, Diana. You point out something that I have never thought about: the assumption seems to be that adults will only study a language for as long as necessary to prepare them to _go_ to the country, either as visitors or as immigrants; presumably, if they need to learn more, they will do it "sur place". It is a pity that there isn't more of a market for life-long language learners in the US.
I'm glad that some of my tips are proving helpful. TV is great, but I find that reading works better, since it allows for more careful control of vocabulary acquisition. Bonne chance!
The problem with Duolingo/Portuguese is that it's Brazilian, which my ears are much more acclimated to. I like Bossa Nova, Brazilian telenovelas and they are lots of them around in Florida. But the words/expressions in both are different. It's like learning Castilian Spanish and living in Venezuela.
This is such an excellent post—not only for the tips and suggestions but also because it motivated me to keep going.
When I was around 12, I asked for a Spanish language dictionary for Christmas. I lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere, but my thirst for language began in kindergarten. I was surrounded by Spanish-speaking kids whose parents worked in the agricultural fields. I was taught colors, numbers, some culture, and short sentences in Spanish before I used the English version. It stuck with me. When I hit first grade the kids changed and there were no more Spanish lessons, which really disappointed me, I was fascinated with learning to communicate in another language.
Anyway, instead of the Spanish dictionary I asked for, I got five language dictionaries. Now I understand why I was so frustrated. One was the Spanish version I wanted, but the other four were in languages that didn’t complement one another.
By the time I reached middle school and was able to take more Spanish classes, I had an awful teacher. She was fixated on hammering in grammar and never made the lessons fun.
High school Spanish was a bust because I didn’t pick up enough from middle school Spanish.
Today, I absolutely wish to live in a Spanish-speaking country to learn to speak and understand the language—not fluently, perhaps, but adequately enough to live comfortably among native speakers.
Thank you so much for this post, I really enjoyed it. I'm happy I found you.
Thank you Gregory! This post is chock full of tips, suggestions, advice and resources for language learning. It was just what I needed to revive my commitment to improving my Portuguese, which has plateaued somewhat since the surge of learning in our early years here.
Despite our weekly conversation classes with a Portuguese teacher, involving discussions on subjects covering everything from current affairs to prehistory, I fear that I'm just not making progress with becoming more fluent. Digital resources I used and benefitted from at the beginning were the Michel Thomas method and the Memrise app, which (in my opinion) was excellent for learning and memorizing vocabulary. But the commitment to sticking with that eventually fell away.
With your suggestion I have just dived into Anki and am making decks of the new vocabulary I encounter during the week - through conversations, news articles, TV, radio, songs and you tube videos. Though I keep lists and lists of new words and phrases, I rarely go back to reviewing and memorizing them. Now I have a way forward and I am motivated and excited once again. :)
Helen, my friend, it makes me so happy that I may have helped your motivation a bit! Thank you for the tips; I will check them out, and encourage others to do so as well. And I'm glad that you like the idea of Anki—it has really helped me.
For vocabulary, I highly recommend reading books. It's like vitamin supplements for your proficiency. And for fluency, I suspect that the thing that will help you get over the hump is to start interacting with people who don't speak English. That's what makes it real, I'd say. Do you have any opportunities to do that? Maybe even a conversation exchange where things are not so controlled and you are forced out of your comfort zone. Just a thought.
A voluminously illuminating post. In my case, the primary factor in my failure to become multi-lingual was psychological. Liza alludes to this point in her comment about letting go of one's ego. When I was learning French in school, I did well enough in writing and reading comprehension, but I would flail in conversational exercises. The moment when I heard something that I didn't fully understand, and when I had a thought that I couldn't fully convey in the meager French that was at my disposal, I would freeze up. Some combination of general anxiety and my particular sort of perfectionism kept me from ever approaching fluency. A related barrier involves acutely feeling the gap between how fluently I could convey a thought in English and how feckless and speechless I would be in trying to convey the thought in French (or another non-native language). In sum, I posit that a key ingredient in language acquisition—one that you could fold into the category of "motivation"—is a willingness to fail, to sound and feel stupid, and to speak at a grade-school level even as your mind chugs along at a grad-school level. (Par exemple: You need to accept that it will take much time and effort before you can finesse the use of terms like "grade" and "grad," as in the preceding sentence.)
Yes, I’ve been the same way. Languages came easily for me growing up (the academic aspects of learning languages reminded me so much of mathematics, which I also loved), but when it came to speaking, I’d freeze up as well. Some blend of my shyness and desire for speaking perfectly, which led to not speaking enough at all. Thank you (to Liza, too) for the reminder of the power of ego in holding back something like language learning.
Nicely put, Mike! You have a point that in learning languages—as in learning most things—you have to accept that you will begin as a beginner. One of the reasons that children do so well in learning languages (apart from the Critical Period Hypothesis discussed elsewhere in these comments) is that they don't have that hangup about looking silly. They see language learning as more like play than like competition, and thus are in a better mindset to learn.
Hey, I was going to say reading Henning Mankell in Swedish does sound like a good reason to learn Swedish, but as I was reading I remembered a lovely book from Hungarian-turned-Brazilian author Paulo Rónai, "Como Aprendi o Português e Outras Aventuras". Rónai learned Portuguese as a language student, then came to live in Brazil (and had to re-learn it, kind of) and ended up teaching Portuguese in school here. He's got a text in this book where he talks about the many specific features of Hungarian. "The only language the devil speaks". It so made me feel like learning Hungarian. Never started, though. Maybe some day.
Thanks for sharing that, Renata. I will look for Rónai's book. You sound like a linguist, the way you talk about wanting to learn languages because of the challenge! Who knows, one day you may really be hungry for Hungary...
I hate to say it, but there aren't any studies demonstrating that learning a new language reduces your risk of developing dementia.
The study you pointed to, with a misleading PR writeup, is a meta study of bilingual people. These studies almost always restrict their participants to people born into bilingual families, since people who learn a new language tend to come from extreme life circumstances (refugees, military, diplomats, weirdos who learn 12 languages for fun) that create problems when normalizing data. Learning two languages in your home as a child is a different animal than learning a second language in school or as an adult.
The other issue these studies sometimes attempt to untangle is whether speaking more than one language reduces our likelihood of developing dementia or helps us manage our symptoms (thus delaying diagnosis). These studies (including the one you point to) do suggest some actual risk reduction for people who grew up in a bilingual household and maintained their bilingual status into adulthood. Alas, this still doesn't help us.
While this isn't the evidence we want to hear, I think most of us still believe it's useful to learn a new language as an adult. I like to tell myself that living in Lisbon will help me navigate a world in which I have dementia. Every time I have to act out something I don't have words for, can't figure out how to turn on the microwave, or have to smile and nod my way through a baffling encounter, I'm getting useful practice for being one of those old ladies who becomes nicer and calmer when she goes senile.
Cori, thank you for this very useful perspective! Clearly you are more familiar with the literature than I am. I understand why studying bilinguals would be more feasible from a methodological perspective, and it is heartening that growing up bilingual _may_ reduce the risk of dementia. That doesn't necessarily help the rest of us, though. But I have a couple of questions:
1. Have any studies shown a _positive_ correlation between language learning and dementia (i.e., that it hurts, rather than helps)? I would assume the answer is "no", for lots of reasons, including the methodological problems you point to. And if that's the case, then at worst, learning languages won't hurt us (at least in this way—it might lead to us becoming dangerously fond of tiramisù, for example).
2. Aren't there other studies that show that mental exercises in general (memory exercises, Sudoku, etc.) are helpful in reducing the risk of dementia? I believe this to be the case, but you may know better than I do. If it is the case, then language learning should _logically_ be one of those activities. So even if no study has yet been designed that would prove that language learning has this benefit, we might reasonably expect it to.
There. I hope I have managed to nod my way through this baffling encounter without giving myself away. 😊
Alas, I can't provide good answers to these intriguing questions. I'm not a medical researcher. I just find myself inundated with articles on the topic and can't stop myself from clicking through to see if my life choices have good data to back them up :)
I agree with you that it seems quite unlikely that learning a second language would increase our risk of developing dementia. As I recall, the evidence supporting mental exercises isn't as robust as one would hope and improvements in one domain don't necessarily translate to improved function in general.
Personally, I can't help but believe that learning a new language (or picking up an instrument, learning to dance, becoming an avid gardener, learning to draw, etc) would reduce our risk of developing dementia. It's just that the studies I've encountered don't come anywhere near supporting these ideas. I'm okay with trusting common sense when the scientific method doesn't have much to say on the matter, at least so far.
I was exposed to almost all the Romance languages because I went to a conservatory of music as a singer. I've actually studied three of them, plus Latin, so they soak in very very easily, to the point where a two-week stint in Catalonia had me unthinkingly mixing Spanish and Catalan, something a shopkeeper informed me I was doing (while laughing at me good-naturedly). Are there any good solutions from the linguist perspective for not mixing up vocabulary in closely-related languages?
I also have some Germanic languages, and I find I have a much easier time not mixing vocabulary between German and Dutch because they sound so different. But wow, Italian and Spanish make a fool of me every time and when I'm not careful, Spanish and French can do an uncanny merger that makes me wonder if I just need to move to the Pyrenees.
Hanne, it sounds like you do have a talent for learning languages! As someone who also speaks four Romance languages (plus a little Catalan), I can agree that it is easy to confuse them. As a linguist, I can say two things that come to mind:
First, we tend to learn language in chunks—that is, in sequences of several words. This is true of fixed expressions like "be that as it may", but also less obvious chunks such as "in the middle of the". If you focus on learning the chunks that contain the word of interest, it will probably make it clearer which language we are talking about. For example, compare French "la prochaine sortie" and Spanish "la próxima salida"; in that context, it's pretty clear which language "sortie" comes from and which one "salida" comes from.
Second, intonation (which I imagine you are very good at, having classical training) will also give away the language. So, again, focus on phrases, but also the prosody of the phrase. These are highly characteristic of the language. Compare the bouncy phrasing of Italian "dietro la porta" with the machine-gun rhythm of Spanish "detrás de la puerta". That can also help your memory characterize the words as belonging to the right language.
Finally: hey, moving the Pyrenees doesn't sound at all bad to me! I'll happily come and visit you one you move. 😁
Thanks for this, Greg. I have found myself using the prosody trick sometimes, I shall have to try to do it more systematically. The chunking thing will probably help too. I realize I do it with phrases from songs/arias, though the vocabulary those cover is pretty limited.
I have spent a lifetime studying (not necessarily learning) languages just because I like to, but I recently discovered a new reason. I am writing a novel in which one of the characters is a classicist. I stopped studying Latin 50+ years ago, retaining a little through other Romance languages, and did a whirlwind tour of Modern Greek before a visit there a couple of years ago (during that perid I was the #1 Duolingo user worldwide).
But I'm not a classicist. To get more into this character's head — well, at least with the pleasant parts — I added Latin to my Duolingo stack. Duolingo's Latin sucks as badly as its Japanese, in the same ways, but I think that puts me even more into the classicist's head.
Interesting, Jim! It's nice to know that Duolingo can be used as a research tool. Have you looked into the role that AI tools like ChatGPT can play in researching languages? (I haven't.)
I have no use for AI. I did AI research in the 1990s, and the big advance seems to have been wasting massive amounts of electricity to generate flaky results.
One of my Tai Chi classmates and I have undertaken a study of the original names of the poses. She is French but lived in China; I have studied Japanese. We compare the ancient and modern (in China and Japan) uses and constructions and pronunciations of the characters. The joy is in the process. We have big dictionaries. We don't have time for AI.
Thank you for such a thoughtful article on language acquisition! I’ve tended to learn languages in language groups and it’s really helped me be able to expand my knowledge quickly. Nothing beats the excitement of starting from scratch with something new.
Hi Kate! I'm glad you liked the piece. It's very interesting that you tackle languages in groups—most people automatically assume that that will just be confusing. Me, I'm working on a spreadsheet where I compare several of the different Romance languages, in order to highlight the similarities and differences. It seems we think alike. 😊
Fantastic post, Gregory, and there are some great comments from your readers too. I'm ashamed of myself now - you managed to convey so much in this post whereas it took me parts of 11 different chapters in my book where I waffled and pontificated endlessly about similar themes. I'll tell my existing and future readers to skip all that and read this instead!
So many excellent points here, especially regarding the permanent meatball (I'm pretty sure it's a linguistic term!). My next post will be one dedicated to language learners, the theme being different approaches/different teachers and I will be sure to link to this.
Thanks, Daniel! I look forward to reading your next post. And I kind of think you might be a permanent meatball yourself. (Takes one to know one, they say...)
I just found your Substack and I look forward to reading more. If I had known that linguistics existed when I started college I would have majored in that, but geography has served me pretty well. I remember being fascinated when I learned at age 7 that other languages existed. I didn't start learning one (French) until 9th grade, but since then I've learned several and have lived in a handful of different countries.
Immersion in the target language really is the best method for anyone really motivated to learn a language well. I tried Duolingo for the first time this year and was not impressed. Maybe I didn't get far enough, but there were no explanations of or exercises with the basics of how the language works (gender, cases, verb conjugations) and much of the vocabulary was useless. I really don't need to know how to say that my hedgehog is in the park.
Nice to meet you Jean! It’s nice to have you here. I think it’s just as well that you never majored in linguistics, as there aren’t a lot of jobs, unless of course you want to leave academia and work for Duolingo. 😉 I agree that immersion is the best method, though there are lots of things that people can do short of full-on immersion that are very useful, too (I’m thinking about reading, music, TV, films, etc.).
As for Duolingo, the genius of that platform is that it doesn’t teach grammar explicitly, because that’s the thing that turns most learners OFF. (Not you, though, apparently.) It is therefore a more “natural” way to learn language, though I agree that the vocabulary is not always useful. (Stay tuned: I am preparing a humorous post based on Duolingo.)
And for what it’s worth, I for one am relieved to hear that your hedgehog is in the park.
I have a question that you as a linguist might be able to answer. I have a jumble of a few languages taking up space in my head from decades of trying to learn different ones (French, Spanish, German, Italian). My problem is that sometimes when I’m trying to speak one of the languages that is not my first, a word or phrase from a second language will pop into my head instead. In fact, if I’m trying to focus on learning one language, I find it’s absolutely essential for me to focus on that language exclusively—even dabbling in mixing on Duolingo impedes my progress.
Also, what do you say about how the ability to learn languages changes over the lifespan? I studied French throughout high school and lived there one summer, and I was essentially fluent. I can still get by in France despite not having used it regularly for 40 years. However, I have been trying to learn Italian for the last 30 years now, but I can never hold onto it. I studied in Italy for a couple of months and lived with a family, at which point I was picking up a fairly good command of the language. But I lost most of it, and now, despite in-person learning pre-Covid and a 1,000+ day streak on Duolingo, I’m not even as conversant as I was at the end of those two months years ago. Sigh.
Hi. Thanks for writing. I feel you, but I'm not sure I can say very much that will be helpful. I am not an expert in language learning over the lifespan, but I do believe that it is definitely possible to learn languages later in life. I think that it really depends on how much you immerse yourself in the language. If you know that you won't eat tonight unless you are able to buy groceries or order dinner in Italian, your motivation will be very high! I suspect that if you spent several months in Italy, using it on a daily basis, the Italian would come. Buona fortuna!
Great article. Thanks. As one who learned French in a private elementary school from French nuns (near Boston), that's where my great pronunciation comes from (plus some innate talent).
For over 3 years now, I've been re-learning it but it's been frustrating: it's very hard to find good teachers (who really know how to teach, not just be a native speaker - lookin' at you Alliance F.) and there are almost no courses that go beyond "beginner" for older learners. Even beginner courses in adult ed. programs don't offer much, if any, conversation practice. I've also had 2 good tutors (current one is in Paris and very good).
I have been motivated for 3.5 years to stick with it because I love the language, the incremental achievements, and France (use the language as a visitor).
Just got on Duolingo thanks to your advice. Esp. for the spaced repetition.
I watch French TV. TV5 news is challenging but I like just listening and picking up bits of the story and training my ear.
You verify my sense that it takes a long time and personal commitment to really learn a language, certainly once you are out of school and doing it for the love of it. This idea these days that "20 minutes a day" is enough is not realistic!
Thanks for this thoughtful reply, Diana. You point out something that I have never thought about: the assumption seems to be that adults will only study a language for as long as necessary to prepare them to _go_ to the country, either as visitors or as immigrants; presumably, if they need to learn more, they will do it "sur place". It is a pity that there isn't more of a market for life-long language learners in the US.
I'm glad that some of my tips are proving helpful. TV is great, but I find that reading works better, since it allows for more careful control of vocabulary acquisition. Bonne chance!
The problem with Duolingo/Portuguese is that it's Brazilian, which my ears are much more acclimated to. I like Bossa Nova, Brazilian telenovelas and they are lots of them around in Florida. But the words/expressions in both are different. It's like learning Castilian Spanish and living in Venezuela.
There is one more reason - learning the language comes with cultural legacy of the other culture, to which you don’t have access otherwise:
https://open.substack.com/pub/nomadicmind/p/worlds-we-dont-see
This is such an excellent post—not only for the tips and suggestions but also because it motivated me to keep going.
When I was around 12, I asked for a Spanish language dictionary for Christmas. I lived in a small town in the middle of nowhere, but my thirst for language began in kindergarten. I was surrounded by Spanish-speaking kids whose parents worked in the agricultural fields. I was taught colors, numbers, some culture, and short sentences in Spanish before I used the English version. It stuck with me. When I hit first grade the kids changed and there were no more Spanish lessons, which really disappointed me, I was fascinated with learning to communicate in another language.
Anyway, instead of the Spanish dictionary I asked for, I got five language dictionaries. Now I understand why I was so frustrated. One was the Spanish version I wanted, but the other four were in languages that didn’t complement one another.
By the time I reached middle school and was able to take more Spanish classes, I had an awful teacher. She was fixated on hammering in grammar and never made the lessons fun.
High school Spanish was a bust because I didn’t pick up enough from middle school Spanish.
Today, I absolutely wish to live in a Spanish-speaking country to learn to speak and understand the language—not fluently, perhaps, but adequately enough to live comfortably among native speakers.
Thank you so much for this post, I really enjoyed it. I'm happy I found you.
Thank you so much, Patti! I hope you will be able to revive your love for Spanish!
Thank you Gregory! This post is chock full of tips, suggestions, advice and resources for language learning. It was just what I needed to revive my commitment to improving my Portuguese, which has plateaued somewhat since the surge of learning in our early years here.
Despite our weekly conversation classes with a Portuguese teacher, involving discussions on subjects covering everything from current affairs to prehistory, I fear that I'm just not making progress with becoming more fluent. Digital resources I used and benefitted from at the beginning were the Michel Thomas method and the Memrise app, which (in my opinion) was excellent for learning and memorizing vocabulary. But the commitment to sticking with that eventually fell away.
With your suggestion I have just dived into Anki and am making decks of the new vocabulary I encounter during the week - through conversations, news articles, TV, radio, songs and you tube videos. Though I keep lists and lists of new words and phrases, I rarely go back to reviewing and memorizing them. Now I have a way forward and I am motivated and excited once again. :)
Helen, my friend, it makes me so happy that I may have helped your motivation a bit! Thank you for the tips; I will check them out, and encourage others to do so as well. And I'm glad that you like the idea of Anki—it has really helped me.
For vocabulary, I highly recommend reading books. It's like vitamin supplements for your proficiency. And for fluency, I suspect that the thing that will help you get over the hump is to start interacting with people who don't speak English. That's what makes it real, I'd say. Do you have any opportunities to do that? Maybe even a conversation exchange where things are not so controlled and you are forced out of your comfort zone. Just a thought.
Eu sei que consegues fazer isto. Força! ❤️
A voluminously illuminating post. In my case, the primary factor in my failure to become multi-lingual was psychological. Liza alludes to this point in her comment about letting go of one's ego. When I was learning French in school, I did well enough in writing and reading comprehension, but I would flail in conversational exercises. The moment when I heard something that I didn't fully understand, and when I had a thought that I couldn't fully convey in the meager French that was at my disposal, I would freeze up. Some combination of general anxiety and my particular sort of perfectionism kept me from ever approaching fluency. A related barrier involves acutely feeling the gap between how fluently I could convey a thought in English and how feckless and speechless I would be in trying to convey the thought in French (or another non-native language). In sum, I posit that a key ingredient in language acquisition—one that you could fold into the category of "motivation"—is a willingness to fail, to sound and feel stupid, and to speak at a grade-school level even as your mind chugs along at a grad-school level. (Par exemple: You need to accept that it will take much time and effort before you can finesse the use of terms like "grade" and "grad," as in the preceding sentence.)
Yes, I’ve been the same way. Languages came easily for me growing up (the academic aspects of learning languages reminded me so much of mathematics, which I also loved), but when it came to speaking, I’d freeze up as well. Some blend of my shyness and desire for speaking perfectly, which led to not speaking enough at all. Thank you (to Liza, too) for the reminder of the power of ego in holding back something like language learning.
Nicely put, Mike! You have a point that in learning languages—as in learning most things—you have to accept that you will begin as a beginner. One of the reasons that children do so well in learning languages (apart from the Critical Period Hypothesis discussed elsewhere in these comments) is that they don't have that hangup about looking silly. They see language learning as more like play than like competition, and thus are in a better mindset to learn.
Hey, I was going to say reading Henning Mankell in Swedish does sound like a good reason to learn Swedish, but as I was reading I remembered a lovely book from Hungarian-turned-Brazilian author Paulo Rónai, "Como Aprendi o Português e Outras Aventuras". Rónai learned Portuguese as a language student, then came to live in Brazil (and had to re-learn it, kind of) and ended up teaching Portuguese in school here. He's got a text in this book where he talks about the many specific features of Hungarian. "The only language the devil speaks". It so made me feel like learning Hungarian. Never started, though. Maybe some day.
Thanks for sharing that, Renata. I will look for Rónai's book. You sound like a linguist, the way you talk about wanting to learn languages because of the challenge! Who knows, one day you may really be hungry for Hungary...
I hate to say it, but there aren't any studies demonstrating that learning a new language reduces your risk of developing dementia.
The study you pointed to, with a misleading PR writeup, is a meta study of bilingual people. These studies almost always restrict their participants to people born into bilingual families, since people who learn a new language tend to come from extreme life circumstances (refugees, military, diplomats, weirdos who learn 12 languages for fun) that create problems when normalizing data. Learning two languages in your home as a child is a different animal than learning a second language in school or as an adult.
The other issue these studies sometimes attempt to untangle is whether speaking more than one language reduces our likelihood of developing dementia or helps us manage our symptoms (thus delaying diagnosis). These studies (including the one you point to) do suggest some actual risk reduction for people who grew up in a bilingual household and maintained their bilingual status into adulthood. Alas, this still doesn't help us.
While this isn't the evidence we want to hear, I think most of us still believe it's useful to learn a new language as an adult. I like to tell myself that living in Lisbon will help me navigate a world in which I have dementia. Every time I have to act out something I don't have words for, can't figure out how to turn on the microwave, or have to smile and nod my way through a baffling encounter, I'm getting useful practice for being one of those old ladies who becomes nicer and calmer when she goes senile.
Cori, thank you for this very useful perspective! Clearly you are more familiar with the literature than I am. I understand why studying bilinguals would be more feasible from a methodological perspective, and it is heartening that growing up bilingual _may_ reduce the risk of dementia. That doesn't necessarily help the rest of us, though. But I have a couple of questions:
1. Have any studies shown a _positive_ correlation between language learning and dementia (i.e., that it hurts, rather than helps)? I would assume the answer is "no", for lots of reasons, including the methodological problems you point to. And if that's the case, then at worst, learning languages won't hurt us (at least in this way—it might lead to us becoming dangerously fond of tiramisù, for example).
2. Aren't there other studies that show that mental exercises in general (memory exercises, Sudoku, etc.) are helpful in reducing the risk of dementia? I believe this to be the case, but you may know better than I do. If it is the case, then language learning should _logically_ be one of those activities. So even if no study has yet been designed that would prove that language learning has this benefit, we might reasonably expect it to.
There. I hope I have managed to nod my way through this baffling encounter without giving myself away. 😊
Alas, I can't provide good answers to these intriguing questions. I'm not a medical researcher. I just find myself inundated with articles on the topic and can't stop myself from clicking through to see if my life choices have good data to back them up :)
I agree with you that it seems quite unlikely that learning a second language would increase our risk of developing dementia. As I recall, the evidence supporting mental exercises isn't as robust as one would hope and improvements in one domain don't necessarily translate to improved function in general.
Personally, I can't help but believe that learning a new language (or picking up an instrument, learning to dance, becoming an avid gardener, learning to draw, etc) would reduce our risk of developing dementia. It's just that the studies I've encountered don't come anywhere near supporting these ideas. I'm okay with trusting common sense when the scientific method doesn't have much to say on the matter, at least so far.
Still scarred by my oboe playing, I see. It’s been 40 years, dude. The ringing can’t be THAT bad.
It was awful! The Force was not with you, Oboe Wan Kenobe.
I have been learning Spanish!
Go for it, Pam! ¡Adelante!
I was exposed to almost all the Romance languages because I went to a conservatory of music as a singer. I've actually studied three of them, plus Latin, so they soak in very very easily, to the point where a two-week stint in Catalonia had me unthinkingly mixing Spanish and Catalan, something a shopkeeper informed me I was doing (while laughing at me good-naturedly). Are there any good solutions from the linguist perspective for not mixing up vocabulary in closely-related languages?
I also have some Germanic languages, and I find I have a much easier time not mixing vocabulary between German and Dutch because they sound so different. But wow, Italian and Spanish make a fool of me every time and when I'm not careful, Spanish and French can do an uncanny merger that makes me wonder if I just need to move to the Pyrenees.
Hanne, it sounds like you do have a talent for learning languages! As someone who also speaks four Romance languages (plus a little Catalan), I can agree that it is easy to confuse them. As a linguist, I can say two things that come to mind:
First, we tend to learn language in chunks—that is, in sequences of several words. This is true of fixed expressions like "be that as it may", but also less obvious chunks such as "in the middle of the". If you focus on learning the chunks that contain the word of interest, it will probably make it clearer which language we are talking about. For example, compare French "la prochaine sortie" and Spanish "la próxima salida"; in that context, it's pretty clear which language "sortie" comes from and which one "salida" comes from.
Second, intonation (which I imagine you are very good at, having classical training) will also give away the language. So, again, focus on phrases, but also the prosody of the phrase. These are highly characteristic of the language. Compare the bouncy phrasing of Italian "dietro la porta" with the machine-gun rhythm of Spanish "detrás de la puerta". That can also help your memory characterize the words as belonging to the right language.
Finally: hey, moving the Pyrenees doesn't sound at all bad to me! I'll happily come and visit you one you move. 😁
Thanks for this, Greg. I have found myself using the prosody trick sometimes, I shall have to try to do it more systematically. The chunking thing will probably help too. I realize I do it with phrases from songs/arias, though the vocabulary those cover is pretty limited.