Well, I learned from history lessons and life experiences that "heros create eras/times/epochs, eras/times/epochs create heros" (please correct me, I can't decide on which). My parents are monolingual and never offer me any language books (I haven't allowed to do e-shopping owing to financial problems and concern about security), languages, and the money for languages. Many of the Chinese learners know even more about Chinese food and cities than me. I've never even left my province, though I've been to some neighboring towns and two remote foreign countries.
You'd understand perfectly that everyone is unique and cannot live the life of others easily, with all the constraints. But as I see it, I'm afraid that most of the audience here won't even know how hard it is to live. Yes, I don't understand you, but I can infer from individual language courses that, in an entirely different socio-economic environment, the language learning business has started in the West long ago - at least since 1900s (Linguaphone). You can't expect any polyglots who specialize in Asian, or native African, languages, without having to be at least slightly educated in the Western way. Linguistic diversity aside, in real terms it's 10 times difficult to learn many such languages, when you have few good materials, and if you won't even learn English, and maybe some other Western ones, to get better access to them thru using superb materials.
Although I do admire professors who are well-versed in their subjects - to become some of the few great people I can term as speakers for high culture - that bit of sophisticated life is achieved with a hefty price. Indeed, AA did attribute that to the best kind of (higher) education of his time. English is now the gold standard for polyglottery. It's some kind of too-high culture that people won't care for - I'm not them, but I know what I would think, when I consider myself a mere mortal. And indeed, the kind of worries of such scholars, at times, may sound too lofty and therefore quite pointless for the brain-washed (see: the dumbing down theory), the half-brain-washed (like me), and those who are never brain-washed (some being illiterate).
It might sound like an irony for me, and I've learned that 1) English is modern Latin and 2) the monolinguals can be the greatest polyglots. Poor countries and cultures can't speak of culture (and language), so what defines polyglottery can seem quite vague in that sense. When I was brain-washed, I had thought that polyglots must be supermen. So, I was deluded, and now I think I'd still be ordinary. YET, I know better the fact that, to put it simply, it's really l'art pour l'art and does nothing more than satisfying personal ambitions (polyglottery in aboriginal languages wouldn't help much; I'm very utilitarian about this). Those who deluded me knew nothing more than the fact that Assimil, or wordlists, or any other methods from the West, if they like, would work for them. So, my values have been fossilized. I couldn't erase the socio-economic consciousness in me. Even though I know the chocolate and sweets of learning western (and essentially economically significant, and hence with "worthwhile" cultures) languages, I still think this business is pointless in most aspects... except, of coz, in that it's l'art pour l'art.
Inevitably, the world has been defined by "pointless" tongues, and now, almost English only. The fact that polyglottery has no equivalent (as suggested by some Chinese folks here) in my native language may actually be a cultural phenomenon - that it doesn't define it at all.
(Again, the question of how to make learning effective reminds me of how to use the right western methods and avoid using the bad western ones - yes, most of the methods are western, since the West has defined everything language - accusative, character, diglossia, register, dialect, and all that)
|
