The Internet Polyglot Phenomenon
Posted on | December 15, 2012 | 1 Comment
There are the polyglots who speak multiple languages. There are the language learners who try to become them. Then there are those who just love watching people talking about language learning.
There is nothing inherently wrong about people making videos on the Internet speaking multiple languages trying to help and motivate other language learners. What I observe in reality is that people, including my past-self, tend to indulge in watching these individuals, and we would be doing nothing but to watch them and talk about them online, engaging in those never-ending discussions on “what is the best way to learn languages” and “who speaks how many languages fluently”.
In recent months, the Internet polyglots like to get together and conduct lengthy interviews and discussions together on language learning. A typical conclusion that comes out of these discussions would be: “There is just no best way. Follow your intuition and pick the best approach that suits you.” Now, thanks for the advice!
Pause for a moment and ask yourself how much time you have spent on watching and listening to all these multilingual medleys of monologues, dialogues, interviews, discussions, and hangouts. How about the time you have spent on ‘discussing’ language learning in the forums? Compare this with the amount of time you have actually spent on working on the languages. Now can you see why you are making slow progress?
Do you just want to talk about learning languages, or are you willing to put in some real effort to learn them?
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December 18th, 2012 @ 8:03 am
Oh!!!
That’s very good point. I spend probably more time learning how to learn, than actually learning.