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By Verdana, 2010/01/11

There are many prejudices that burden language learners and range from broad generalizations about how hard it is to learn another language, to some specific misconception about an aspect of the language that is being learned. For this reason, children indeed do have an advantage in learning languages when compared to adults, since they accept things as they come without any false preconceptions of how things are supposed to be.

To me this happened often while I was learning English. For example, English inherited many words from Latin, which are also used in Serbian, my native language. However, they sometimes mean different things and are pronounced differently. This is perfectly normal, since each language took the original Latin words and molded them to fit the rules of the younger language.

The problems for me as a learner arose when I took English interpretations of Latin words as wrong, since they deviated from the way they are used in Serbian and other European languages I’ve been exposed to. “Americans are surely deaf to the way normal people speak and incapable of pronouncing words correctly,” was a pretty regular thought in my head at the time. “It’s not aluminum, it’s aluminium, you dumb Americans!”

Yeah…

Well, while I still think English is in many ways retarded and could be improved, it does me no good to be grumpy about the way it’s using words, no matter what their origin may have been. If anything, that approach only creates resentment, reduces the fun of learning, and slows down progress. Learning a language and being a language purist at the same time is simply a bad idea. Until you know enough of the language that you can effectively use it to discuss the most obscure nuances of its grammar, syntax, spelling, pronunciation, or whatever other grievances you may have, it’s best to just shut up and accept it the way it is used in your environment.

Sure, native speakers might use improper grammar, misuse common phrases, overuse slang, and so on, but in the end it’s their language, and they can do to it whatever they want. The point of a language is to communicate, and if most people around you are using the language in a certain way, even if it seems wrong in your head, it is still the best way to be understood.

I’m finding the same thing happening with people who are learning Japanese. After they get passed the “Japanese is hard/impossible” preconception and actually get to intermediate stage, they continue to complain about some parts of the language. Some complain that there are too many kanji which should be abolished to make the language easier to learn. Then again, others have invested great efforts to learn the kanji and are so much in love with them that they put kanji even when natives would just use kana instead. Yet others complain about overabundant usage of words imported from English and written in katakana.

The point is there are many things you might find strange, different, illogical, annoying, unreasonable, politically incorrect, or simply wrong about the language you’re studying, but let’s face the fact that you are just some foreigner learning a language you don’t know enough about to judge. Accept it as you find it, marvel its quirkiness and learn to use it just the way the natives are using it, even if at the moment it doesn’t make sense to you. Sometimes there just isn’t a reason why something is done in a certain way, except that someone once started doing it like that and others copied.

Once you become comfortable in the new language, you will develop your own isms and strange word usages that will make sense to you and be understandable by others. And who knows, maybe some of them will catch on and become a part of the language, if not in general population, then at least in your own community. Everything in its own time.

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By Verdana, 2009/08/16

It was always amazing to me how easy it is to get sidetracked by following tangents in either my own thoughts or in conversations with others. The topic can be anything and very soon something else will pop into the conversation and take it where it was never meant to go. Unless there is some strong desire to come back to the original topic, the point that was supposed to be made is forever lost to something that at the time was more interesting.

This process is a very crucial factor in learning. In order to learn something, one has to pay attention, and in order to pay attention one has to posses some interest in the subject. While a conversation involves more than one person and the interests of participants will most likely be different, an individual will find his thought process to follow his own interests at the moment, making it easy to pay attention to wherever the thoughts are going.

The tangents in learning are different paths that a person takes in discovering the world. A child might play with a toy truck and then become interested in a number of things such as mechanical workings of vehicles, logistics of shipping goods, geography, infrastructure, history of transportation, family life of truck drivers, etc. By following these interests and whatever tangents arise from researching them, the child will encounter a vast amount of information. Some of that information will be learned and thus converted to knowledge, while the rest will be discarded. What becomes knowledge and what doesn’t is entirely up to the interests awakened in the child.

Different learning environments allow tangents to different degrees, and thus have different advantages and disadvantages.

In free play a person is, as the name implies, free to do whatever he wants. This is great because it allows him to absorb the most knowledge since he will devote his time and full attention to following any tangent to his thoughts he finds interesting. However, this may leave him stuck with things he already knows something about and slow down the discovery of new areas of possible interest.

Conversation is another way to gain knowledge. Talking with others lets the student find out about subjects that she herself may have never thought about. This in turn would allow new interests to form and be followed. Paying attention to the conversation is a bit harder than paying attention to your own thoughts, since you don’t have the full control of the flow of information. You have to listen to something that may not be very interesting to you, but is interesting to other participants. That may allow the concentration level to drop and some of the information would fail to be converted to knowledge.

The most restrictive form of learning is instruction. It is a one way street. Tangents are controlled by the instructor, and everyone else is there just as a witness, not as a participant. This allows mind to wander, following its own tangents. The information presented will most likely be only partially learned and even then to a lower degree than in a conversation. However, instruction can be a good way to expose yourself to ideas that you might find useful or desirable to learn, but not interesting enough to pursue them on your own.

I guess the worst kind of learning environment is the one we have in our public schools, where we have instruction which we’re forced to attend. We’re not even given a chance to consider whether that information is something we could find useful or interesting, we’re just forced to learn it, even if we forget it right after we’re tested. But that’s for another post…

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By Verdana, 2009/06/16

All children are born as autodidacts, but through schooling, most forget that they can learn something on their own without being taught. This happened to me too. After 12 years in brainwashing school systems, I assumed that in order to learn anything credible, it has to come from an institution with lots of good reputation, otherwise there is no way it can be useful.

However, when I was faced with picking a major in college, I picked programming. I noticed that it wasn’t because I had a great programming teacher, or because I took lots of programming classes, but because I was spending most of my free time having fun programming on my own. From that point on, I took learning as something I do for myself and teachers are there only as consultants that will give me advice and information.

I’m now confident that I can learn anything I put my hands on if I really want to know it. Case in point, in the past two years, I became a hobby auto mechanic, just because I was interested in cars. I didn’t take a course at a local community college; instead I bought a 1991 Nissan 240sx that needed some TLC. While trying to make that car run and look better, I researched suspension, handling, intake, exhaust, powertrain, basic maintenance, body work, interior and exterior styling, lighting, etc. and applied that knowledge to my own car, tinkering with it on weekends. I learned about different automotive competitions and driving styles and techniques. In order to make my well built car perform better, I also found the need to improve my driving so I participated in several autocross events. I became friends with people who were into working on cars, so we helped each other and learned from each other. In short, I made cars my number one preoccupation in my free time, which in two years turned me from a completely ignorant girl that would judge cars based on their color, to a car enthusiast who could swap the suspension in an hour or troubleshoot and fix an idle problem.

In the same way by reading books, websites, magazines, forums, Wikipedia, etc. and gaining practical knowledge at the same time, I can learn how to be a vet, a detective, a farmer, a pilot, or whatever else I want to become. The only hitch about being an autodidact is that you don’t get a piece of paper that says what you are supposed to be able to do. I know people who finished computer science, yet can’t write a decent piece of code. They were never passionate about programming, and went for it just because they heard it would be profitable. How are they now any better and worth more than someone who spent thousands of hours on a computer improving the kernel or writing elaborate web tools for fun, is beyond me, but that is how the modern school system functions, and frankly that will get a post for itself.

Regardless, learning new things on your own even especially after leaving school is an invaluable skill to have. By learning whatever you want or need to know, you will become more flexible and adaptable, make your life more interesting, and in the long run possibly make/save money if that’s what you’re into.