There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning any amount of any language. In fact, learning basic conversational phrases in other languages should actually be mandatory for those who travel internationally. My issue is people giving themselves some sort of title for doing so.
You can absolutely be passionate about ‘learning languages’.
But, at a certain point, it needs to be taken seriously. Learning one, discarding it, and learning a new one is not the way to go.
A few days ago, I was recommended a video on YouTube titled “Multilingual Interview Prank”. The video consisted of someone approaching tourists, asking them basic interview-like questions in English, and then switching (mid-conversation) to their native language.
For the most part, the people he spoke with were pleased and obviously surprised when he instantly switched to their language.
It was an entertaining video, so I watched a few more on his channel. Not too long after, the pattern became clear.
Most of his other videos are titled “Dutch polyglot _____” with some sort of provocative line following that (i.e speaks 18 languages with tourists).
Outlandish titles like this are obviously meant to attract viewers. Which is fine. Even though these titles sound remarkable, the videos themselves are more or less the same.
For example: when speaking with the interviewees in his videos, Wouter (the channel owner and star of the videos) will almost always:
- tell them he speaks “a little bit of (their language)”
- say that he studied it “____ years ago in (a country)”
- say he doesn’t have many friends to practice with in said language
- and he will often conclude by asking them to go out for a drink in their language
If you watch any of his videos, you will definitely see one of, if not all, of the above. Sometimes you’ll even see them occur back-to-back with different people in the same video. Other than these go-tos, he will mostly awkwardly stumble around other basic conversational phrases in the native language of whoever he is speaking with.
When the people respond, it’s usually clear that he doesn’t know what they’re saying. It’s clear because he’ll respond with something completely unrelated (I’d provide evidence, but I promise you’ll see this happen in literally any video of his).
My intention is not to bash him. I’m merely using him as an example of why I don’t think the word ‘polyglot’ should be thrown around so casually (or maybe, at all).
Three main points come to mind when I see videos like these; these points make it difficult to take polyglots’ claims seriously.
- Human language is immensely complex. To claim that you can speak 2 is a feat in itself.
- Learning a language and acquiring a language are different. Acquiring a language represents some degree of finality, while learning is a manual, ongoing process.
- Acquiring even one additional language as an adult is difficult. It isn’t impossible, but it’s a task that requires a lot of focus and attention.
Your brain works extremely hard in the background while you navigate your day-to-day life as a language user. Regardless, you’re able to churn out sentences without issue. As a speaker of a language, you automatically utilize concepts like syntax without consciously ‘understanding’ them.
Roughly speaking, syntax refers to word order. Simple enough, right? Well, just take a moment to consider how exactly you string together sentences when you speak.
You have to somehow know which words can precede or follow other words. There are an obscene amount of words in English, so there’s no way you could’ve memorized every one and where it belongs in a sentence.
Terms such as ‘noun’ and ‘verb’ are really just positions in a language’s syntax.
Alright. So you know how the categories combine with one another. But how do you know this? Did someone teach this to you? Not necessarily. Parents don’t give their newborns lessons in sentence structure, yet these babies grow into children that learn to speak.
As a speaker of English, you know that “The dog was running” is a perfectly acceptable sentence. By way of that, you also know that “Dog running the was*” is not. How do you know this? Did someone once sit you down and tell you every possible English sentence? Nope. That can’t be the case, since there are probably an infinite number of possible sentences* (up for debate).
You surely don’t evaluate every sentence you hear on a case-by-case basis and make sure everything is in the right order, right? You can’t. It just ‘happens’. You just ‘know’ when you hear a sentence that doesn’t sound right.
This is the absolutely fascinating part. When you know a language, you also know which constructions (sentences) are valid, and which aren’t. And this knowledge is all subconscious.
To make matters more complicated, there’s also the fact that nearly every sentence you speak is novel — meaning that that exact string of words has never been uttered. Since that’s the case, it’s even more unlikely (actually, it’s impossible) that you could have memorized pretty much anything related to word order.
Language is scarily complex. The fact that you can subconsciously and instantly evaluate any sentence in your native language is nuts. This should cue you in to how much work your brain has to do to make that possible.
My second point is that there is an important contrast between language acquisition and language learning.
Barring any severe disabilities or abusive situations, every child in the world acquires their first language without issue. Second language acquisition is obviously much different in this regard, since not everyone can successfully acquire one.
Language learning just refers to, well, learning a language. It literally refers to learning something about a language.
If I read a dictionary of Mandarin words, it would be fair to say that I’m learning Mandarin. Whether or not learning can turn into acquisition is not something I’m qualified to debate. Crucially, just know that acquisition represents some degree of finality. Everyone* will acquire a first language. Some people might acquire two. They might acquire both at once, or acquire one later.
Acquisition is concerned with the subconscious, cognitive processes that allow you to speak and understand a language. Learning is manual. Babies don’t choose to acquire a language, it just happens. People choose to learn a second language.
With that being said, imagine that you were learning Thai. You probably wouldn’t claim that you’ve acquired it, since you’re still learning it. By way of that, you probably wouldn’t tell people that you ‘spoke’ Thai. You would most likely say that you speak ‘some’ Thai.
Interestingly, polyglots don’t seem to follow this train of thought. To them, (or at least, the ones I’ve seen) ‘learning’ multiple languages classifies them as a polyglot. As we progress, you’ll see why that’s an issue for me.
My final point — acquiring a language as an adult is difficult. The topic of the critical period for language learning. This topic is one of massive controversy, despite the fact that research has repeatedly shown evidence for it.
In general, it is the case that children around ages 12 and under can acquire a second language without issue. Past that age, it becomes increasingly difficult. This is why most of the bi/multi- lingual people that you know acquired their additional language(s) as children. Note, though, that this refers to naturalistic situations — not formal ones (like classroom instruction). Naturalistic acquisition is the process that allowed you to acquire your first language.
Interestingly, it is not clear why children seem to acquire an additional language more easily than adults. Some physical limitation of human cognition is likely the culprit, but as I said…it’s not clear.
With this in mind, though, we might want to find it strange that ‘polyglots’ claim to speak upwards of 10 languages. This would mean that they’ve defied this hypothesis several times.
Another glaring issue is that of input.
When acquiring a language, input is the absolute most important factor in determining your success — even moreso than your personal and cognitive capabilities.
Input is someone speaking and you listening. Input leads to you hearing, understanding, and processing what was said. When babies acquire their first language, it’s because of the input that they get. Their parents (ideally) talk to them all the time, and some research has even shown that the amount of input an infant gets determines how rich their vocabulary will be later in life.
This demonstrates that input is critical for not only second, but first language acquisition as well. If you’re in your room studying Arabic with only a “Learn Arabic 101” book, your chances of acquiring Arabic are slim to none. If you were to travel to an Arabic speaking country, however, your chances would drastically improve.
That is not to say, though, that going to a country where your language of choice is spoken would allow you to learn it effortlessly. Not at all. What is true, though, is that the amount of input you’d be receiving would be of unrivaled use to you in trying to learn that language.
If you are not constantly exposed to a language you’re attempting to acquire, it will fade from your cognitive space. That is a fact.
With these ‘polyglots’, it’s safe to assume that they do not have 19 different sources of input every single day. Even if they did, it still would never allow them to fully master all of those languages. The human brain is physically unable to process that much input.
I’m aware that this isn’t the most accurate comparison, but for a second just imagine that your brain is a computer. This computer is only capable of so much.
The first language that you know (your native one) takes up a lot of memory and hard drive space, even if you don’t notice. Now, consider someone telling you that they’re squeezing in 19 more. The story of the polyglot comes more apart at the seams the further we explore this topic.
Speaking of polyglots, let’s get back to them. Sorry for the long (but necessary) detour.
I want to transition into this section by saying that ‘polyglot’ is rather ill-defined. According to a dictionary, it means “someone who knows or uses several languages”. Now that you’re more familiar with language acquisition, you might wonder what the hell that even means. It’s very vague.
Knowing a language? Well, that isn’t a very clearly-defined concept either. I guess we can assume it means knowing any amount of a language.
Using a language? If I don’t speak any Japanese, but I repeat a sentence in Japanese, I’d be using Japanese. I don’t think you’d praise me for doing that in 10 different languages.
If we want to give this definition the benefit of the doubt, we can assume it refers to a person that is fluent in several different languages. Fluency, for my purposes, will mean someone who can effectively communicate and think in a language across the board. You are, without a doubt, fluent in your first language. That’s the standard that I’m setting for the additional languages of these polyglots.
The mechanics that allow someone to (by choice) successfully learn a second language and possibly acquire it are not clear. Some research has shown that certain people are better than others at learning/acquiring a language, yes, but that’s about it. It isn’t clear why.
There’s also the fact that motivation plays a massive role as well. If you don’t even want to be in your Spanish class, of course you’ll be less likely to acquire any Spanish once the class ends. The question of some sort of innate ‘aptitude’ existing for learning languages is the subject of mountains of research and debates. I’m not going to say more on it other than this, but just keep in mind that some people may simply be ‘better’ than others at ‘learning languages’ for many different reasons. There is not one discerning factor or attribute that allows this to be so. In short, don’t think that these people hold some sort of intellectual edge over you.
I felt it necessary to state that, because a lot of people hold this myth close to them. That these ‘polyglots’ are just somehow innately more adept than the rest of us, and we should all just give up and go home. They definitely aren’t.
Remember Wouter, our friend from earlier?
As I mentioned, he has a video called “Dutch polyglot speaks 18 languages with tourists”. Even if you hadn’t read anything I’ve written so far, I’m sure you’d find this hard to believe (if not, you should).
After watching his content, it’s clear that what he has done is memorized basic conversational banter in many different languages. I’m claiming that this is the case for the bulk of the languages he claims to know, since I wouldn’t be surprised to find out he has a decent command of at least a few of the languages in his arsenal.
Based on the definition that I’m using, this most certainly is not considered fluency.
This is where that ill-defined definition of ‘polyglot’ comes in again. Since it could also mean someone who ‘uses’ several different languages, Wouter would definitely be one. If I wrote down “Good morning” in 10 different languages and read each of the phrases aloud, I, too would be considered a polyglot though. See how that works?
In the comment sections of Wouter’s videos, people have this discussion (about his proficiency) pretty frequently. I am definitely not the only one of this opinion.
On the contrary, I’ve seen people say that ‘even if he did just memorize these, it’s still impressive’. I would agree with this. Not many people would be able to accomplish such a task, so we definitely have to give him some credit. And, as I mentioned in the introduction, the people he speaks with seem generally happy and amused with him.
My issue, though, is the title he gives himself. Can someone like this really be considered a polyglot?
Plenty of Wouter’s subscribers will also leave comments like: “Hey, he’s trying! of course he’s not going to be perfect in every language”.
But why not? Is that too much to ask of someone who supposedly has such great abilities?
How could I say such a terrible thing, when the people are clearly happy that he’s trying?
Well, because it ceases to be amazing when you use the same three phrases on 100 people. Knowing 3% of 18 languages means that you’re a master of none of them, and you never will be.
When you do this, you severely misunderstand what language learning should be about (actually learning the language and hopefully, acquiring it).
Wouter is not alone in this. There are a plethora of channels run by self-made ‘polyglots’. Usually, these videos consist of someone sitting in front of a camera, talking for about 30 seconds in 5 or so different languages.
To make matters worse, they’ll often include languages that they openly admit they’re still ‘learning’.
While the effort is commendable, I don’t think that’s worthy of the ‘polyglot’ title. Would you call yourself a black belt in Taekwondo after only taking two lessons. No.
The fanciful title of ‘polyglot’ should be reserved for a very select few. A select few that I’m not even sure exist! It’s unrealistic and idealistic to expect someone to be a master of so many languages, I know, but that’s what I think would be worthy of praise.
A huge issue with videos and channels like Wouter’s are that they trivialize language and language learning. As you’ve probably gathered, human language is a very dense topic that is still not completely understood.
They liken it to a game. A competition.
Reducing ‘knowing’ a language to a basic, mistake-laden conversation is insulting. It’s insulting to those who speak it, and to those who seriously try to master the languages that they study.
If you claim to ‘speak’ 20 languages, your focus and mastery is going to be centered around whichever language you’re currently studying. You can’t leave the rest on the backburner and claim to have acquired them. Those languages need input.
Languages aren’t too different from babies. They need all of the time and attention that you can possibly manage in order to allow them to flourish.
If someone told you that they had 18 kids living in their house, would you immediately assume that they took perfect care of every single one of them? Probably not. You’d be much more likely to assume the opposite. We should approach the case of ‘polyglots’ with this same apprehension.
