A few years back I took private Spanish lessons with my sister, I was crap and didn’t learn anything, no reflection on the teacher , who we knew, shes brilliant, but I just found it so difficult! I think you need to be young to naturally learn.
Interesting you also have an international development element to your career Daniel. And we were in Edinburgh at the same time - I did an undergrad in law there from 2001 - 2005 and studied in french law school in the south of france 2003 - 2004 in an erasmus scheme. I am sure we must have passed in the street sometime! I agree that having a need to learn a language increases motivation. Of all the languages I have learned - french is one I am glad to have studied in a classroom - its got so many grammar quirks I do think its hard to learn from a book.
Wow, we might've crossed paths in either Edinburgh or the south of France. I love(d) Edinburgh and it's funny that it came down to an agonising choice between studying there and Warwick. I think I chose wisely, although the delights of the city made studying hard, especially with our dissertations due in September and the festival in all of August. I also spent way too many [messy] nights at a place Medina, which might not be around anymore.
Another good point re: languages, something I've written about elsewhere - it also depends on *what* you need it for and your priorities. If it's just to get by and nothing professional then it's okay to make mistakes and as long as you're understood, that's fine. If I had managed to land a job in Senegal or somewhere similar (I think we applied to a job there), then I would've had to make sure I had the grammar down. Living for as long as I did in Ukraine, I was a bit half-hearted with my grammatical accuracy.
Yes Edinburgh was an interesting place to study and I still believe one of the best cities in the world as long as you have a strategy to get through the winter ok. I remember Medina - that is funny - last time I checked it is not there anymore but sometimes those places come back around. That is true about languages - when I learned Burmese it was very useful for sorting out logistics, booking a hotel, chatting to my cleaner, buying things at the market, chit chatting to people but I couldn't do the intense technical stuff and partly that was because I knew it wasn't needed for my job - whereas the logistics vocab was very useful for getting around. It was also extremely difficult and time-consuming to memorise. I
Hmmm...interesting, but I have to say, I've had some painfully tedious conversations with drunk language learners and from my perspective, it's damn hard work! I've also had drunk students come to class and they've sometimes been belligerent and offensive.
I'm absolutely terrible at learning languages but I can order a raspberry tart in France. Even saying "croissant" in the UK makes me cringe though - are you supposed to add the accent or not?!
I often have this argument/discussion with my brother-in-law, who makes fun of the way I say 'croissant' - I say it the English way, cruh-sahnt. He - the fluent French speaker, btw - says it should be the French pronunciation. But then my take is we use the English pronunciation for other French words, like restaurant, filet and baton (though interestingly, Americans pronounced 'filet' and 'baton' the French way).
I am a terrible language learner. I took both French and German at school, and got hopelessly confused between the two when it came to exam time. What makes it worse is that my grandfather was actually German, so I should/could have focused my efforts there.
I make an effort, whenever I travel, to at least learn 'please,' 'thank you' and 'two beers, please.' The essentials.
Your "living in France" starter pack is funny in the most decadent intellectual way and deserves an illustration! Also, my mother visited a week ago and got me a capybara plushie as we were walking around Riga. They need to update the map.
Fantastic, a capybara for you too! I’ll find a more up to date map.
Okay, what you say about France, you’ll never believe it, but I do have an incredible illustration of it. The English woman I referred to drew an amazing map of all the characters and events from our time, but frustratingly it’s in a box somewhere in the US with my parents. I wanted to ask them to dig it out, but they’ve just moved and everything’s a mess. One of these days I’ll find it and show you.
These are very intriguing categories, Daniel. Growing up in the midwestern US, I learned French (six years) and then German (two years) in school. My 14-year-old self pondered where in the world I could ever use *both* these languages and came up with Switzerland, but could not for the life of me figure out what I would possibly do there.
I think I left out an important part in my post (oops) - I really wanted to live in the US and I felt so American while living in Spain and Germany, and I never envisaged moving back to Europe. I thought I'd either end up in the UK or US. I simply never thought I'd ever need other languages besides English. How provincial and arrogant of me!
Well you've just made me feel a heck of a lot better about my shoddy Thai after 15 years in Thailand! Also, excellent tip to find someone who's stoned to have a conversation with in the language you're learning. I shall keep this one in mind for Spanish!
Oh to be young again, traveling the world and collecting such great stories!
I spent my junior year of college at a university in Germany. Shortly after arriving, I met a student from Spain who had grown up in Germany. In those days, he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish, so my ability to speak German grew by leaps and bounds!
After returning to the US, I took accelerated Spanish (it covered 3 quarters in one quarter) then moved to Mexico to teach English. There I fell in love with a wonderful man from Mexico, which greatly accelerated my Spanish.
My first husband was from the Netherlands. We lived in the States and always spoke in English, so I never learned to speak Dutch. But I did learn enough Dutch to understand conversations.
My second husband is Austrian. He speaks a dialect I don't understand and does not like speaking standard German, so we use English. Even so, my German has improved (after 40 years of nonuse) again because I use German with all of his friends and family.
So falling in love with a foreigner can clearly help you learn a foreign language, and I highly recommend it!
I had to reread this to process it all! Wow, this would form part of a great language learning guide. I have a story about an ex-girlfriend's language learning strategy I was saving for part 2, but I don't think it can top all of this. Romance is the way to go, for sure - need/motivation - who needs language lessons anyway?
Yes, this is how / why my husband (born in West Germany) and I (born in Chicago) are both totally bilingual despite his never living in the US and my never living in Germany.
Language learning is fascinating. I had French and German lessons in school, and learned the bare minimum because a) I didn't think I was going to live anywhere where those languages were spoken and b) language lessons in the UK (at least in the early 2000s) were pretty ineffectual. I've picked up all my Greek by 'immersion' - and like you I am NOT a natural 'languages' person. Although I've only spoken in Greek in my 'outside' life since I got here (except to a select few people e.g. my friend who's an English teacher), I'm pretty poor at it because I speak English both at work and at home - the places where I spend the majority of my time. I'm fine at ordinary, everyday exchanges, and my understanding is good, but conversing about things on a deeper level is still beyond me, and that has made me feel quite lonely sometimes. As you say, it's my own fault, though. I don't 'immerse' myself as much as I should because we speak English at home, I read the kids English books, listen to English music (mostly) and watch English-language films. This has, however, given the children a phenomenal grasp of the language - their vocabulary is C1/2 level, even the 8-year-old! The funny thing is, I've never pushed the reading and writing, and while my oldest is on par with her peers (who, by the way, mostly have incredible English), the youngest is behind in English reading and writing because all her friends go to language school (after normal school). The 10-year-old I guess is fine - she's hoovering up Percy Jackson at a rate of knots anyway! I've met people who've lived here for 2 years with brilliant Greek, and others who have been here 30 and still struggle. It's mostly about exposure, but also, as your title says, some people suck at learning languages. I feel, deep down, that I am one of those people, but I can't use that as an excuse - if. for example, I couldn't work without learning Greek, I'd be pretty fluent by now. I do, however, have a lot of other excuses (see above)!
Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to comment, your insight is really interesting. Yeah, I probably left out the part where I could've mentioned I never expected to be living in Spain or Germany in the future and I figured, 'what's the point?' I wanted to live in America so badly and never envisaged returning to Europe and I honestly have no recollection of my parents encouraging me either (which is why I jokingly half-blame them!)
In part 2 I'll touch on some of the things you've mentioned, but in contrast to you I guess, I never feel too lonely and even though I spent so much time in the classroom as a teacher, I'm generally pretty un-social (or anti-social?). So I was generally fine doing my own thing and any time I had friends I went out with, especially in Ukraine, they just wanted to practise their English all the time. I'd make attempts to speak Russian and people would answer me in English if they knew any, which happened more than I'd like (for language learning purposes).
Kids are truly amazing, aren't they? The way they pick up language, hoovering up is a great way of putting it. My daughter is fluent in 3 languages and nearly a 4th and it's just a product of circumstances and where she's grown up. I never expected her to speak such good English and now I'm blown away by how good she is, using vocabulary my father doesn't even understand!
You have lived about 800 different lives! I'm not sure if it is unusual that you ended up as a teacher by trade (mentor by mistake) whilst not really getting into languages yourself, or perhaps there's a roundabout link there... All I know is I want to hear the saucy end to the story with the profesora 😂 And also that I don't think I have any talent for languages at all, I learnt Spanish by absolute pure determination because I liked the idea of being able to say I was bilingual. Enjoying these identity and belonging posts a lot!
I'll have to save that saucy end for another time (or for a book!).
Isn't pure determination also related to talent? I think it might be. My problem is that I'd like to say I was bilingual or multilingual and I'm in awe of those who are, but I don't think I have the oomph to put in the effort to get there. I just don't enjoy the process enough, and I've always managed to fumble my way through wherever I've lived with the bare minimum.
Multilingual people are very impressive. I had a good friend in Madrid who was 24 and spoke five languages fluently, including Arabic. So obviously we aren’t friends anymore 😅
I think with learning in general it’s good to go with what ignites your curiosity (‘what your interests draw you to and your talents fit you for’ to quote AC Grayling), otherwise it’s just a slog. Sometimes that slog is worth it, but most of the time you are probably just making life harder than it needs to be. (That’s the plural ‘you’ by the way!)
This is such an interesting topic because it's practical... language learning isn’t easy for everyone, and not all of us are naturally wired for it. I was actually thinking about this recently and realized that, broadly speaking, there are three kinds of people when it comes to learning languages:
The Survivors – For them, it’s a matter of necessity. They’ve moved to a new country and have to learn the language in order to live, work, and function day to day.
The Intellectuals – They’re in it for the love of the language itself. They find the structure, history, and nuances fascinating, and enjoy the process of studying it as an academic or personal pursuit.
The FOMO-driven – For lack of a better term, these folks hate the idea of being left out. If they’re abroad, they need to understand what’s going on around them. It’s less about survival or pure interest, and more about staying in the loop and feeling connected.
I love these categories - I'm tempted to steal/borrow them for my part 2, when it gets slightly more theoretical (giving you full credit, of course!)
Funnily, I don't think I fit into any of these categories, but maybe The Survivors is the most logical - but just the bare minimum, enough to get by (restaurants, markets, doctors, etc). I did, as I'll reveal in the sequel to this sorry tale, get my Russian to a really good level at one point, but then my need/motivation disappeared and I let it slide.
I am a native speaker (I hate that expression too, by the way) of two languages, which ironically always seemed to kill my motivation to truly master further languages... My logic always deducted that I would never achieve a level at which I would be able to speak and write as eloquently as I can in the two languages I grew up speaking, so why bother?! I studied Spanish while completing high school within the German educational system, but never stuck with it for the reason mentioned above (which is probably just laziness in disguise). I can order a beer and multiple scoops of ice cream in Spanish (up to 50 because that's how far I can still count) - the essentials 😌
I'm not sure about ice cream, but being able to order beer is easily a major priority in any language! So you can order 50 beers, great!
You've captured one of my key points for part 2 - knowing that I'm unlikely to master another language to the extent of my English and if I can get by without learning it, then what's the point? Plus, I'm not terribly social so I'm rarely eager to chat with people (other than barmaids, I guess, a bad habit, but one I kicked long ago, haha).
Honestly, just speaking 2 languages fluently like you do is incredible as it is, so you're in great shape.
As for me...just a bad, bad language learner (and a poor model for my own students)
Exactly, 50 beers or 50 scoops of ice cream - either way, I'll be sick in the end and in need of medical attention (bad because my knowledge of Spanish no longer goes beyond what I mentioned, meaning I may be left to die)...
Ooooh, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's been using that excuse then!
I do very much appreciate having grown up in a bilingual household. I find there's this essence to any language that you just can't capture completely unless you grew up speaking it or learned it in a country where it's spoken and then continue to live there for a looooooong time. The first is more effortless, so I'm grateful I had the advantage...
A few years back I took private Spanish lessons with my sister, I was crap and didn’t learn anything, no reflection on the teacher , who we knew, shes brilliant, but I just found it so difficult! I think you need to be young to naturally learn.
Also I want to know the saucy end ?? 🤣🤣🤣
Eventually I will reveal the saucy end - when the time is right 😉
Interesting you also have an international development element to your career Daniel. And we were in Edinburgh at the same time - I did an undergrad in law there from 2001 - 2005 and studied in french law school in the south of france 2003 - 2004 in an erasmus scheme. I am sure we must have passed in the street sometime! I agree that having a need to learn a language increases motivation. Of all the languages I have learned - french is one I am glad to have studied in a classroom - its got so many grammar quirks I do think its hard to learn from a book.
Wow, we might've crossed paths in either Edinburgh or the south of France. I love(d) Edinburgh and it's funny that it came down to an agonising choice between studying there and Warwick. I think I chose wisely, although the delights of the city made studying hard, especially with our dissertations due in September and the festival in all of August. I also spent way too many [messy] nights at a place Medina, which might not be around anymore.
Another good point re: languages, something I've written about elsewhere - it also depends on *what* you need it for and your priorities. If it's just to get by and nothing professional then it's okay to make mistakes and as long as you're understood, that's fine. If I had managed to land a job in Senegal or somewhere similar (I think we applied to a job there), then I would've had to make sure I had the grammar down. Living for as long as I did in Ukraine, I was a bit half-hearted with my grammatical accuracy.
Yes Edinburgh was an interesting place to study and I still believe one of the best cities in the world as long as you have a strategy to get through the winter ok. I remember Medina - that is funny - last time I checked it is not there anymore but sometimes those places come back around. That is true about languages - when I learned Burmese it was very useful for sorting out logistics, booking a hotel, chatting to my cleaner, buying things at the market, chit chatting to people but I couldn't do the intense technical stuff and partly that was because I knew it wasn't needed for my job - whereas the logistics vocab was very useful for getting around. It was also extremely difficult and time-consuming to memorise. I
Talking to drunks is also good be ause tbey repeat tbemselves a lot.
Hmmm...interesting, but I have to say, I've had some painfully tedious conversations with drunk language learners and from my perspective, it's damn hard work! I've also had drunk students come to class and they've sometimes been belligerent and offensive.
I'm an old TEFL hand myself.
I'm absolutely terrible at learning languages but I can order a raspberry tart in France. Even saying "croissant" in the UK makes me cringe though - are you supposed to add the accent or not?!
I often have this argument/discussion with my brother-in-law, who makes fun of the way I say 'croissant' - I say it the English way, cruh-sahnt. He - the fluent French speaker, btw - says it should be the French pronunciation. But then my take is we use the English pronunciation for other French words, like restaurant, filet and baton (though interestingly, Americans pronounced 'filet' and 'baton' the French way).
I honestly have no idea anymore!
Exactly! And if you don't know, then no one does! I'll go back to pointing at things I think.
I am a terrible language learner. I took both French and German at school, and got hopelessly confused between the two when it came to exam time. What makes it worse is that my grandfather was actually German, so I should/could have focused my efforts there.
I make an effort, whenever I travel, to at least learn 'please,' 'thank you' and 'two beers, please.' The essentials.
Your "living in France" starter pack is funny in the most decadent intellectual way and deserves an illustration! Also, my mother visited a week ago and got me a capybara plushie as we were walking around Riga. They need to update the map.
Fantastic, a capybara for you too! I’ll find a more up to date map.
Okay, what you say about France, you’ll never believe it, but I do have an incredible illustration of it. The English woman I referred to drew an amazing map of all the characters and events from our time, but frustratingly it’s in a box somewhere in the US with my parents. I wanted to ask them to dig it out, but they’ve just moved and everything’s a mess. One of these days I’ll find it and show you.
These are very intriguing categories, Daniel. Growing up in the midwestern US, I learned French (six years) and then German (two years) in school. My 14-year-old self pondered where in the world I could ever use *both* these languages and came up with Switzerland, but could not for the life of me figure out what I would possibly do there.
I think I left out an important part in my post (oops) - I really wanted to live in the US and I felt so American while living in Spain and Germany, and I never envisaged moving back to Europe. I thought I'd either end up in the UK or US. I simply never thought I'd ever need other languages besides English. How provincial and arrogant of me!
Well you've just made me feel a heck of a lot better about my shoddy Thai after 15 years in Thailand! Also, excellent tip to find someone who's stoned to have a conversation with in the language you're learning. I shall keep this one in mind for Spanish!
Oh to be young again, traveling the world and collecting such great stories!
I spent my junior year of college at a university in Germany. Shortly after arriving, I met a student from Spain who had grown up in Germany. In those days, he didn't speak English and I didn't speak Spanish, so my ability to speak German grew by leaps and bounds!
After returning to the US, I took accelerated Spanish (it covered 3 quarters in one quarter) then moved to Mexico to teach English. There I fell in love with a wonderful man from Mexico, which greatly accelerated my Spanish.
My first husband was from the Netherlands. We lived in the States and always spoke in English, so I never learned to speak Dutch. But I did learn enough Dutch to understand conversations.
My second husband is Austrian. He speaks a dialect I don't understand and does not like speaking standard German, so we use English. Even so, my German has improved (after 40 years of nonuse) again because I use German with all of his friends and family.
So falling in love with a foreigner can clearly help you learn a foreign language, and I highly recommend it!
I had to reread this to process it all! Wow, this would form part of a great language learning guide. I have a story about an ex-girlfriend's language learning strategy I was saving for part 2, but I don't think it can top all of this. Romance is the way to go, for sure - need/motivation - who needs language lessons anyway?
Yes, this is how / why my husband (born in West Germany) and I (born in Chicago) are both totally bilingual despite his never living in the US and my never living in Germany.
Language learning is fascinating. I had French and German lessons in school, and learned the bare minimum because a) I didn't think I was going to live anywhere where those languages were spoken and b) language lessons in the UK (at least in the early 2000s) were pretty ineffectual. I've picked up all my Greek by 'immersion' - and like you I am NOT a natural 'languages' person. Although I've only spoken in Greek in my 'outside' life since I got here (except to a select few people e.g. my friend who's an English teacher), I'm pretty poor at it because I speak English both at work and at home - the places where I spend the majority of my time. I'm fine at ordinary, everyday exchanges, and my understanding is good, but conversing about things on a deeper level is still beyond me, and that has made me feel quite lonely sometimes. As you say, it's my own fault, though. I don't 'immerse' myself as much as I should because we speak English at home, I read the kids English books, listen to English music (mostly) and watch English-language films. This has, however, given the children a phenomenal grasp of the language - their vocabulary is C1/2 level, even the 8-year-old! The funny thing is, I've never pushed the reading and writing, and while my oldest is on par with her peers (who, by the way, mostly have incredible English), the youngest is behind in English reading and writing because all her friends go to language school (after normal school). The 10-year-old I guess is fine - she's hoovering up Percy Jackson at a rate of knots anyway! I've met people who've lived here for 2 years with brilliant Greek, and others who have been here 30 and still struggle. It's mostly about exposure, but also, as your title says, some people suck at learning languages. I feel, deep down, that I am one of those people, but I can't use that as an excuse - if. for example, I couldn't work without learning Greek, I'd be pretty fluent by now. I do, however, have a lot of other excuses (see above)!
Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to comment, your insight is really interesting. Yeah, I probably left out the part where I could've mentioned I never expected to be living in Spain or Germany in the future and I figured, 'what's the point?' I wanted to live in America so badly and never envisaged returning to Europe and I honestly have no recollection of my parents encouraging me either (which is why I jokingly half-blame them!)
In part 2 I'll touch on some of the things you've mentioned, but in contrast to you I guess, I never feel too lonely and even though I spent so much time in the classroom as a teacher, I'm generally pretty un-social (or anti-social?). So I was generally fine doing my own thing and any time I had friends I went out with, especially in Ukraine, they just wanted to practise their English all the time. I'd make attempts to speak Russian and people would answer me in English if they knew any, which happened more than I'd like (for language learning purposes).
Kids are truly amazing, aren't they? The way they pick up language, hoovering up is a great way of putting it. My daughter is fluent in 3 languages and nearly a 4th and it's just a product of circumstances and where she's grown up. I never expected her to speak such good English and now I'm blown away by how good she is, using vocabulary my father doesn't even understand!
You have lived about 800 different lives! I'm not sure if it is unusual that you ended up as a teacher by trade (mentor by mistake) whilst not really getting into languages yourself, or perhaps there's a roundabout link there... All I know is I want to hear the saucy end to the story with the profesora 😂 And also that I don't think I have any talent for languages at all, I learnt Spanish by absolute pure determination because I liked the idea of being able to say I was bilingual. Enjoying these identity and belonging posts a lot!
I'll have to save that saucy end for another time (or for a book!).
Isn't pure determination also related to talent? I think it might be. My problem is that I'd like to say I was bilingual or multilingual and I'm in awe of those who are, but I don't think I have the oomph to put in the effort to get there. I just don't enjoy the process enough, and I've always managed to fumble my way through wherever I've lived with the bare minimum.
Thank you 🤗
It definitely hasn’t stopped you getting around!
Multilingual people are very impressive. I had a good friend in Madrid who was 24 and spoke five languages fluently, including Arabic. So obviously we aren’t friends anymore 😅
I think with learning in general it’s good to go with what ignites your curiosity (‘what your interests draw you to and your talents fit you for’ to quote AC Grayling), otherwise it’s just a slog. Sometimes that slog is worth it, but most of the time you are probably just making life harder than it needs to be. (That’s the plural ‘you’ by the way!)
In my case, the singular ‘you’ would also apply - I’m very good at unnecessarily making my life harder. All I long for is simplicity, but alas…
This is such an interesting topic because it's practical... language learning isn’t easy for everyone, and not all of us are naturally wired for it. I was actually thinking about this recently and realized that, broadly speaking, there are three kinds of people when it comes to learning languages:
The Survivors – For them, it’s a matter of necessity. They’ve moved to a new country and have to learn the language in order to live, work, and function day to day.
The Intellectuals – They’re in it for the love of the language itself. They find the structure, history, and nuances fascinating, and enjoy the process of studying it as an academic or personal pursuit.
The FOMO-driven – For lack of a better term, these folks hate the idea of being left out. If they’re abroad, they need to understand what’s going on around them. It’s less about survival or pure interest, and more about staying in the loop and feeling connected.
I love these categories - I'm tempted to steal/borrow them for my part 2, when it gets slightly more theoretical (giving you full credit, of course!)
Funnily, I don't think I fit into any of these categories, but maybe The Survivors is the most logical - but just the bare minimum, enough to get by (restaurants, markets, doctors, etc). I did, as I'll reveal in the sequel to this sorry tale, get my Russian to a really good level at one point, but then my need/motivation disappeared and I let it slide.
I am a native speaker (I hate that expression too, by the way) of two languages, which ironically always seemed to kill my motivation to truly master further languages... My logic always deducted that I would never achieve a level at which I would be able to speak and write as eloquently as I can in the two languages I grew up speaking, so why bother?! I studied Spanish while completing high school within the German educational system, but never stuck with it for the reason mentioned above (which is probably just laziness in disguise). I can order a beer and multiple scoops of ice cream in Spanish (up to 50 because that's how far I can still count) - the essentials 😌
I'm not sure about ice cream, but being able to order beer is easily a major priority in any language! So you can order 50 beers, great!
You've captured one of my key points for part 2 - knowing that I'm unlikely to master another language to the extent of my English and if I can get by without learning it, then what's the point? Plus, I'm not terribly social so I'm rarely eager to chat with people (other than barmaids, I guess, a bad habit, but one I kicked long ago, haha).
Honestly, just speaking 2 languages fluently like you do is incredible as it is, so you're in great shape.
As for me...just a bad, bad language learner (and a poor model for my own students)
Exactly, 50 beers or 50 scoops of ice cream - either way, I'll be sick in the end and in need of medical attention (bad because my knowledge of Spanish no longer goes beyond what I mentioned, meaning I may be left to die)...
Ooooh, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's been using that excuse then!
I do very much appreciate having grown up in a bilingual household. I find there's this essence to any language that you just can't capture completely unless you grew up speaking it or learned it in a country where it's spoken and then continue to live there for a looooooong time. The first is more effortless, so I'm grateful I had the advantage...
Looking forward to part 2!