Here I share the 7 Language Learning Myths that unfortunately persist all the time on the internet. Do you believe in any?<\/p>\n
7. It is possible to learn a foreign language overnight using some secret tricks<\/strong>. 6. You shouldn\u2019t learn any foreign language because everybody speaks English<\/strong>. 5. You should learn a language till you are proficient and only then move on<\/strong>. 4. All the languages in the world are of equal difficulty.<\/strong> 3. Don\u2019t learn Japanese or Chinese because they are dead difficult.<\/strong> 2. You can\u2019t become proficient in a foreign language unless you learned it before puberty<\/strong>. 1. You can\u2019t learn two languages at the same time<\/strong>. If you do, you\u2019ll end up getting confused and messed up and fail horribly.<\/em> Here I share the 7 Language Learning Myths that unfortunately persist all the time on the internet. Do you believe in any?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1040,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ikindalikelanguages.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSorry, no. A language is a lot more than grammar and vocabulary. It\u2019s also expressions, sayings and all this kind of stuff. It is not possible to learn a language that fast unless you are able to somehow upload it to your brain (let me know<\/a> when you are able to do that). Some methods for learning a language are clearly better than others (that\u2019s what a good part of this site is about, after all). And by better we don\u2019t neceserilly mean objectively better, even though sometimes it gets so subjectively better for everyone that it gets close to being objective.<\/p>\n
\nIt is estimated that about 1 billion people know at least some English in the world. The world is at least six times that. If you have travelled in China or some other similar countries, you know how easy it is to find English speakers. Also,\u00a0see this article<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nYou know, I once heard it\u2019s just a Western fetish to try learning languages till proficiency. And really, why would you do that? As long as you can communicate, it\u2019s all good. Learn untill you are able to talk about weather and ask where the toilet is and move on. You will be picking up more and more of the language as you move on even if you don\u2019t actively learn it and just use it from time to time.<\/p>\n
\nThis one is a bit tricky. First of all, it is kind of evident that some languages are more alike (English and French) than others (German and Thai) so some languages are relatively easier to learn for speakers of related languages. But let\u2019s forget that. Let\u2019s look at it from a Martian\u2019s perspective. The argument goes: if a bunch of cloned Martians came to Earth and each of them picked a language and started learning it, they would finish learning those languages at the same time. Now, that seems just too counter-intuitive for me. Let\u2019s look at two extremes: Riau Indonesian and Russian. Russian has noun declension, verb conjugation, noun genders and numbers, verb tenses and so on. Riau Indonesian has no inflection or tone, almost no tense marking, no noun genders and numbers. Now, which one do you think is easier for a Martian to learn?<\/p>\n
\nWhen we got over this \u201call languages are equally difficult\u201d idea, we sometimes see this kind of thing being stated. Now, both Chinese and Japanese have hieroglyphic alphabets which makes you remember all those signs to write all the words which is not really that awesome. The thing is though – you are not obliged to learn those to communicate. Neither Chinese nor Japanese has noun genders, rigorous verb conjugations and all that kind of stuff and spoken Chinese (Mandarin) is pretty easy compared to some other languages (tones are not that hard too). For example, to say \u201cI will be going to school tomorrow\u201d in Mandarin Chinese, you simply have to say the equivalent of: I tomorrow go learn place. Could it be easier?
\nAs for the writing system, English is not that much different: it has no strict rules how to spell words so you have to learn the spelling by rote. Check out the word\u00a0Ghoti<\/a> (pronounced: fish) for example.<\/p>\n
\nThis is based on a Critical Period Hypothesis that suggests that you cannot learn a language once you are out of puberty. Sadly, there is some truth to it. It is way harder for you to learn a language once you get older. However, this is not absolute. To my knowledge, the idea is not based on sufficient evidence. To the contracy, I have seen many people who achieve a native-level fluency while having learnt the language as adults. I have to dismiss it due to lack of sufficient evidence and existance of counter-evidence. That\u2019s not to say that fluency is easy. That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s something you can achieve with moderate efforts. Still, it\u2019s to say that it\u2019s impossible (save for accent).<\/p>\n
\nI would definitely disagree with this one. Who on Earth says you can\u2019t learn many languages? I have done been doing that. I have known people who do that too. Actually, Why wouldn\u2019t you be able to do that? Say, you can learn Maths and Physics at the same time, can\u2019t you? Why not different languages? In fact, I think it\u2019s even better for you to switch between languages every other day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"