It doesn’t matter how many languages they speak

Hey reader,

This week saw the release of a new blog post, which you can find a summary of below. In this one, I talk about the problem with following people and trying to learn from them just because they speak lots of languages.

Over on Reddit, the Head of Research at Mango Languages stopped by and did an AMA.

Apologies this is a week late. I had intended to queue it while I was up in Scotland for the Fringe Festival last weekend, but I didn’t manage to finish it.

I’m personally of the opinion that “sorry I’m late but it’s coming later” placeholder emails are just an annoyance. I’d rather just skip a week and pick up where I was, which is what I’m doing here.

Anyway…

Have you seen those videos on social media of people who know phrases in a very large number of languages, or are conversational in a smaller set, and they go around filming themselves having interactions in these languages?

Aside from simple entertainment, it's one of the most common methods people use to build credibility in the language learning space: showing the number of languages they speak. They do this for a good reason: to an uninformed beginner, knowing a lot of languages seems like a strong signal that the individual knows a lot about language learning. The trouble is it isn't.

There's no objective definition of what it means to "speak" a language or be fluent in it, so people can truthfully claim to speak a large number of languages. If you use the CEFR, anything above A2 would probably count as speaking it. If you want to say you speak a language, reaching a basic conversational level can be done with 3 months of study. And what about mastering a language? Well, that can take a decade.

In the same time one learner spends mastering one language, another could achieve conversational ability in 10. To the uninformed, these two look completely different. One an accomplished polyglot, the other only having managed a single additional language in the same time.

So why are you only seeing one type in your feed? Speaking lots of languages is appealing and easy to share. If you don't speak those languages, it can be easy to mistake someone with basic conversational ability for being highly fluent. As for the single-language expert: you're much less likely to find them online, since speaking one language doesn't make for appealing short-form videos. Fame doesn't line up with skill.

My advice is not to put much stock in how many languages a person can converse in. At most, knowing a language tells you they can start. It doesn't tell you whether they can help with the part you're actually stuck on.

In the full post, I give you a list of language learners I think are well worth following.

Read the full post:

Context is my favourite part of Reverso. Search for a word or translation and get lots of useful example sentence. I have found it great for getting the sense of a word and making flashcards.

Steve Kaufmann - how I immerse myself in a language.

This guy’s method for learning fast resonates with me - it’s basically learning lots of sentences, but when and what kind of sentence matters. I have to add, I think he’s over-promising on the outcome and self-labelling as a ‘hyperpolyglot’ is not something I would personally do. Caveats aside, the technique is useful.

Motivation: Someone manages to travel with A2 level. In my experience, with some prep, this is completely possible.

The Mango Languages AMA has a lot of useful info for language learners.

How this linguist detects AI slop.

Till next time!

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