On being thoroughly disillusioned with learning other languages.
"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another." George Bernard Shaw.
I am thoroughly disillusioned and disenchanted with learning other languages and I no longer believe that it is possible, desirable or beneficial to fully learn more than one language - one's own mother tongue.
The G.B.S. quote shown above that I have long been aware of I now concede to be entirely true.
My own experience and observation of others leads me to believe that it is very much the truth.
I confess that I have a Modern Languages degree, which I received about 18 years ago. I now regard this as having been essentially a mistake and - in terms of studying the actual languages - a wasted degree. I would much rather have studied philosophy.
Mastering a language other than one's principle language is not even possible. But maintaining such a second language at merely a high level of proficiency requires exceptional circumstances. These are either to live in the country where it is spoken, or to have been a native speaker in the first place or have been brought up bilingually.
Even this is very difficult and rare. But another point is that it is not really necessary or desirable.
And this is nothing to do with my own language being English - which is effectively the most dominant language in the world today.
Now that I have fully conceded this point to myself, I feel set free to actually study proper subjects and to properly learn philosophy and to philosophize, without wasting my time and effort with the fantasy that I can effectively learn other languages or that I need to.
This is the source of a great feeling of self-liberation from a tyrannical belief of my own that I had imposed upon myself - the belief being that I had to thoroughly learn other languages.
I am also thoroughly liberated from the irrational belief that a language is something other than a method of communication, that learning another language gives the learner something more than just another means of saying the same thing!
A bi-product of learning a language can be cultural insights but all of these can be gained entirely by means other than learning of the language. Language itself is indeed nothing more than a means of communication.
"No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another." George Bernard Shaw.
I am thoroughly disillusioned and disenchanted with learning other languages and I no longer believe that it is possible, desirable or beneficial to fully learn more than one language - one's own mother tongue.
The G.B.S. quote shown above that I have long been aware of I now concede to be entirely true.
My own experience and observation of others leads me to believe that it is very much the truth.
I confess that I have a Modern Languages degree, which I received about 18 years ago. I now regard this as having been essentially a mistake and - in terms of studying the actual languages - a wasted degree. I would much rather have studied philosophy.
Mastering a language other than one's principle language is not even possible. But maintaining such a second language at merely a high level of proficiency requires exceptional circumstances. These are either to live in the country where it is spoken, or to have been a native speaker in the first place or have been brought up bilingually.
Even this is very difficult and rare. But another point is that it is not really necessary or desirable.
And this is nothing to do with my own language being English - which is effectively the most dominant language in the world today.
Now that I have fully conceded this point to myself, I feel set free to actually study proper subjects and to properly learn philosophy and to philosophize, without wasting my time and effort with the fantasy that I can effectively learn other languages or that I need to.
This is the source of a great feeling of self-liberation from a tyrannical belief of my own that I had imposed upon myself - the belief being that I had to thoroughly learn other languages.
I am also thoroughly liberated from the irrational belief that a language is something other than a method of communication, that learning another language gives the learner something more than just another means of saying the same thing!
A bi-product of learning a language can be cultural insights but all of these can be gained entirely by means other than learning of the language. Language itself is indeed nothing more than a means of communication.