Blog post on "Ecolingualism"

[leosmith]

Reading this article really irked me. Apparently I'm a selfish colonizer exploiting people by learning their languages. What do you think - is this reasonable?

https://lovinglanguage.wordpress.com/20 ... uage-love/

[Saim]

There's a kernel of truth in what this fellow's saying but I'm not sure the level of outrage is warranted given the totally vague solutions provided.

I mean, people have been moving to richer countries for higher wages for generations, a phenomenon which has helped create the immigrant communites the author has been so ecolingually in touch with. What's the difference between that and people moving to poorer countries to take advantage of cheaper rent? Of course there are serious issues on this planet regarding the global distribution of wealth, but wealthy people temporarily living in foreign countries and learning the language is practically irrelevant when compared to all the other forms of exploitation going on: what, you don't think we economically exploit poor countries without leaving rich countries? I'd much sooner point the finger at self-styled "expats" (read: white emigrants) who don't do anything to integrate into the local culture at all: who, let's be honest, represent the vast majority of immigrants from wealthier to less wealthy countries. I'd go as far as to say that these problems are inherent to our current model of capitalism, although perhaps that's getting a bit too political for this forum.

Finally, the author himself admits to having done the same thing, only somehow mitigated by the fact that he still uses the languages he learned overseas in his own country. Well, great, but how exactly are you going to get to a very advanced level in several immigrant languages spoken in your country without having lived overseas? It's not as if the Arabic vernaculars the author has mastered are known for being replete with resources for foreign learners! Does he think that other language nomads, upon returning home (if they indeed ever do), actively avoid immigrant communities that speak their target languages?

I mean, criticise mass tourism, "expat" culture and AirBnB all you want (and I would be the first to do so), but I'm not sure what the completely marginal in comparison language-learning community has done to deserve this ire.

(I'd also like to point out that I find the pot-shots at Benny profoundly boring given how common they are: these people make it seem like he's the undisputed spiritual king of language tourists everywhere).

[Ogrim]

I find the argumentation in this blog post at least confusing, and even hypocritical. Whatever you think of the so-called "digital nomad", I really cannot see that they do that much harm to anybody, certainly not more than the average backpacker or charter tourist who does not even bother to learn a few words of the language in the countyr they visit. And how is visiting a country and talking to people in their native language "exploitation"? Of course I accept that the attitude of some of these "nomads" can be condescending and that some of them may look on the cultures they visit as "inferior", but I do not think that is the norm. If one cares to check out the blogs of some constant travellers you can see that they have a genuine interest in and sympathy for the countries they visit and the people they get to know.

What I find hypocritical is the second part of the article, where he talks about "ecolinguism", whatever that is. I fail to see how learning the languages of minorities in the community in order to speak them is a way of helping those minorities (unless you work as an interpreter at a refugee centre or similar), and then he goes on to talk about how much stuff he has got for free or with a discount because he spoke Russian and Arabic to shopkeepers and taxi drivers. How is that helping the community? Isn't this the same kind of language banditry as the one he accuses the digital nomads of?

[Iversen]

The article oozes of selfrighteousness and naivity to a degree that makes it hard to remain polite.

First a practical problem: it is naive to think that responsible tourists can learn near-extinct languages before arriving in a far-away country. The resources for such languages will be minimal, and even learning those languages after the arrival would take long time and an immense effort. And this situation will of course be even worse if you want to show solidarity with several moribund language communities, especially if they are spread all across the globe. It is simply not a reasonable demand. What you could demand is that expats take some interest in the local communities, including their languages. But you can't tell ordinary tourists to drop dead or settle down and become politically correct expats, especially not if you also expect them to live on the same budget as local people. It won't happen.

Even learning the dominating local language of a country will be too hard in many cases (like learning Vietnamese to visit Vietnam once), but at least it would show a interest in the local culture, and people who have spent time on learning foreign languages, but just not the one spoken at their travel destination, might be more likely to be interested in interacting with the local population wherever they go, even if it can't be in the local language. After all, travelling is one of the most common reasons why people learn foreign languages, but we just can't be expected to learn a whole language for a two week holiday.

And then you may ask a general question (bordering on politics): is tourism harmful? Well, it may be - if an area is inundated with tourists corrupt local politicians and businessmen and global enterprises will reap most of the benefits, while local people may lose their natural resources and access to for instance beaches and affordable food and housing. But again, precisely the kind of tourists who are interested in the local culture (including those who haven't learnt the language of their destination) are more likely to be aware of such things than those who just want to sip lumumbas under a palmtree - or even worse: those that don't even contemplate visiting other parts of the world. So why whack the kind of tourists who at least have done something to learn other languages and who at least take the time to learn to say hello and thanks in the local lingo? Whack those who don't care a damn, and whack those that earn their money on destructive mass tourism, but don't expect us all to become newborn Mother Theresas.

[whatiftheblog]

I was all prepared to hate on this - nothing gets me going quite like a sanctimonious blog post by a privileged Westerner claiming to be better than all the other privileged Westerners. However, I think he had a valid point in the first part that happened to be poorly delivered; he kind of got lost in his argument, which was supposed to be about digital nomads (?) and ended up unfairly targeting traveling language learners.

When it comes to digital nomads, my experience suggests that he may be right on certain points. For every "digital nomad" who remains sensitive to and in tune with the local culture, there are typically 10 who move to Chiang Mai (it's always Chiang Mai or Bali, it's never like, Topeka, is it...) because it's cheap and there's stable wifi and (most significantly) everything is infinitely instagrammable. For every 1 person who starts a cool venture (Benny would be a good example), there are 20 travel bloggers who all publish the same clickbait listicles, shill the same e-courses on commission, and use the same auto-scheduling apps to manage all their social media accounts, resulting in virtually indistinguishable profiles. I followed about 300 travel bloggers on social media for a professional project I was doing, and the incestuousness of the community as of late, where everyone likes and retweets everyone else and generates 0 original content, became damn near unbearable after a month or so. If they truly cared for the communities they were staying in, they did a good job of hiding it, because when they weren't publishing groundbreaking content such as "10 Reasons Women Should Travel Solo", they were whining about Thai visas and Thai this and Thai that, twirling with selfie sticks at shrines and temples, and hanging out exclusively with other white Western travel bloggers. They most certainly weren't learning Thai, I'll tell you that much.

All of that to say that I think he had a good point that was, unfortunately, lost. As for the second part, I couldn't really figure out where he was going with that at all.

[Hrhenry]

Totally unrelated, but "Twirling with selfie sticks" would make a great name for a band.

R.
==

[Cavesa]

I find the blog post wrong on so many levels, despite the good intentions.

Tourisms certainly needs some criticism and changes, but I totally don't believe digital nomads and such people are the main problem. Mass tourism is. That is the largest part of tourism, and the one that cares the least about the locals, the culture, the language. The most cultural thing they care about is a typical meal. And you'd want to criticise the digital nomads instead?

How many digital nomads are there? And are they worse than us, usual individual tourists? Who cares whether they have more money than locals and want cheaper living than at home They still pay in the country, they give jobs to others. Money from a foreigner is no worse than money from a local. Is it so wrong that instead of paing a higher rent back at home, they bring money to a poorer country? As was said, it is just as normal as moving to a richer country for more money. That is the base of freedom. Of course there are some downsides, such as some parts of cities becoming ghosttowns, where rich foreigners come just for one month per year and their homes are dead for the rest. But that is a matter the cities should and can solve on their own, or at least regulate the less pleasant consequences. Making individual middle income travelers feel guilty changes nothing. If guilt is what you want to use to change this, go and try to make millionaires with ten flats all over the world guilty. Guilty for not making friends with poorer neighbours, or at least guilty for the ways their developper used to make locals move out of the locality (true thing). They will laugh into your face.

About temporary friendships during the travels. I used to have some friends we fell out of touch with. Not half the world away,we both live in Prague. And so what? How is that different from my temporary friends from Spain? Yes, I plan to write to one of them, as I'd really want our friendship to continue, but I am a bit shy. But most are the cases the author mentions. I would be interested to know how old is the author of the blog. Falling out of touch is a normal part of life, not a tragedy. With some people, it will mean losing the friendship. With others, you will connect at some later point again. So, where is any dishonesty and exploiting in that?

Oh, the author had such an unusual revelation that travelling is great but it is better for a family to settle down. What an original point!

Ecolingualism. So, learning just the languages of immigrants and minorities in your country? That is stupid. Especially in today's world, where we all should strive to get to know a bit the people and cultures far away from ours, as they are not that far in importance, business, politics, and other areas. Should I understand that Ecolingualism is just a hipster version of the old "learn to know your own country and culture really well first, before going abroad" nonsense?

But the most stupid part:

How will you use your language ability for others?

I don't care at all and don't feel guilty about it. Of course others will profit from it, when it means either my pleasure or gain or sense of duty. But that is not my primary concern and I refuse to be scolded for that. I do lots of things for others. I have sacrificed my youth to get a career in which I will very probably have my personal life and health ruined for the good of others. It is at least quite interesting. I do things for others in my personal life as well. Yes, one can always do more, always. So, why on earth should I choose my hobbies for others? How do most people learn their sport hobby for others? Should they feel guilty of running around just for their own pleasure? For learning to swim fast with no intention to become a lifeguard? For learning martial arts or sports shooting without applying to police? Really, this attitude is disgusting.

So, if I were to redefine "ecolingualism" to something I'd find more suitable and useful, I'd be all for printing coursebooks on recycled paper, converting dvds and other future nature damaging rubish to a digital form, promoting traveling by train, and so on.

[iguanamon]

...Ecolingualism. So, learning just the languages of immigrants and minorities in your country? That is stupid. Especially in today's world, where we all should strive to get to know a bit the people and cultures far away from ours, as they are not that far in importance, business, politics, and other areas. ...

Well said, Cavesa. I've done some of this with Spanish and especially Haitian Creole/Lesser Antilles French Creole but not with Portuguese and Ladino. Portuguese and Ladino-speakers are far away in distance but close at hand in electronic distance. I find it valuable to be able to speak with linguistic minorities here in their mother tongue. I also find it very rewarding to speak and interact in my other languages that are not represented here locally. My life would not be as rich without Portuguese and Ladino.

No continent on Earth is much more than a day's flight away. We are more connected than ever. As author Tom Friedman said "The world is flat". Learning languages of peoples who are far away helps us to get to know those people and their cultures better. It is harder (though definitely not impossible) to demonize a people and a culture when you understand more about them and it works both ways. Seeing others as we see ourselves is also critical to understanding. Sadly, this doesn't always come along with language-learning for some folks.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

[whatiftheblog]

I find the blog post wrong on so many levels, despite the good intentions.

Tourisms certainly needs some criticism and changes, but I totally don't believe digital nomads and such people are the main problem. Mass tourism is. That is the largest part of tourism, and the one that cares the least about the locals, the culture, the language. The most cultural thing they care about is a typical meal. And you'd want to criticise the digital nomads instead?

I think the argument to be made here is that these days, "digital nomads" are basically considered to be the equivalent of mass tourists - they come, often in large groups, overpay because they can, contribute to inflation, typically don't bother with any aspects of the language or culture, "other" (used here as a verb) the local population (see: the classic Very White Person Surrounded by Very Non-White Children Facebook profile picture), and peace out to the next place, rinse and repeat.

This is all part of a higher-level quasi-philosophical debate on sustainable tourism, cultural appropriation, etc, but there's also the economic aspect. Regarding the below:

How many digital nomads are there? And are they worse than us, usual individual tourists? Who cares whether they have more money than locals and want cheaper living than at home They still pay in the country, they give jobs to others. Money from a foreigner is no worse than money from a local. Is it so wrong that instead of paing a higher rent back at home, they bring money to a poorer country? As was said, it is just as normal as moving to a richer country for more money. That is the base of freedom. Of course there are some downsides, such as some parts of cities becoming ghosttowns, where rich foreigners come just for one month per year and their homes are dead for the rest. But that is a matter the cities should and can solve on their own, or at least regulate the less pleasant consequences. Making individual middle income travelers feel guilty changes nothing. If guilt is what you want to use to change this, go and try to make millionaires with ten flats all over the world guilty. Guilty for not making friends with poorer neighbours, or at least guilty for the ways their developper used to make locals move out of the locality (true thing). They will laugh into your face.

I work in development, and while this is not really the place for a dissertation on development economics, to respond to the bolded - that's how it should work, but the reality on the ground is often far more complex. If you're not familiar with White Car Syndrome, it's a colloquial term used to refer to an economic/social/political affliction brought on by too many aid workers and too much aid money. When cities suffer from White Car Syndrome, you typically see over half the population living on less than $1.25/day while downtown apartments rent at $1,500+ for a 1-bedroom, which is what I pay in Washington. I once spent $78 on 4 things at a Haitian grocery store; one of them was a piece of cheese. Juba, where there was an actual civil war going on in the streets just a few months ago, is one of the world's most expensive capitals for this very reason. It's a vicious cycle that neither development professionals nor governments have been able to break out of, with extraordinarily rare exceptions like East Timor.

Digital nomads are like aid workers, except they don't typically go to war zones. If one dude with a laptop shows up in a moderately connected village and brings 50 more with him, all of a sudden you've got people willing to pay $200/mo in rent instead of $20/mo, so the families start renting out their homes and moving out. Then The Nomads complain that there "aren't enough breakfast places", like that one guy quoted in the Forbes article from the blog post, like heaven forbid I should have to fry my own eggs! The horror! So breakfast places start opening up, and let's say they charge $2 for a meal, but the locals can't afford to pay $2 for a meal, so the locals stop going out, because if one guy on the street is charging $2 instead of $0.50 and is always busy, then the next guy is going to start charging the same, and so on. So now you've completely transformed the fundamental characteristics of 1) the real estate market, including any cultural heritage that's there, like people who live in the house that their great-grandparents built; 2) the social and political culture, because locals can no longer afford to gather at neighborhood joints to talk politics and morals and religion and what have you; 3) the cost of literally everything. Better quality products start getting more and more expensive, and so less and less attention is paid to less expensive products, meaning lax approaches to health and safety, so now you're spreading communicable diseases with your mangoes as well.

But now you have all the locals living on the outskirts of the city, so you have several new problems, including: 4) they're now further from things like medical facilities and their places of employment; 5) so they need to travel further distances, which means now you're clogging up roads and hurting the environment; 6) while all of this inflation was running rampant, corruption and social inequality increased. Government agencies now know they can earn more from demanding bribes from new entrepreneurs with more money, and now the heads of government agencies are getting greedy, too. Bad bosses, drunk on power, start stealing wages, endangering the most vulnerable employees.

So now Mr. Local is 10 km further from the hospital, is barely scraping by, doesn't have a vehicle, his wife's pregnant and he doesn't know how he'll get her to the hospital when she goes into labor, so she might die, and to top it all off, the home his family has lived in for generations is occupied by white girls with dreadlocks and dreamcatcher tattoos who are some form of "marketing consultants" and who are just, like, totally free spirits, yanno? The local shrine/temple happens to be very beautiful, so what used to be a place of great spiritual significance is now overrun by the Eat Pray Love people. But hey, at least there's a breakfast place now! And the white girls are "contributing money to the economy"!

^^ That's obviously a doom and gloom scenario, but it's very much a reality in many places. There are dozens of different factors at play here, and much depends on the specific country/region where this is taking place - many struggle to regulate these processes not because they're fundamentally stupid or incapable of running their own affairs properly, but more often than not because of complex (likely colonial) legacies and structural problems with government services and an overabundance/dearth of resources and insufficient public finance absorption capacities and bad geographic luck (at sea level, on fault line, in rough climate) and bad aid management and Western corruption and embezzlement and and and and and... *exhale*

In closing, so long as digital nomads remain cognizant of all of these trends and effects and attempt to live as sustainably as possible in their new environments, there's obviously nothing wrong with that. However, that has more frequently than not not been the case.

(And for my last language exercise of the night, I'll attempt to record this soliloquy in French! )

[PeterMollenburg]

The article oozes of selfrighteousness

(quote cut in half to focus on point, not taken out of context though imo)

Yes, I totally agree.

It is very judgemental and one dimensional. And just for the record, I have been these things on many an occasion (judgemental and one dimensional). However, that doesn't take away from the fact that that is exactly how I see this article and 'selfrighteousness' as Iversen put it, is the perfect word. The writer is very much on his/her high horse. I think many a person strives to (and I've dreamt of it, maybe it might happen some day) create a location independent work situation for the very reason of exploring other cultures and countries. Some people it appears put a lot of work into creating such an income, and good on them! They are quite often encouraging imo, from the point of view that they often value other cultures enormously and strive to embrace them. Ranty McRant signing off

it is naive to think that responsible tourists can learn near-extinct languages before arriving in a far-away country.

Even learning the dominating local language of a country will be too hard in many cases (like learning Vietnamese to visit Vietnam once),

Ranty is back!
Yes, very true indeed. It's like there is not an ounce of practical thought going into this person's article. And being a blog that could indeed be very plausible. I've written many a stupid things myself In today's capitalist driven world, whether we like or don't like certain kinds of toursts or not, they exist, they have their own motivations, their own likes/dislikes, carry their own lack of insights and ignorance (just like I do) and they certainly have a lot of knowledge on certain topics and many of them are likely not to be related to other cultures or languages, so if they want to simply have a break and visit another country in whatever way (without being criminal about it) then that's their right. And even the most revolting mass tourist styled sightseeing may shed shed some cultural light on some people. It may not, but for some people a tacky sighseeing tour might be the grand opener to someone who goes on to learn much more about a culture they saw through the window of a bus or via the interpretation of a guide.