Shame in Learning

[chove]

I think it's helpful to think about it as if this were some other hobby.

If you were getting into painting, would you say to yourself it was only worth doing if you could sell your paintings and make a living off of it? I hope not.

If painting brings you joy, then paint. If learning languages brings you joy, then learn languages. If neither brings you joy, then find another hobby that does.

A lot of (most?) hobbies have the lurking issue of monetisation. When people find out I can sew the next thing they say is "have you tried selling things on Etsy?" There's a definite sense that if you're not making money doing something then you shouldn't be doing it. Which is odd, because surely it's enough to enjoy something, you don't have to make a career out of it as well? The radical notion that we're allowed to want to spend time doing something that doesn't have a financial reward involved.

[coldrainwater]

Language learning, by dint of trajectory, has a long-term perspective. In-the-moment thrills, chills and obsessions aside, a language well-acquired is a useful asset to the owner potentially for the rest of their days. When you think about how long it takes to learn one, a counterpoint to that is that you may then go and use it for 10, 20, 30+ years into the future. When choosing a programming language to specialize in for my career, I picked one that was firmly entrenched and that I knew would be important and valuable in 10 or 20 years. Now 10 years later, I can say it has been a good decision. The current human language that I am studying has a very strong presence in that field that integrates nicely with it and with most of my other intellectual interests.

Life isn't a straight line. Nevertheless, I knew one line, I am going to need this when I am older by heart and from a young age. I learned to play chess as a young kid sitting in Barnes & Nobles one or two nights per week. While I played with everyone, many of my opponents were 50 years my senior. If I am as fortunate in my life as they were in theirs, one day I may be sitting opposite myself in a little cafe, sipping coffee and making a grand mess out of 64 squares, smiling all the while. It is hard to put a price tag on a life like that. Similarly, I chose hiking as a physical hobby since it produces great physical benefit now and I can still see myself doing it at 70, potentially to an even greater effect.

Some of the dilemma may be a question of how far you ultimately take your skills and at what pace you acquire them. At least in my opinion most lives should and do have room for at least one hobby. I hope the examples I gave have been helpful, but even after all that rambling, I have to admit, I still run across similar concerns due to competing priorities. Our old CEO said that it is a good rule to estimate that you can control about 90% of what happens to you. From that angle, I do actively work to integrate language learning with other practical interests and in a sense, you can very much shape a large portion of your tomorrow. For most people, the shape that takes is far more under their control than it is beyond it.

[IronMike]

If what you're filling your time with makes you happy, and doesn't harm someone else, then just do it.

That caveat is important. There have been times in my life when spending a couple hours a day working on a language would have hurt someone else if it was at the expense of work, watching the kid(s), walking the dog, doing chores. Thankfully the wife and I worked our butts off early so that now we can have a life where we have several hours available to each of us daily to do whatever the hell we want.

Bottom line: one shouldn't feel shame doing what they love.

[lemme_try]

Then there are those colleagues of you who used the time you put into languages to get a PhD or start a business and earn big money or something, and your parents start to compare your life to theirs.

Lol. Some personal anecdotes?!

People have different miles stones. You should not measure your self-worth comparing yourself with others.

[Ogrim]

I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I like to learn languages. I like to learn them. I like unveiling the mysteries. But it is also true that learning is not paying my bills, though I have no intention of forcing it to do so. Even in my native tongue I am not a conversationalist, easy to open up, the first to speak, as I am more prone to listen. I find polyglots usually become a sort of teacher or translator eventually - or that's where they intended to go in the first place.

Does anyone else struggle with this? I have no end goal and I think that's where the shame creeps in. If you have or had these same feelings, how do you or how have you overcome them?

From what you write it is not clear to me whether you are a full-time student of languages or you are just studying in your free time, whether you have a job or not. Whatever your situation I wanted to share my story:

I discovered that I loved languages when I was still in school as a teenager. So when the time came to decide on my university studies, I was gently nudged by my parents to study law. I started on law studies but quit after a couple of months to concentrate fully on Spanish. My family thought I had made a very bad choice, as I would probably end up as a low-paid school teacher instead of a successful lawyer. I stood my ground and I ended up with a Masters degree in Comparative Romance Philology, and my aim was to get a PhD and become a university professor.

However, life took a course of its own and I ended up with a career working for international organisations, not as a linguist but as a Human Resources specialist. Today my languages is a hobby (admittedly a very important one), but they have also allowed me to work internationally and live in five different countries.

Of course I had doubts when I decided to leave law studies and spend all my time on languages. I would not say I felt shame, but I did disappoint my parents initially and that is difficult when you now they have high hopes for you. However one thing I have learnt in my profession is that you should never choose a line of study or a career to satisfy someone else's ambitions.

I don't know what else interests you in life, but you say you feel shame because you have no end goal. Maybe you need to find out for yourselves what is really important to you and at least have some idea of where you want to go. In HR we talk a lot nowadays about "potential" and "motivation" as key factors for success. What motivates you? In what field of work do you think you have potential to grow and develop? Would you like to work as a translator or interpreter? Would you be comfortable teaching languages to others? Or is there some other area of life you would like to explore and other subjects you would be motivated to study with a view to a career?

The point is, in the end only you can know what is important to you and what can make you happy.

[Querneus]

Reminder that "dilettante" comes from Latin dīlēctum, "loved thing". A dilettante is etymologically someone who goes around loving things. Quite often becoming a professional in something makes you stop enjoying it as used to, as the proportion of responsibilities increases over what previously you simply enjoyed doing, and you chose to do only. I just disagree people have to work in what they love the most. Sometimes leaving it as a hobby is a way to protect that love.

That said, many people including some of our members here make a living as language teachers, and seem to enjoy languages all the same. And I've known at least two translators who were also enthusiastic learners of hobby languages.

Isn't this a waste of time? What else should you be doing?

This is something I struggle a bit with, though. Why care so much about learning a specific language, knowing I could perfectly live my life not knowing it? My stance so far is that I have to choose something to do with my time anyway, and that's always an arbitrary decision. And language learning —and linguistics— so far seem to bring forth way more joy in me than most other things, gardening, computer science, the current ephemeral politics, drawing, making music, so why not keep doing it? Not that there's anything wrong with gardening (and oof, didn't I meet one very enthusiastic amateur botanist one time...), but this is just my personality right here.

[Language patzer]

Wow, I thought I was the only one!

I feel worthless pursuing my hobbies when my work life is not set. That includes painting and chess, two things I have essentially given up.

It doesn't include languages though, even if french is basically useless to me professionaly. The reason is that knowing languages in Greece is considered a great thing, even if a language doesn't help promote your carreer. It's always appreciated for its own value, and is considered an education on its own.

On the contrary, if you spend your days painting, without earning money in some way, people willl simply call you lazy.

So, having read all the messages, I assume it's a cultural thing, dependig on the country and on the hobby!

Don't give up on languages nomatter what. It's always an asset, and a true education for your mind and character.

[白田龍]

Let the fools argue among themselves...

[Beli Tsar]

The average person spends several hours a week on TV/Netflix. Most people. So if people really care about wasted time, why not deal with that first? And can anyone (e.g. your parents) really say they never do anything that isn't immediately useful or profitable.

I think the reality is that people think learning languages is such hard unpleasant work that you can't really be doing it for fun - it must be for profit. And it's not that efficient for profit, therefore you must have made the wrong choice.

[jmar257]

I've definitely fallen into that trap, especially right after graduating with debt and not making a ton of money. Part of fixing it was getting a bit more financially secure (it's easier to spend money and time on this without guilt now), but another part was realizing this: you have to pass the time somehow. This was never supposed to a professional endeavor for me, just something I do in my free time because I enjoy it (even if I can't explain why).

One of the big things for me was, as news about better machine translation becomes more widespread (although I still think we're far off from it replacing translators/interpreters), I asked myself this: if perfect machine translation was available tomorrow, would I stop learning languages? I don't think so. Language learning isn't the means to and end for me (i.e., I don't just want to read or watch things in the original language and thus have to learn a foreign language to do so), I generally enjoy the process of decoding something unfamiliar and then turning around and using it. Even if machine translation were perfected tomorrow, I'd still need something to do after work in the evenings to pass the time other than workout, I'm not a big fan of watching TV, so languages (or reading, or video games) it is. This kind of feeds into the "no end goal" thing as well--who cares? Ultimately it's a hobby to pass the time, and it's better than binging TV. Do you want to get to the end of your life and look back at the free time you spent not learning languages (filling it with another activity you enjoy less)?