In the self-taught language-learning community, a common goal is complete native fluency. As for me, there's no need to go that extreme. First of all, being able to speak perfectly like you lived your whole life in the target culture, that's very difficult. Some linguists say it's impossible for an adult to pull off (well, I disagree there, but it is a lot of work.) But more importantly, it's really better to be just on the verge of perfect fluency.
First, there's the accent issue. Accents are awesome. You definitely don't want to lose yours. Here in the U.S., for example, there's a kind of stereotype that French speakers are very sexy and passionate. Imagine two Frenchmen migrate to the States. One of them always speaks with a distinct Franco color. The other studies his butt off day and night until you can't tell him apart from a natural born speaker. Who's gonna get more girls? Obviously, the one with the exotic words and speech! The other guy just went to all that trouble to make girls think he came from Idaho or Kansas or something.
My girlfriend loves when I talk to her in Japanese. I have a cute California accent that any jgirl just fawns over. I don't have enough vocabulary to be a sexy ninja, so I settle for being an adorable ninja. When I need to whip out some sexy, I use English, at which I'm really really good ;) I can't wait 'til I've expanded my lexicon enough to evoke the sexy foreigner persona.
Next, if you do manage to learn to speak and read to absolute perfection, you're done. By definition, there's nothing new for you to learn. (Well, of course, we're always learning new linguistic devices, even in our own mother tongue, but it's not really "learning" so much as it is just keeping up with natural linguistic change.) Why is it bad to have nothing new to learn? Because learning is the whole joy of multilingualism. Once you actually finish the acquisition process, using it is no longer an amazing game and adventure, it just becomes everyday life-- by definition. Like with me studying Japanspeak, I don't have any intention of going to Japan and becoming a salaryman. The work world sucks arse in the Land of the Rising Sun, it's one of the most stressful countries to live in the world. Neither do I plan to use my skills to hit on jgirls-- for that, English is usually better.
It's a fact-- if I drank down a mystical potion that gave me total native fluency, I'd essentially lose one of my hobbies. Studying langs is something I do, something to unwind and relax.
Lastly, there's the ability to appreciate the beauty of the target lang. When it's foreign, it sounds beautiful and exotic. As you begin accumulating knowledge, to the point where you can start making things out and even understanding whole conversations and articles in the target script, your appreciation of the aesthetic qualities increases more and more. But only to a point. If you actually manage to gain so much skill its like your first tongue, then you can no longer "hear" it. Just like you can't "hear" your mother tongue: your mind filters out the actual sounds, replacing them with parsed semantic meaning. I've actually "heard" English, and it sounds kind of similar to German-- see my article, The Sound of your Native Tongue-- but that was an unusual situation.
SLA became more fun and enjoyable for me once I realized I shouldn't hold myself toward such an extreme goal as perfect speaking fluently. I take it a little less seriously now and I have more fun-- and the ironic thing is, when you're having more fun, your mind works better, so I'm actually making better progress now than when I was pushing myself.
FURTHER READING
Using Multiple SRS Decks: Another article where I really step away from the usual views of the self-taught SLA community.
What Is An Official Language? An article concerning the debate about whether or not English should be officialized in the U.S.
Japanese False Cognates: Words which resemble Western words, but only by pure coincidence, not by deliberate borrowing.
First, there's the accent issue. Accents are awesome. You definitely don't want to lose yours. Here in the U.S., for example, there's a kind of stereotype that French speakers are very sexy and passionate. Imagine two Frenchmen migrate to the States. One of them always speaks with a distinct Franco color. The other studies his butt off day and night until you can't tell him apart from a natural born speaker. Who's gonna get more girls? Obviously, the one with the exotic words and speech! The other guy just went to all that trouble to make girls think he came from Idaho or Kansas or something.
My girlfriend loves when I talk to her in Japanese. I have a cute California accent that any jgirl just fawns over. I don't have enough vocabulary to be a sexy ninja, so I settle for being an adorable ninja. When I need to whip out some sexy, I use English, at which I'm really really good ;) I can't wait 'til I've expanded my lexicon enough to evoke the sexy foreigner persona.
Next, if you do manage to learn to speak and read to absolute perfection, you're done. By definition, there's nothing new for you to learn. (Well, of course, we're always learning new linguistic devices, even in our own mother tongue, but it's not really "learning" so much as it is just keeping up with natural linguistic change.) Why is it bad to have nothing new to learn? Because learning is the whole joy of multilingualism. Once you actually finish the acquisition process, using it is no longer an amazing game and adventure, it just becomes everyday life-- by definition. Like with me studying Japanspeak, I don't have any intention of going to Japan and becoming a salaryman. The work world sucks arse in the Land of the Rising Sun, it's one of the most stressful countries to live in the world. Neither do I plan to use my skills to hit on jgirls-- for that, English is usually better.
It's a fact-- if I drank down a mystical potion that gave me total native fluency, I'd essentially lose one of my hobbies. Studying langs is something I do, something to unwind and relax.
Lastly, there's the ability to appreciate the beauty of the target lang. When it's foreign, it sounds beautiful and exotic. As you begin accumulating knowledge, to the point where you can start making things out and even understanding whole conversations and articles in the target script, your appreciation of the aesthetic qualities increases more and more. But only to a point. If you actually manage to gain so much skill its like your first tongue, then you can no longer "hear" it. Just like you can't "hear" your mother tongue: your mind filters out the actual sounds, replacing them with parsed semantic meaning. I've actually "heard" English, and it sounds kind of similar to German-- see my article, The Sound of your Native Tongue-- but that was an unusual situation.
SLA became more fun and enjoyable for me once I realized I shouldn't hold myself toward such an extreme goal as perfect speaking fluently. I take it a little less seriously now and I have more fun-- and the ironic thing is, when you're having more fun, your mind works better, so I'm actually making better progress now than when I was pushing myself.
FURTHER READING
Using Multiple SRS Decks: Another article where I really step away from the usual views of the self-taught SLA community.
What Is An Official Language? An article concerning the debate about whether or not English should be officialized in the U.S.
Japanese False Cognates: Words which resemble Western words, but only by pure coincidence, not by deliberate borrowing.
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1 comments:
I disagree with you here. Obviously, every person does his own priorities and decides how much time/energy to invest in studying X. But you outline here why it's *bad* to be fluent in a language, and to me it even looks a bit like excuses (like in the fable with the fox that doesn't succeed in getting an apple hanging on a tree so he walks away thinking "it's rotten anyway".)
First of all, I agree that learning is fun. But even if you, let's say, become fluent in a foreign language it's not as if there's nothing more in the world to learn. You can begin learning another language!
And more than that, I think that when you become fluent (or becoming anywhere near this) that's where the magic appears. When you can freely use a language (hence the word "fluent") there's a wide new world opening to you. There's a whole new group of people you can interact with easily (nihonjin with nihongo; Germans, Austrians etc. with German; Brazilians and Portuguese with Portuguese and so forth), you can read foreign literature in it's original (I'm a big "fan" of literature, so to me it means a lot) or any other media (films, music..). There's a huge amount of cultural information you gain access to, since many times there are a lot of things untranslated - and now you can even be the one to translate them!
As for the "exotic" issue. Just because you are familiar or fluent in several languages doesn't mean they all sound the same to you (myself, being born in Russia, living in Israel and interacting a lot with computers and the internet, I'm quite fluent in three languages). My Russian is actually the worst of the three, but my parents have remarked how Russian poetry (of Pushkin, for example) is beautiful, even though it's in their native tongue.
To me, you left the impression that you study languages for the studies' sake themselves. On one hand I admire that. But I know it's not entirely true, not really the case. Japanese culture fascinates me too, and seeing a remark of your about Anime I understand where does it come from. But maybe when you get really (too?) concentrated on the methodology of the studies itself (and that is necessary when the prevailing methods are outright bad) you forget for what purpose you study the language to begin with.
Is it to be cool, to feel smart? or is it to be able to connect to other people and their heritage and current cultural conduct?
Mark.
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