Check Your “Linguistic Ego” At The Door The language-learning attitude that really works               Have you heard the old cliché that adults just can’t learn languages as well as children can?  Have you perhaps believed this myth – even repeated it yourself?  It’s true that it takes more effort to truly master a new tongue after you grow up.  It’s harder, yes: but it can be done. Kids sometimes seem to make everything look easy.  Can you guess why?  Here’s a hint: how self-conscious is the average toddler?  How concerned is she about her image?  How much time does he spend obsessing about whether he’s doing anything “correctly?”  Most of us lust like crazy after yet another cliché: the innocence of youth.  And when it comes to learning a foreign language, it turns out we’re onto something. See, while kids have too big an ego in some ways, they’re missing a key mental trait which keeps adults from giving language learning a fighting chance.  I call that quality: linguistic ego – the unconscious cultural superiority complex which prevents many adults from even realizing what they need to focus on in the language classroom. Remember Mark Twain’s parody of the type of person who a century later would be relabeled an “Ugly American” – the guy who opined that all those crazy “feriners” who went around during the day nattering away in strange languages would automatically revert to “plain ‘ole English” if you woke them up suddenly from a deep sleep?  As absurd and funny as this sounds today, it actually contains a grain of truth in that even those who learn languages well enough to be sent behind enemy lines as spies often reveal their true origins when under pressure, or when dealing with basic things like numbers.  Try this experiment, and you’ll see how hard it is to really “think in” your second language: find a math text to read out loud; you’ll quickly see that you have a stubbornly automatic tendency to revert to English when reading out the figures.  Chances are no matter how fluent you are in other areas, this simple test will prove quite humbling. Twain had something else to say about other languages, specifically German.  To show how “illogical” its grammar could be, he translated a paragraph of German text as literally as he could, converting grammatical gender into the English pronouns “his,” “her” and its, and marveling at how various inanimate objects and types of weather could be feminine, but a young girl wasn’t.  This is the same sort of linguistically chauvinistic thinking that regularly causes frustrated American students of European languages to give up the ghost and join their ill-informed brethren the world over.  Don’t fall into this trap!  If you want to learn another language, meet its speakers on their own linguistic terms from the very beginning.  After all, the whole point is to be able to hear the voices of that language’s speakers without relying on translators.  Or at least it should be! Don’t kid yourself: I’ve said learning a language needn’t be as hard as it seems, but it is going to be a challenge.  You are literally learning to talk – and thus also to think – all over again.  You’re probably not used to thinking this way, but studying a language is a very brave thing to do – the ultimate act of cultural humility.  That’s why no matter how badly you butcher their language, most people you try your modest skills on (yes, even the French and Germans) will instantly respect and like you for making the effort.  This is because no matter how small your vocabulary or how shaky your grammar, the action of leaving your own linguistic identity behind to talk to others speaks louder than whatever words you may be mangling.  It says: “I care so much about you I’m not content to learn about you through translators and interpreters.  I want to know you on your own terms, and in your own words.” Didn’t think it was that big a deal, did you?  Didn’t plan to make quite that basic a shift in your very identity, huh?  Confucius said it even better than Twain: “One language, one man.  Two languages, TWO men.”  Yes, learning a new language is indeed that big a deal. Now you know why school is such a frustrating place to learn a foreign language.  On the surface, the complaints are all about reasonable-sounding problems: grammatical gender, tones, retroflex consonants or whatever else English-speaking learners of the language in question find difficult.  These are real challenges, but the true root of such “technical” troubles in language learning is much deeper-seated.  At their most basic level, all these issues of form are really a struggle to step out of one linguistic world and into another. Once you grasp this point, you’ll understand how patient and adventurous you’ll need to be to reach your linguistic goals.  Just planning a quick trip someplace?  Shopkeepers and other educated businesspeople probably speak English.  With just a few phrases of polite chitchat you’re ready to show these people you mean business when it comes to understanding their market. Plan on a bit of partying while you’re there?  Once again, young people the world over are obsessed with English, and this is one instance in which you’d better be careful about appearing too fluent, lest you upstage your new friends.  Then again, nothing helps people bond like getting to know one another – most easily accomplished with words.  If you’re even considering dating in another country the decision’s been made for you: take the equivalent of one college year of a language wherever and however you can, and master it to the best of your ability.Found your true love?  Want to settle down, raise a family and fully integrate into your new surroundings?  Then forget about phrasebooks; you’ll need the “Real Deal” – complete mastery of your second language.  If you find yourself returning to one country again and again, wanting to read its literature in the original, anxious to participate in academic discussions, wanting to watch TV for fun and learning, sitting down to read the paper, going out to deal with local officials and eventually even working and taking  your place alongside locals in their full and varied national lives, you’ll have to aim for total fluency – which will bring up its own set of perplexing questions and concerns. Some people love it when foreigners make the effort to truly master their language, while for others it brings an uncomfortable uncertainty about your true motives.  It always changes the dynamics of your interactions for ever more, so don’t take this step lightly.  It’s next to impossible to master a language overnight anyway, so you’ll have plenty of time to consider such issues as which accent or dialect to learn, which vocabulary areas to concentrate on and (most important of all) what to tell people who ask why you went to so much trouble to learn their language.  Whatever you say, it should cast you in the best light according to local sensibilities, which are hopefully beginning to blend together seamlessly with your own values and worldview.  Ideally, as your familiarity with the community deepens, so will your comfort level with what they stand for and how they live – not necessarily with their government or current politics, but with their very soul as a people.  If this sounds impossibly New Age, you’ve missed the point.  Learning and using a language is more art than science, more passion than discipline.  It’s just too hard otherwise.  You have to want to do it, or sooner or later, you will fail. You also have to want – or at least be willing – to abandon your preconceived notions of how communication works, what a word is and even how to get your mouth around one.  If you’re doing this right, your body itself will notice a change in which muscles are getting a workout when you talk, the same way a new exercise routine makes you suddenly aware of your physical self in a million brand new ways.  Old habits die hard, but rest assured: even if you want to, it’s impossible to completely forget your native language or turn your back utterly on your own people.  Any unrecognized fears you have along these lines need to be brought out in the open, thanked for keeping you centered, and then politely but firmly banished back to the netherworld of dark fantasies from which they came. Learning a new language won’t erase who you are; it will only add immeasurably to that person.  But you must understand what the challenge involves, and you must come out fighting – ready to send your English-based assumptions of how people label and interact with the world packing.  You need the humility to not mind looking like a baby and the patience to let life reveal itself anew in its own sweet time, just as it did when you were a little kid.  Then you can come in out of the cold, bleak fog of linguistic chauvinism and into the warmth of the global village.  Just remember you don’t need that heavy coat anymore.  Take off those skin-deep assumptions about how people should talk to one another like the ego-masking protections they are, and check them at the door like a worn-out overcoat as you climb onto the stage of international relations.  Live, love and play well.  Before long you’ll discover that this show lasts as long as you live, and there’s no need to even pass through the lobby again.  Leave your old monolingual jacket behind.  You won’t need it where you’re going.