It Feels Like Brain Damage & PTSD: Learning Languages is Over-Rated.

you you weren't tempted last week when
we talked about the possibility of you starting a whole new life in cambodia did that know it's a tremendous sacrifice and when i say that these things change who you are it's not entirely free you're closing a whole lot of doors to open that one door i'm more curious this is like i've been wanting to just kind of move into a different topic segwaying if you will i'm curious to know okay so i only speak english i don't even speak high school level french it's terrible yeah you speak multiple languages or you've at least [Music] learned languages sounds like some of them you haven't kept up with whatever i'm curious as somebody who is clearly who clearly prioritizes learning languages um i don't know a lot about that from personal experience like i'm not driven i don't want to like i feel like it's a very it's like learning math for me i just don't want to look at it another language and i think for somebody who doesn't really look at languages too much or hasn't learned multiple languages the assumption is kind of like that the main reason to learn a language is simply so that you can communicate to people who speak that language but my vague understanding is that beyond just being able to translate words from english to whatever you're learning that you actually can pick up stuff from learning another language like it's not just this word means this there's actual like interesting things you can learn about a culture or just about psychology or whatever from hearing or understanding how another language works is that accurate and if so like can you tell me about that a bit like is there is there lessons you get from languages that you kind of can't get anywhere else that aren't just sort of this word means this the short answer is yes but the long answer is i'm very very careful not to romanticize this aspect of language learning and there were a lot of people on the internet a lot of people publishing books and a lot of people working in universities who really do try to romanticize language learning so i have at least one youtube video where the title is this is from memory like learn as few languages as possible like that's either the title of the section where i warn people like don't don't think you can learn like eight languages without really [ __ ] up your life and kind of damaging your psychology it's a big deal uh it screws you up frankly it feels like brain damage and i have a lot of regrets about about language learning and i'm very honest about that because i don't want other people to make those those mistakes and i really caution people against overly ambitious overly adventurous approaches to learning a language there is no shortcut when it comes to learning languages none and you know what else it's not rewarding in the way that people think it is or the way that people say it is i don't read as much as i used to because i'm busy learning languages sorry i got books here i i don't know when i'm gonna find time to read this but i'd love to do a book review on this channel but if i'm okay so this is these are both related to china so i can't read this book about politics and history of china because i'm going to be busy memorizing incredibly simple sentences out of this book doing language language learning language rote memorization language practice so on and so forth so there's there's a really simple direct sense in which language learning makes your life worse makes your life less meaningful makes your life less rewarding and you know i mean on the other hand i'm spoiled i've studied so many languages for so many years i am accustomed to getting off an airplane and being able to speak enough french i'm get off the airplane in germany this even happened we should switch planes in germany and speak enough german now within asia speaking chinese speaking thai probably if i had to i could go back to speaking enough japanese not not easily you know the places i've been flying in and out of i am really accustomed to saying part of me thank you how much does this cost knowing the numbers even if it's just that level of interaction what buying gross able to do it and here i am now in athens greece and you know i feel ashamed i feel ashamed that i don't speak enough this language already instantly to be able to ask people how much does this cost part of me sorry excuse me whatever those kinds of interactions from the day i got off the plane and you know what you know what i own the books so i i have the temptation to think over now how much time do i want to put into reading these books but again language study it competes with studying the philosophy the history the politics things that are really more meaningful and more rewarding if i spend the time doing rote memorization on greek vocabulary greek sentence structure greek grammar that's time when i'm not even reading the greek newspaper let alone the philosophy of aristotle or you know uh whatever so you asked about the positive side and i'm only talking about the negative side so far i have to talk about both in terms of the positive side let me say this there is absolutely no way you can pick up a political pamphlet published in communist china and appreciate what it means in english translation all right just very simple example and by the same token like today if you picked up one of the pamphlets for donald trump and translated into chinese like did google translate china's trend hand it to a chinese person there would be so much there they're not getting and not understanding when you're talking about the politics of cambodia the politics of laos you know some of what's going on politically comes from a marxist and communist heritage some of it comes from an ancient buddhist heritage some of it comes from a french empire european colonialist heritage there's a lot there right there's a lot to appreciate now you know for someone like me that may powerfully motivate you to wake up in the morning and study an obscure language like lotion along with the potential to really make a positive difference in the world in brief through humanitarian work through research you know i i had different different reasons to do this with that having been said very often the price is too high to pay i'm left with a lot of regrets in my life and i really do feel like it's brain damage i've lost a lot of my intellectual potential and a lot of things i could have done with my life learning lotion learning cambodian i learned much less cambodian than lotion incidentally but it was very hard work very very tough language to work on what what i learned of cambodian came at at a very high price and you know i have to say also when i slip into speaking lotion which i still can do it doesn't feel good i mean it's really like ptsd it's really awful and i don't think on a biological level that it is natural normal or good to to be multilingual or or massively multilingual to have many languages acquired this way um you know so just to very briefly contrast you know something positive you know when i was in laos i didn't just study lotion i studied the ancient language pali and i remember riding up on my bicycle to a hospital and the hospital had a long pretentious name i like to do that in lotion so lau it's a it's a monosyllabic language it's like many words are just one syllable long but then they have these long words that come from buddhist philosophy that are polysyllabic and very very long and you know i actually found an error in the spelling of the hospital's name and i was able to speak lotion enough to go up and explain them hey you know i'm a scholar of buddhist philosophy and you know actually you have the wrong consonant in the middle of this long word and i know today i completely forgot what was the name of the hospital it was probably like you know the hospital of the sun shining down radiant kindness in order to help the injured or something you know pretentious uh you know needlessly obstruct name for a hospital whatever the hell it was called i forget you know uh but it was it was a long long word like this you know okay you know if you study languages like cree and ojibwe you get to look at a map and understand why some of the places still name what they're named you get to read the legends and the understand the culture and there are there are different things you can learn there are ways in which you can benefit but um it's a tremendous sacrifice and when i say that these things change who you are it's not entirely for the better um in some ways studying languages changes you for the worse and uh each new language you take on it's a it's a big big decision um with with major ramifications and consequences so um people write to me asking for advice about learning particular languages and i often i'm cautioning them look like like let's say it's let's say it's lotion okay go there for two weeks first think about this think about this really make sure you want to take this step because there's also the opportunity cost okay so you've decided to learn lotion so you're never going to learn mongolian you're never going to learn a central turkic language such as was spoken in uzbekistan you're never going to go to egypt and be able to communicate with people in egyptian arabic like you may not think you're closing the door in a lot of things like you are you're closing a whole lot of doors to open that one door so are you sure you want to learn the ocean are you sure you want to learn cambodian chinese japanese whatever it is and to really take that seriously and when i say it changes who you are um keep in mind some of that stuff you can't anticipate you can't know how that's gonna change you and um and what i've just said right now you can watch a hundred different youtube channels from so-called polyglots and language coaches and people who say pay me to talk to me on skype like there are a lot of people making money out of um making language education seem fabulous and entertaining on the internet and i think none of them will be as honest as i've just been and saying look there's there's a dark side but this this language learning game you got to think about you got to think about the cost [Laughter] you weren't tempted last week when we talked about the possibility of you starting a whole new life in cambodia did that know not really that's interesting that wasn't the answer i was expecting that's interesting