I wrote a post at the end of August about the choice between totally mastering a single foreign language or getting decent at several. At the time I wrote:
I’ve bounced back and forth on this question, but I’ve finally settled on the “single really sharp knife” approach as being right for me. I live in China, and plumbing the depths of Chinese is going to do me a lot more good than skimming along the surface of a series of languages (even other related languages like Japanese and Korean). There’s no doubt that I’m well past the point of diminishing returns for Chinese, but still the returns are worth the effort put in to obtain them. Until that’s no longer true, I’m going to stick with Chinese.
I no longer feel this way, and I’m going to explain why.
There is no English, there is no Chinese, there is just language
One of the things you learn early in studying a foreign language is that, despite what classes and books try to tell you, there is no single language called Chinese (or English, or Spanish, or whatever). There may well be a standard language — for Chinese, it’s 普通话 / 国语 — that is nominally used by official media, but the language that everyone actually speaks is some variation — subtle or drastic — of that norm. Eventually, when the variation grows too extreme, you end up with different languages (the Romance languages, for instance, or the various “dialects” of Chinese).
It benefits you to learn to at least understand the major dialects of the language you’re studying — i.e., even if you always say 怎么样, you should understand 咋样 when it’s presented to you. I say y’all all the time, but I understand that ‘you’ is also an acceptable second person plural pronoun (I’m from the South, y’all). Dialects are often used for comedic purposes as well, or to cast characters in a show of being a certain type of person (see 赵本山, or the massive volume of 関西弁 on Japanese TV).
What I’ve found (after I started paying attention to what was going on around me) is that this mix exists in speakers of distinct languages, too. I speak English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese (in descending order of ability). If I meet a Cantonese-speaking Japanese person (as happened recently), we can communicate. If I meet an English-speaking person from Hong Kong (of whom there are several million), we can communicate. Do I sound erudite in Japanese? No, I don’t — not even close. But I can communicate, and enjoy the benefits of that communication.
I can do this because I have systems — SRS and a massive listening environment — that keeps me from going backwards even if I slow down (and, if I increase scope I have to either slow down or expend more time studying, and I don’t have more time to expend).
Becoming more of a people person
My change in attitude is, I think, part of my transformation into more of a people person (being more social is a long-term goal that I’ve been working on for years). In many ways my thoughts about language learning are dragging behind my practice — I’ve written before here about how actual communication with other people not being a huge priority, but that’s shifting, and the shift is picking up speed.
I know that, for very social people, the above sounds silly, but for people like me that have always been willing to stand by the wall and sip my beer at parties, it’s a huge transformation, and one that’s dragging other parts of my life, including my language learning, with it.
Related posts:
- One language or several?
- Fumbling in English
- Maintaining one language while learning another
- More thoughts on Heisig
- How to read in a foreign language
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Dialects in Chinese are super interesting. I had dim sum with a Chinese couple yesterday and could understand the husband a little when he spoke Cantonese to the waitstaff (mind you, just basic stuff). I just started reading Robert Ramsey’s “The Languages of China.” Really interesting stuff.
P.S. — I can’t think of any reason NOT to say “y’all.” It’s so convenient. It’s more clear than “you” and more concise than “you guys” or “you all” or “you people.”
–Fellow Southerner (grew up in Pensacola, FL)
Pensacola, hey? I grew up outside of Orlando, but my parents now live in between Pensacola and Tallahassee (Bascom, I believe the town is called). My mom, though, grew up in south Florida when it was still the south, and I think that’s where I picked up “y’all” (and yeah, totally agree, it is fantastically convenient!).
WOW. Bascom, population 106? Believe it or not, I know where it is. Makes De Funiak Springs (where most of my mom’s family is from) seem like a sprawling city!
Yeah, it’s really tiny. A gas station and some farms, for the most part. I’m pretty sure my apartment complex in Shanghai has 20-30x the population. Apparently they didn’t feel like the population density in suburban Orlando was low enough
I never agreed with the “sharp knife” idea.
Becoming more of a people person: I believe I know what you mean (and feel the same myself), I just wonder a bit “how?” I mean, if you were learning, say, Norwegian in Norway, would the effect be the same? Or could it be the case that, by speaking to lots of Chinese people you don’t know very well, you’ve had to learn how to chat-with-strangers Chinese-people-style?
I don’t doubt that seeking out people and situations to talk would change one a bit, regardless of language or place. But with a culture like China’s, perhaps the change is much more 厉害?
(I don’t actually know any Norwegians, I just get the impression they’re more likely to be less garrulous than Chinese.)
This sounds kind of silly, but I set goals for myself. Like, if I go to some sort of event, I’ll tell myself beforehand that I’ll talk with five different people. I’m actually a pretty talkative person, regardless of the language, I’m just not normally the sort to start conversations. So I just need that little push.
That’s an interesting point that you bring up about Chinese tending to be more talkative. I’m not sure if that’s true or not — my feeling is that there’s a lot of distance/disinterestedness between strangers, much more so than in a lot of other places I’ve been (in fact, when I visit the US now I’m a little put off by how you’re supposed to maintain smalltalk with strangers — I’m just no good at it anymore). As a foreigner, though, I guess we get a special pass, as just opening your mouth and speaking Chinese is going to get you at least a couple of minutes of conversation about the fact that you can speak Chinese!
I’m right there with you. I need the push. A quota sounds like a really good idea. I may have to try that. So far I’m working on just getting out there in the first place. It’s become too easy to hide in my cave in Minhang.
I want to take issue with the “dialects” thing ChinaQuest said, but only because it’s in my contract to do so (see website link).
I really enjoy being able to communicate in several languages, even though none of them are particularly “sharp”. For me, once I passed that first threshold from “yes/no/hello” into basic back and forth conversation it’s like going from black and white to color. This is a great feeling for me and for the people I’m communicating with (usually as a tourist, just passing through).
It really depends on your goals as well. Because of my particular academic interests I benefit from learning more than one language to varying degrees. I love this! It’s fun and I have an excuse to stick my nose into fun grammar and writing systems endlessly. I may never master any of them and that’s ok. However, if you really want to master a language, for any reason, I would agree that you should resist the temptation. I also wouldn’t personally recommend starting two new languages at the same time or trying to spend the same amount of time on each language you’re learning. I have a “cycle” where one is in “active learning” mode and the others are in “maintenance mode”. Fun, fun!
This is great blog, I enjoy reading it.
Interesting post. I’ve never really been the most active of conversationalists, but I also don’t shy away from one once it’s started. What actually drew me to language, though, was empathy. I started thinking a lot about people who came here to canada and tried so hard to learn english, and once I tried learning some foreign languages and realized how hard it could be, I became much more aware of the effort that other people had put in. So, at heart, I’m motivated by communication with many people, and therefore I think I’ll always be on the path of many languages.
The problem for me, though, is striking a balance between jumping around and getting myself to a sufficient level first. I think as long as I set my minimum study time at 6 months, then I should be ok (since my only mode of study seems to be rather intensive).