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Comment by delis-thumbs-7e | Hacker News Reader

None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German. You can get to A2 level pretty easy (in most indoeuropean languages at least), but jumping to B1 can seriously be a year or more of studying. You have to be able to handle basic daily situations in the given language and understand what is said in a TV or Radio show. With practice you can get there especially if you live in the country and force yourself to speak the language, but easy it is not.

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It's not easy. I learned Japanese at 28 and am now proficient. But I didn't want to spend my whole life asking other people to translate things for me, being permanently ostracised from conversations, or causing problems for others by forcing them to speak English. It's basic decency imo.

It's less of a basic decency if you're in a country where almost everyone is fluent in English, you get by your life just fine in English, speaking the local language doesn't open new doors, as you're not going to be "native level" speaker no matter how much you study (and many would prefer to speak English with you if you have less than native level of German), learning the local language would take many years of continuous time and effort that could be spent elsewhere, and in the end you're not even sure how many more years you want to stay before leaving.

Then leave.

Considering so many people here are feeling extremely strongly about their right to not learn a language and the absurd amount of apathy I honestly see zero goodwill here.

Like, no one is arguing based on personal failure, saying they failed to learn the language. They're saying they are busy raising a family as an adult in a foreign country and learning the locals language is a waste of time.

I'm in such severe disbelief. Like, how can any rational and sane person even think that?

How can you decide to go to a foreign country and then decide that actually all of that country is bad including the language and say you're above the locals and their stupid language and then expect to be considered a welcome guest?

Obviously the host wants the unwanted guests to leave.

I think it's a mistake to assume that speaking the local language wouldn't be a good investment of time. It absolutely does change the way people see and treat you, even if you're not aware.

If natives choose to converse with you mostly in English, it's because it's (in many situations) obviously less friction for both - but to be recognised as having put in some effort changes your status (caveats notwithstanding).

Have you ever been on vacation where you could speak the native language (assuming you do speak any second language besides English)? It's a night and day difference, my friend.

If you restrict yourself to those areas of life where this effect isn't noticeable (e.g. an english speaking workplace and communities), that's okay, but you are effectively limiting your participation in the host society in a broader sense. I understand that can be a reasonable decision for any individual, but one should be under no illusions.

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German.

I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often not easy to convince that not everybody is as talented in language learning as they are.

Believe me, I know this kind of people:

I just want to quote some polyglot person who very casually said: "Being fluent in five languages is not something to be proud of - this is rather minimum standard." (she had the opinion that rather keeping fluent in 10 [!] languages is something that takes steady learning efforts to retain the obtained level in all of the 10 languages).

I've always heard it said that "polyglot" starts with the fourth language. The opinion is that to have a at-home (family) language, an outdoor (regional) language and a market (capital) language is too common to be considered truly exceptional. Once you pick up the fourth, you're getting into hobby territory.

Kató Lomb (maybe the first official "simultaneous translator" wrote about gaining, losing, and maintaining languages entertainingly and in detail.

edit:

"Polyglot: How I Learn Languages" https://www.tesl-ej.org/books/lomb-2nd-Ed.pdf

"With Languages in Mind: Musings of a Polyglot" https://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej78/WLIM.pdf

This reminds me of Xiaomanyc.

When I first found the channel I was like "wow that dude speaks so many languages so well!".

He does not. I can't really judge for most languages of course, but for the ones I can, he really isn't good at all :shrug:

Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

> Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

The kind of people that I know and have in mind are not this way. They often rather compete for the most complicated and different language families. :-)

I do typos and grammar mistakes in four languages (only two of them fluently) and it’s pretty easy to learn basic vocabulary, read a bit of a comic book and order coffee with a thick accent. A lot of “polyglots” who can do basic phrases in 11 languages and make videos about it on YouTube. There’s people who genuinely speak plenty of languages fluently, but they are quite humble about it. Reaching B1 after completing A2 is 200-300h of study, preferably in a class. That’s a lot for a working adult with a family.

However, there is plenty of people who think that they speak a language because they can order a coffee in some language close to theirs and have never lived in a foreign country for any extended period of time, ie. don’t know what they are talking about, and arguing from the position of complete ignorance say “just learn the language”.

The idea that there’s one country with one language is very recent actually, part of the nationalistic idealism of 19th Century. Most of the history, as it is still today, any nation is a mishmash of cultures, languages, dialects of various kinds and origins, there of course always being some official one (used to be Latin, then French, now it’s TikTok-memes). The fact that pur systems cannot facilitate that multitude is a shame and I believe those systems that can will succeed.

I think it can be more useful to think in terms of hours of lessons rather than time spent learning. My partner is learning french right now at a private school and they have occasional classes (1h30 once a week), middle ground (2h twice a week) or intensive classes (4h five times a week). The program is always 70h, but you can either do it in a month, a semester or a year.

Having learned czech, I only had 1h30 a week and it took me 5 years to get to B1. I agree that the steps to A2 are much simpler because it focuses more on simple phrases and vocabulary, so you also learn it outside of the classes by reading descriptions, signs, menus. For B1 and up, you definitely need to practice by having deeper discussions with people or reading articles.

You are completely right, and hours spent (in class) is how say US Foreign Service measures how quickly you get somewhat competent in a given language. There’s a lot of hoopla about just immersing yourself to the language and so on, but for most people achieving B1 means going to classes several hours every week for quite awhile.

Why does that matter?

It's honestly absurd to make the case that you don't have time to learn the language of a country you're spending 100% of your day in.

What are you doing all day? The people who are struggling to learn a language tend to be the people who have zero pressure to learn a language.

The most time consuming part of language learning is immersion, meaning that you just listen to or speak the language, without going out of your way to do any language lessons at all.

How many languages have ypu learned with your immersion technique? Maybe you should search a bit of research on how successfull your immersion is for adults learning a new langauge. Perhaps then take a look what research says people who actually learn new languages (not youtube polyglots, people who have to do it for work etc.) do.

I would disagree about it not being "easy". Learning a language certainly takes time and effort, but the fact that even the dumbest people in society can speak fluently, that literal toddlers learn languages, shows that it's far from difficult.

It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the language and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to struggle with. It's telling that children from non-English countries naturally become completely fluent in English by just playing video games and watching YouTube videos, while adults will struggle for years to reach conversational fluency in their second language.

…young children have immense neural plasticity while adults, especially 40+, have little.

Imo this is so overrated, the biggest difference is that children have 100% exposure and almost all language they come across is tailored exactly to the right level, just for them.

Just as importantly, they have little to no alternative. And then they are given every opportunity to learn—at school, by parents, and so on.

this is massively overrated. Given the same amount of exposure, adults win every single time. Just look at the other people in this thread decrying the idea that it could possibly take 5 years to learn a language. How fluent would you say a 5 year old is? Consider their mastery of legal terms, cooking, vocabulary, geography, political terms, things from all aspects of life? Their grasp of grammar and spelling?

You might suggest "oh but surely a child knows far more about animals and plants and countries and the like, child things" but I find almost all adults pick these up extremely easily, at least the same ones a child might be expected to know. (lion, tiger, blue whale, dinosaur: Yes. Osprey, Bullfinch, Plaice, Tapir perhaps not.)

However, adults must put a lot of very draining, effortful study consistently to have a chance. I'd put learning a language to fluency on the same level of difficulty as getting a degree. Something one really must do if living in another country, but not something to be trivialised, or sneered at someone for not having found time to complete yet.

I think the biggest difference is that children don't have mental barriers about those things. They just explore and learn, without any thoughts wasted about the usefulness, pressure or excuses not to learn.

Why can’t you grow 10cm of height each year? Toddlers do it very easily, and they don’t even go to the gym. Maybe you just don’t work out enough? Average 40 year-old man should be about 4 metres tall, otherwise he just gave up.

It just requires turning your rational mind off, immersing yourself in the play/sport and trusting things will work out, something which more rational/analytic people tend to struggle with.

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