Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

General discussion about learning languages
garyb
Black Belt - 1st Dan
Posts: 1572
Joined: Mon Jul 20, 2015 12:35 pm
Location: Scotland
Languages: Native: English
Advanced: Italian, French
Intermediate: Spanish
Beginner: German, Japanese
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1855
x 5992
Contact:

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby garyb » Mon Nov 29, 2021 12:31 pm

I broadly agree with the posts so far: it's easier to learn but also easier to get distracted, get stuck in analysis paralysis with the vast number of available resources, go down unhelpful paths, and lose motivation after being given unreasonable expecations.

There are many other factors that could explain a seeming lack of increase in knowledge between generations. Are people at all more interested in learning languages now than back then? If not, then it being easier might make little difference. With globalisation and the increased dominance of English, plus technology like online dictionaries and automatic translation (which of course will never be a substitute for language learning, but can help people to get by in a pinch which is often all they really need), one could argue that learning languages (other than English) is less interesting and more of a niche hobby than ever.

As usual, English learning is a very different kettle of fish from other foreign language learning, and is surely easier and more interesting than ever since it's become so important and ubiquitious.
9 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Nov 29, 2021 2:20 pm

zgriptsuroica wrote:One thing that seems to be different to me (though I can't comment with any certainty owing to my age) is the obsession with efficiency that seems to me to have popped up within perhaps the last 10-15 years. I've seen people elsewhere talk about abandoning a particular approach/resource not for any concrete fault, but that they heard of another method that was more efficient. It can be a negative for learners in a number of ways, in my opinion, not least of which is that it encourages resources hopping rather than settling in and engaging with one set of materials at length, as well as giving pseudo-scientific legitimacy to nonsense about being able to learn a language to advanced competency in ridiculously short amounts of time.

While I don't think there was really a time where language courses advertised as saying "This one is going to be a real pain, you'll hate it," we've also gone further than ever down the path of convincing people that, not only might they have fun learning a language, they could even do it effortlessly via some app, turning all their video games to Spanish or something. This goes hand-in-hand with the efficiency obsession and internet gurus selling magic methods to establish unreasonable expectations of what learning a language should or will be like, and the amount of time that must actually be committed to get results, which can definitely contribute to muddying the waters for the would be student.

This is the post I wish I'd written. I'm in total agreement. Alongside the 'efficiency' obsession I would add-in the endless statistical analyses of of things like 'most common words' in random books/films/TV series. The feverish application of rigid mathematical analyses, all non-peer reviewed, by people who seem to think language-learning is a branch of engineering (since so many today think they are an 'engineer' of some sort or other). Which makes barely a dent in they way people actually learn and what they learn, making it neither faster nor more 'efficient'. It's not that discovering the most common vocabulary worth learning is useless, but that it has already been done dozens of times; not least by leading language instruction specialists as part of research into course development. It's already in the courses.
7 x

User avatar
SpanishInput
Yellow Belt
Posts: 97
Joined: Sun Sep 26, 2021 3:11 pm
Location: Ecuador
Languages: Spanish (N), English (C2), Mandarin (HSK 5)
x 469

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby SpanishInput » Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:35 pm

Le Baron wrote:Alongside the 'efficiency' obsession I would add-in the endless statistical analyses of of things like 'most common words' in random books/films/TV series.

I know I'm guilty of this efficiency obsession. The thing is, some famous introductory courses of years past, such as "The sorcerer's key to Spanish" (I changed the name to avoid trouble), or even some new ones, such as "Easy Spanish foot by foot" (again I changed the name) include words that are not just "uncommon" from a cold statistical point of view, but which are downright rare or region-specific. Even I, a native speaker, need to check a dictionary or read the footnotes to understand some things in these courses.

This is what the current data-heavy approach is solving. The much-maligned Duolingo is among the better courses in this regard. Duolingo has collected subtitles from movies and uses this data to help course creators:
https://blog.duolingo.com/the-duolingo- ... g-content/
Last edited by SpanishInput on Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
2 x

User avatar
Sonjaconjota
Green Belt
Posts: 271
Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 8:12 am
Location: Barcelona
Languages: German (N) - English, Spanish, Catalan (advanced) - French, Dutch, Italian (intermediate) - Turkish (beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 24#p192024
x 1094

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Sonjaconjota » Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:44 pm

Although I do agree with 2, 4 and 5, in my opinion, these arguments don't outweigh the endless new possibilities offered by the internet. Internet has been such a game changer for my language learning, and I'm going to be forever grateful.

I really liked this argument:
Le Baron wrote:Personally I think it's probably easier now if you're serious and organised and willing to accept some cul-de-sacs in your learning. Serious, organised and intelligent learners in the past also learned languages though, we know this because we've seen it. It may have been harder to hunt down opportunities, but that meant the person was determined. There's really not much difference between someone in 1978 purchasing the complete Linguaphone Italian and letting it gather dust in a corner and the person in 2021 downloading the complete Linguaphone Italian (among 2 dozen other materials) and not doing much with it.


I would like to add one aspect. At least from my point of view, in the past, language self-study was a lone hobby for a handful of nerds.
Now it suddenly seems to have become cool and popular by youtube and the catchphrase "polyglot".
I think that's the reason more people nowadays try it out and get tired of it than in the past. O maybe it's just that nowadays through the internet we witness these attempts, whereas we never got to see Linguaphone Italian gather dust in the corner in 1978. (Especially me, because I was born in 1979 ... :D .)
6 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Nov 29, 2021 5:02 pm

SpanishInput wrote:This is what the current data-heavy approach is solving. The much-maligned Duolingo is among the better courses in this regard. Duolingo has collected subtitles from movies and uses this data to help course creators.

Is it really 'solving' anything though? I've done a few Duolingo trees and I've found they contain a fair number of useless words and phrases. Whilst that can be said for practically any course (because nothing is a perfect match to everyone's usage needs), the alleged 'scientific' approach of Duolingo doesn't seem to be turning out language learning successes at any greater or faster rate. My question would be: why are subtitles from films particularly any good for learning? Out of the context of the films they appeared in at any rate? Films contain thousands of throwaway words and phrases that are of little real use to learners. So why is there this idea that they contain something specifically conducive to learning?

I quite like Duolingo, I don't want to malign it. It refreshed Esperanto for me after I'd let it languish for some years. I did the course when it was premiered and enjoyed it immensely. It also had some errors, but I got the impression the creators of it were so tickled that they'd got Esperanto onto Duolingo that they did the very best job they could - it certainly had superior audio compared to many of the other courses. Some of the other courses not so much. And a lot of them are constructed and maintained by amateurs who make mistakes (and refuse to fix obvious errors).
5 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Iversen » Mon Nov 29, 2021 5:41 pm

I have probably done more statistics on my own language learning items than most other language learners, but I'm also aware that there are limits to both the value and relevance of statistics. For instance I know from my wordcounts how dependent the results are on the precise pages I have used for my counting -and of course also on the size of the dictionaries (which means that percentages are much more relevant than absolute numbers). I also know that the most common words have many different shades of meaning and idiomatic uses, but since they aren't vey numerous they won't change the general estimates much. However some are also irregular forms, and you actually ought to count the different roots and unpredictable forms in such words as separate items, which adds to their impact.

It's hard to give a clear limit for this group of words, but let's put the limit at something like 400-500 headwords. Words above this limit may be common, but depending on your interests they could be relatively unimportant, just as allegedly rare words may be very relevant for you - like the names (including tradenames) for musical instruments, cereals, birds, food, institutions and .. let's not forget them: place names. So everybody has to learn the very common words, but above the limit you don't need to take the lists too seriously. Once you have learnt the words that are relevant for your interests and needs you can return to the frequency tables and use them to fill out the holes.
5 x

User avatar
Le Baron
Black Belt - 3rd Dan
Posts: 3510
Joined: Mon Jan 18, 2021 5:14 pm
Location: Koude kikkerland
Languages: English (N), fr, nl, de, eo, Sranantongo,
Maintaining: es, swahili.
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=18796
x 9384

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Le Baron » Mon Nov 29, 2021 7:28 pm

Iversen wrote:It's hard to give a clear limit for this group of words, but let's put the limit at something like 400-500 headwords. Words above this limit may be common, but depending on your interests they could be relatively unimportant, just as allegedly rare words may be very relevant for you - like the names (including tradenames) for musical instruments, cereals, birds, food, institutions and .. let's not forget them: place names. So everybody has to learn the very common words, but above the limit you don't need to take the lists too seriously. Once you have learnt the words that are relevant for your interests and needs you can return to the frequency tables and use them to fill out the holes.

I actually like accruing words, but it may be that I favour a more organic approach than the straight list or calculation methods. There are some words you just have to learn solidly because without them you can't really move forward, can't read or listen to much at all. Word acquisition after this - for myself at least - I do in a rather relaxed way. Those names and nouns you mention are either important/unimportant according to a given situation. Sometimes they form so much of a text that if you don't know the names of e.g. different grains (barley, wheat, rye, oats, spelt...) and the things around them like harvesting, threshing, milling etc, then you are kneecapped. So you guess them and look them up and move on, or form a little list and run over it a few times. Whatever method one prefers.

I am of the 'read much, note little' school of thought, because I look back on the past study I've done and find the wordlists I made were never really pored over; some just got written down once and never looked at again. It was chiefly active reading, listening, speaking which did it. I feel that a person's memory remembers encounters and occurrences and uses, much more than brute facts. And that the bigger the mountain of 'potential words' stocked up for potential use, the harder the brain has to work.

That's my experience at least. Other brains will work in different ways.
1 x

User avatar
tungemål
Blue Belt
Posts: 947
Joined: Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:56 pm
Location: Norway
Languages: Norwegian (N)
English, German, Spanish, Japanese, Dutch, Polish
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=17672
x 2181

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby tungemål » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:01 pm

I've always been an independent learner, and I find that language learning is much easier now, than 20-30 years ago. It's mainly because of these points (but also because I know how to do it now):
- a wealth of material for listening and reading available online, for free
- online dictionaries (faster) and other tools like google translate and context reverso
- easy to find speakers online (Italkie, conversation exchange etc)
- smartphone apps, like Anki and also Duolingo, allthough they can't replace a coursebook.

Which brings me to this: I like to go through a coursebook. But my delution in the 90s was that I would know a language after completing a "Teach Yourself"-book. The coursebook is just a starting point, but a very useful one. And they also existed 20-30 years ago, with audio on CDs or even cassette tape (I bought a French course in the 90s that still came with cassettes).

20 years ago I was living in the Netherlands, and I tried to learn Dutch. I had a coursebook, a paper dictionary, I borrowed cartoons at the local library, and tried to use Dutch in the city. Still, I think it would be much easier for me to learn Dutch now, living in Norway. What I lacked at the time was mainly audio material to practice with.
10 x

User avatar
Iversen
Black Belt - 4th Dan
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2015 7:36 pm
Location: Denmark
Languages: Monolingual travels in Danish, English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Romanian and (part time) Esperanto
Ahem, not yet: Norwegian, Afrikaans, Platt, Scots, Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Greek, Latin, Irish, Indonesian and a few more...
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1027
x 14962

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Iversen » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:15 pm

Now you mention Dutch - I learned that language at home during the noughties. OK, as an avid interrailer I passed through the Netherlands and Flanders many times before that, and I definitely picked up the sound of the language there - and also a few words and a lot of place names. But I learned how to read the stuff at home from written sources around 2010, and because I already had learned to read Dutch something suddenly clicked :idea: and I could understand spoken Dutch after five hours of uninterrupted listening to the website AVRO Museum TV (don't waste your time - it has deteriorated since then). And next time I visited the Netherlands I demonstrated that I also could speak it. :P

So if it had occurred to me to sit down and listen to Dutch speech on TV (or speech from a living human being) during one of my stays down there I could in principle have learned to understand Dutch speech forty or more years ago without the assistance of the internet. :(
4 x

Beli Tsar
Green Belt
Posts: 384
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2018 3:59 pm
Languages: English (N), Ancient Greek (intermediate reading), Latin (Beginner) Farsi (Beginner), Biblical Hebrew (Beginner)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=9548
x 1294

Re: Was language learning easier 20-30 years ago?

Postby Beli Tsar » Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:57 pm

I've no idea of the actual answer to the question, but I can say confidently that all the small sized success I've had in language learning is entirely due to the internet. It isn't much, but a combination of advice, SRS, encouragement, and content has been key. I'd have given up Greek and not managed anything else as a result.

Perhaps there were more people who diligently worked through French and German courses pre-internet. But there are new kinds of success possible that just weren't before - all the success stories from Japanese learners using MIA/Refold, to take just one example, are getting impressive results which wouldn't happen without the internet.

---edited for bad phone-typing errors---
Last edited by Beli Tsar on Tue Nov 30, 2021 9:21 am, edited 2 times in total.
5 x
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin Reading
: 0 / 50 1/2 Super Challenge - Latin 'Films'


Return to “General Language Discussion”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests