4 ms·

>people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what Do these people actually believe that it would be impossible for them, or merely that they w

>people who are convinced they could never learn it no matter what Do these people actually believe that it would be impossible for them, or merely that they would give up before success. i.e. do they think that they would not be able to learn the language in five years if they were offered a billion dollars? Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive.

retrac 4y ago
Some do think that. Often an impression formed from no obvious progress after a few weeks.
malshe 4y ago
I am one of those people who think it is impossible for me to learn a new language!
w0m 4y ago
I could learn another language. But I can't learn a second language insofar-as I can't foresee a situation where I"d be willing or able to dedicate the mental capital toward the task.
HPsquared 4y ago
I think most people who say that probably consider it "not economically viable". That is, their assessment is that the expected reward doesn't justify the expected investment.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive. Yeah—I know I can do it, and even know that I enjoy learning another language, but also know from experience that I don't have enough natural reasons to use anything but English, that I'll have any hope of keeping it up without committing to permanently spending 10+ hours a week doing nothing but practicing the language for the sake of it, all for the occasional few minutes a year (optimistically) in which it's actually useful, or for the once-a-decade trip I might take to somewhere it's widely spoken. Au revoir my once-somewhat-decent French. Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or hopelessly provincial for being so persistently monolingual, but it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly). European learners of other European languages are doing it on easy mode, compared to us. It's hard to find a route anywhere in Europe that long that doesn't pass through at least three different languages, as primarily spoken by the locals, and even finding one with that few takes some effort. So I'm both aware that I can learn another language, and aware that I in-fact won't short of some huge shake-up in my life circumstances, which may as well be the same thing as "can't".
- fluoridation 4y ago
  >it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly) Nonsense. I live in Latin America and English is a second language for me. I'm not sure if there are even any land routes I could take to reach an English-speaking country, as I believe the Colombian jungle interrupts the road. Learning a language is about four things: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. With the Internet you can do three of those four things right from home. Hell, I've been learning English for 24 years and for the first 20 I had maybe one or two conversations with native speakers. The question is not how far you need to travel to speak to a native, but whether there's anything in that language that interests you. Language after all is just a tool to move ideas between people's brains. If there's not then yeah, you would have no reason to learn a language. And I'm sorry to say that does make you provincial. Please don't take it the wrong way; I don't mean it as an insult, just as a statement of fact. You were born into your culture and you're satisfied with ignoring everything else. You've never thought "oh, I wish I could read this, but it's not in English" or "I love this book/show/movie/etc.; I wish I could experience it as a native would", or at least not to the point that it inspired you to learn.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    English is a bit of a special case, being the modern lingua franca (LOL), having two top-tier media producing countries behind it (plus several smaller but not-insignificant ones), and representing an incredible proportion of the world's wealth and economic power. It's telling that a lot of successful creators of foreign-language film, in particular, end up switching to English—it's where the money is, which brings a lot of other benefits to speakers of the language (native or otherwise). I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been (so I gather, anyway) for English-language learners—every option seemed much worse (far shorter, lower quality—which, Friends isn't even that high a bar) and even those were nearly impossible to get ahold of, because the rights holders just didn't care about foreign markets (since no-one who can speak English well is going to care much about a mediocre French sitcom, unless they're like me and trying to learn the language). Music's a little easier, but hell, even there half the time they sing in English. Maybe it's improved since about a decade ago, but at the time, there was just nothing. Meanwhile there are dozens of shows with many, many episodes that could help provide daily exposure to colloquial, conversational English, that are relatively easy to come by (just don't pick The Wire—even Americans have trouble with that, between the authentic Baltimore accents and slang and the pervasive cop-talk). I actually think another language that's got a huge advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. It was hard not to be envious of the Japanese resources and media readily available, even back in the '00s (let alone now), compared with even a language as important and heavily-studied as French. Which is really surprising and impressive when you consider that Japanese is probably the most insular of the major world languages—one might expect French, German, and Spanish, at least, to do at least as well on that front, given that they're read and spoken widely on multiple continents by far more people than live in Japan, but no. I think it's in part because they've been able to resist the shift to preferring English media that other countries have experienced—you look at French TV schedules and there's a lot of translated English media on there, for instance, while I don't think the same is so broadly true in Japan, with the result that they have a stronger domestic media market than many other states.

retrac 4y ago

Some do think that. Often an impression formed from no obvious progress after a few weeks.

malshe 4y ago

I am one of those people who think it is impossible for me to learn a new language!

w0m 4y ago

I could learn another language. But I can't learn a second language insofar-as I can't foresee a situation where I"d be willing or able to dedicate the mental capital toward the task.

HPsquared 4y ago

I think most people who say that probably consider it "not economically viable". That is, their assessment is that the expected reward doesn't justify the expected investment.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> Because personally I doubt I will ever learn a second language, but I'm sure I could given enough time and the right incentive. Yeah—I know I can do it, and even know that I enjoy learning another language, but also know from experience that I don't have enough natural reasons to use anything but English, that I'll have any hope of keeping it up without committing to permanently spending 10+ hours a week doing nothing but practicing the language for the sake of it, all for the occasional few minutes a year (optimistically) in which it's actually useful, or for the once-a-decade trip I might take to somewhere it's widely spoken. Au revoir my once-somewhat-decent French. Europeans sometimes imply Americans are dumb or hopelessly provincial for being so persistently monolingual, but it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly). European learners of other European languages are doing it on easy mode, compared to us. It's hard to find a route anywhere in Europe that long that doesn't pass through at least three different languages, as primarily spoken by the locals, and even finding one with that few takes some effort. So I'm both aware that I can learn another language, and aware that I in-fact won't short of some huge shake-up in my life circumstances, which may as well be the same thing as "can't".

fluoridation 4y ago
>it's hard as fuck to keep up a second language when you can travel 1,000 miles and the locals are all still speaking English (at least, mostly) Nonsense. I live in Latin America and English is a second language for me. I'm not sure if there are even any land routes I could take to reach an English-speaking country, as I believe the Colombian jungle interrupts the road. Learning a language is about four things: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. With the Internet you can do three of those four things right from home. Hell, I've been learning English for 24 years and for the first 20 I had maybe one or two conversations with native speakers. The question is not how far you need to travel to speak to a native, but whether there's anything in that language that interests you. Language after all is just a tool to move ideas between people's brains. If there's not then yeah, you would have no reason to learn a language. And I'm sorry to say that does make you provincial. Please don't take it the wrong way; I don't mean it as an insult, just as a statement of fact. You were born into your culture and you're satisfied with ignoring everything else. You've never thought "oh, I wish I could read this, but it's not in English" or "I love this book/show/movie/etc.; I wish I could experience it as a native would", or at least not to the point that it inspired you to learn.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  English is a bit of a special case, being the modern lingua franca (LOL), having two top-tier media producing countries behind it (plus several smaller but not-insignificant ones), and representing an incredible proportion of the world's wealth and economic power. It's telling that a lot of successful creators of foreign-language film, in particular, end up switching to English—it's where the money is, which brings a lot of other benefits to speakers of the language (native or otherwise). I remember at one point, when I was a still trying to keep up my French, I spent a fair amount of time trying to track down some equivalent to what Friends has been (so I gather, anyway) for English-language learners—every option seemed much worse (far shorter, lower quality—which, Friends isn't even that high a bar) and even those were nearly impossible to get ahold of, because the rights holders just didn't care about foreign markets (since no-one who can speak English well is going to care much about a mediocre French sitcom, unless they're like me and trying to learn the language). Music's a little easier, but hell, even there half the time they sing in English. Maybe it's improved since about a decade ago, but at the time, there was just nothing. Meanwhile there are dozens of shows with many, many episodes that could help provide daily exposure to colloquial, conversational English, that are relatively easy to come by (just don't pick The Wire—even Americans have trouble with that, between the authentic Baltimore accents and slang and the pervasive cop-talk). I actually think another language that's got a huge advantage here, for foreign learners, is Japanese. It was hard not to be envious of the Japanese resources and media readily available, even back in the '00s (let alone now), compared with even a language as important and heavily-studied as French. Which is really surprising and impressive when you consider that Japanese is probably the most insular of the major world languages—one might expect French, German, and Spanish, at least, to do at least as well on that front, given that they're read and spoken widely on multiple continents by far more people than live in Japan, but no. I think it's in part because they've been able to resist the shift to preferring English media that other countries have experienced—you look at French TV schedules and there's a lot of translated English media on there, for instance, while I don't think the same is so broadly true in Japan, with the result that they have a stronger domestic media market than many other states.