Learning Languages in an Immersive Environment Pt. II
Some less-unexpected things you’ll find:
Vocabulary matters…
… but mostly at the beginning and then later in intermediate study. Most of the time you’re studying word order, conjugations, collocations (do you “make a picture”, “take a picture”, “grab a picture” in that language?), and other grammatical concepts, while you slowly add new words.
Once you understand how the language works, and you have a few hundred basic words, you can easily add more vocab after. Until then, you get by with:
“Hey, the thing fell that you use to write.”
“Hm? Oh, I dropped my whiteboard marker? So I did, thanks!”
It works, and it’s better than saying, “to rain… weekend… no to travel… crowded… regional trains,” like you’re trying to have a conversation with someone one flashcard at a time. Vocabulary can be memorized, but fluidity only comes with time and repetition.
If you cheat a little…
(and especially when you are an English speaker, it is easy to cheat!)
… it adds up quickly, and sets you back. You simply have to try as much as possible, retreating to your native language only when you need a break — not as your default.
You make grocery lists in the target language. You hold mock debates in your head (you’re not going to wake up one day ready to argue after learning a little vocab). You hang out with other language learners in a contrived environment to only use the language everyone is worst at (imagine playing a terrible game of tennis where everyone agrees to use their non-dominant hand). But… it’s the only way to improve.
Once, I went to a language meet-up with an Ethiopian who now lives in Canada with his Ecuadorian girlfriend (take a second on that one). When we heard that he wished he could speak Spanish (but exclusively speaks English with his girlfriend), we all threw our hands up at the poor guy. Famously, the original “Best way to learn a foreign language” is to date someone who speaks that language. But yeah — the two of them both already know enough English. They live in Canada. If there is no rule, no self-imposed artificial necessity to communicate entirely in Spanish (at least… a rule for certain rooms of the house, for certain hours of the day, etc.) it will never happen.
You’ve never met a great cyclist who exclusively trains on a stationary bike. You’ve never met a great bowler who keeps the bumpers up. When you have a safety net, you behave like you have one. Go out in the world and embrace failure! Take away the net.
Age does matter:
You’ll meet US citizens here whose kids are in public school and quickly become fluent, while the parents have a few language books and language apps (I’m looking at you, Duolingo ) and languish at the A2 level for a decade.
At the school in Verona where I studied Italian, a couple 20-year-olds visibly passed me in ability while I was there, while some retired students came back to the school every year, and always picked up on the same page.
It is simply easier for younger people — both for the brain plasticity reason and others. People become married to their native language — quite literally if your spouse also speaks your native language. It takes strength to divorce yourself from the language life you’ve made for yourself.
Previous language study matters:
For many of the people at the Italian school, this was the first time they’d studied a second language. On the other hand, a Swiss girl with four languages already under her belt (slightly below average for the Swiss, but she was only 23 so we can cut her a break) progressed through Italian at twice the normal speed. It’s kind of like how someone can be “sporty”, and excel in any athletic activity — or like a musician learning the oboe after the clarinet (or even after the piano) it’s like the know-how is already there.
Language similarity matters a lot, too.
The map below shows mutual intelligibility between languages. “Lexical distance” doesn’t take into account accent and pronunciation and such, and I’d argue even at a distance of 25 you’d need native speakers who speak very slowly, with gestures, and carefully choose their words — like a German speaker could use “garten” (garden) and “maus” (mouse) — but other words, like “bitte” (please), are entirely foreign to an English speaker.
While Russian and Arabic speakers have more trouble with a language like Spanish or Italian, those Romance languages are two of the easiest languages in the world to learn for English speakers. French and German are closer, yes, but French phonology is a mess, and the German system of declensions requires months of extra study for it alone.
Portuguese and Italian speakers jump into Spanish at an intermediate level. Meanwhile, a Russian learning Polish or Ukrainian would fly through while we would likely drag our feet forever just on the alphabet and the sounds.
There are many factors that go into the ability to learn a foreign language that makes it vary so much from person to person. Ultimately, speakers of a second language are at wildly different levels, even if they are technically at the same level. I’m still tweaking my thoughts on the best strategies on how to actually go about learning a second language… but I’ll try to share my thoughts on that one later.
