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Languages and inferiority complex

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cathrynm
Senior Member
United States
junglevision.co
Joined 6127 days ago
910 posts - 1232 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Japanese, Finnish

 
 Message 17 of 29
15 February 2010 at 10:43pm | IP Logged 
I never got any sense of inferiority from language classes in school. We did our grammar drills and vocabulary tests, and wrote our simple little essays. I got good grades, but I don't think I ever really considered the idea that it might be possible to actually learn the language.   Most of our discussions had to do with being a tourist over there. Our instructor was a native English speaker, and he was always spinning tales of his various trips to Germany.

Though, I am the monolingual offspring of bilingual parents, and maybe I have some feelings of being inferior to my parents. As a child, it seemed completely normal that my parents could speak languages that I couldn't. Now that I'm an adult, it feels like I missed the party a little bit. They set an impossible standard as far as developing any intuitive feelings for these languages.

Edited by cathrynm on 15 February 2010 at 11:13pm
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psy88
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5593 days ago
469 posts - 882 votes 
Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French

 
 Message 18 of 29
16 February 2010 at 12:51am | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
Yes, I learn languages because of an inferiority complex, and I learn languages because I want to learn to talk to people better. I also like learning languages as when I'm not perfect at a language I can't bore people as much or make jokes that are too obscure and aren't funny.

However, I recall a certain Hombre_Gordo telling this forum a short while ago about how he likes to go to sites and write about pretend problems he has, as a language learning exercise, which makes me a bit defensive as it makes me suspect that this is another one of those.

It also doesn't help that hombre_gordo continues to pretend to be a native English speaker when he is quite clearly not. (If the grammar alone doesn't give it away, the fact that he tries to imply he's English while using US vocabulary certainly does.)

Hombre_gordo:
Lots of people here are learners -- it's nothing to be ashamed of.
However, those learners look to posters who have "English*" in their profile to provide a model of native English.
By claiming to be a native speaker, you risk teaching other people your mistakes, and that's unacceptable behaviour in my book.


My reaction: once again Cainntear is right on target!
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William Camden
Hexaglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6274 days ago
1936 posts - 2333 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French

 
 Message 19 of 29
16 February 2010 at 5:09pm | IP Logged 
I don't think continental Europeans are necessarily great linguists. Even in Amsterdam, I have encountered non-Anglophone Dutch, and elsewhere there will probably be fewer English speakers. Most educated people do speak another language, but that is not necessarily the majority of the population.
As to political bias, there are certain professional groups where a right-wing bias is often discernable. Professional soldiers and policemen spring to mind.
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Johntm
Senior Member
United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5424 days ago
616 posts - 725 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 20 of 29
17 February 2010 at 5:10am | IP Logged 
William Camden wrote:
Most educated people do speak another language, but that is not necessarily the majority of the population.
Educated people are never the majority of a population
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John Smith
Bilingual Triglot
Senior Member
Australia
Joined 6044 days ago
396 posts - 542 votes 
Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish
Studies: German

 
 Message 21 of 29
17 February 2010 at 5:26am | IP Logged 
hombre gordo wrote:
How many members here have an intense drive to learn languages for the purpose of eradicating ones inferiority complex?

I am certainly one of those people.

I suspect a lot of people of this forum who were raised in monolingual environments may feel this way.

I was raised in a monolingual speaking home and before I had success with language learning I had a terrible inferiority complex which was eating away my heart and preventing me from being happy.

I always saw monolingualism as a great shame for my country. I was always intimidated by the rich multilingual environment when we went on vacations to continental Europe. I always felt inferior to Europeans who had a good or excellent control of 2 or 3 languages (some even more, but quite rare). I knew that I had to get my act together and invest some serious time into studying languages.

On top of that, in the past I took a sociology class (I took it because I was told it was easy to pass) before I got serious about languages. I soon realised that sociology is a subject usually taught by incredibly biased left-wing, liberal progressives who pass off their opinions on how the world ought to be as facts and continually preach about how wrong England, English culture and English values are somehow wrong and how everyone else is somehow better and more cultured.

I know that I see some room for criticism for my country, but this sociology teacher was just over the top. Anyway, he would always make out that we as a nation/people are somehow uncultured, ignorant, even barbarian-like because of the nations poor foreign language ability. At the same time he would give 20 minute speaches in class praising the superior language ability of supposedly more refined continental Europeans, who according to the teacher, are all fluent in at least 7 or 8 languages! With a teacher like this, no wonder I ended up with an inferiority complex! Being told that I am somehow a barbarian just because I dont speak French or German! Of course now looking back on that class, I understand that the teachers views were just silly unpatriotic rants. However, back then, they contributed immensely to my language inferiority complex and made my hate myself more and more.


Well, I felt this strong soul-eating inferiority complex for several years and even suffered depression as a result. I am sure pleased I got into languages.

As you may see from my profile, I am studying some of the 5 cacti languages (Japanese and Korean)including character based languages and hope to add Chinese at some point. My choice of these languages which are believed to be immensely difficult is no surpise. I admit that my decision to study them was to fill in or eradicate my raging inferiority complex, a scathing wound left in my heart by people like that sociology teacher.

Although my inferiority complex has largely been supressed and brought under control since gaining fluency in Japanese and mastering its writing system, it still sometime comes back and hurts me from time to time. I always feel I want more fluency in Japanese, want to add more languages, etc...

Do I no longer have need to feel an inferiority complex?

How can I overcome it completely?

Sorry for the long post. I just needed to get something off my chest.

Hombre Gordo







It's easy being multilingual in Europe. If each Japanese island had a different official language Japanese people would be just as multilingual as the Europeans. The same goes for the US. If Canada was French speaking, California and Florida Spanish speaking and New York Dutch speaking the average American would have no choice but to learn a second language or three or four.

Europeans don't speak 2 or 3 language because they are smarter than people from other parts of the world. They speak 2 or 3 languages because they have to.

Also, the reason why Europeans speak foreign languages well is because they have easy access to them. I live in Australia. If I leave my house right now and go for a 2000 km drive I will end up in an English speaking area. In fact during the entire 2000km journey not once will I pass through an area where English isn't spoken by the majority of the population. In Europe on the other hand a similar trip would expose me to at least 3 or 4 different languages.

A multilingual American or Australian is therefore much more impresseive than a multilingual European.

Edited by John Smith on 17 February 2010 at 5:56am
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FuroraCeltica
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 6867 days ago
1187 posts - 1427 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, French

 
 Message 22 of 29
17 February 2010 at 9:27am | IP Logged 
I understand what you mean. I have always been amazed by the ability of some people to speak multiple languages, and I struggle along.
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Delodephius
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Yugoslavia
Joined 5405 days ago
342 posts - 501 votes 
Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech
Studies: Russian, Japanese

 
 Message 23 of 29
17 February 2010 at 12:51pm | IP Logged 
I live in Vojvodina, a province of Serbia which has six official languages (Serbian, Croatian, Hungarian, Slovak, Romanian and Rusyn, plus Romani which is taught and broadcast but has no official provincial status). If I want I could learn any of these languages in a native environment if I went to villages less than 100km from home. Knowing 2 or 3 languages is not that impressive where I live.
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mustwander
Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 5401 days ago
8 posts - 9 votes
Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 24 of 29
17 February 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged 
I agree that being monolingual gave me an inferiority complex as well. definitely true. For one being Italian it just angered me off we lost our language. Now my father gave me Italian language books at a young age and that kinda cracked the door open. He knew a little dialect and I mean a little like counting, and some basic ninna nanna things for babies. Anyhow, I also grew up around numerous foriegners. I dated an Iranian girl, Lebanese girl for 6 years, and went to a university surrounded by multi-ethnic people.   Greek, Russian, Spanish, Indian etc......and to them I was just a stupid Italo American who new nothing about the world.

I do think that as Americans it is ignorant that we have isolated ourselves and lost our ancestral languages. I think that is changing though, and yeah thats total BS about the average European speaking 7 languages but yeah most seem to know 2 sometimes three depending on the country.

It's tough though, my little one is 1/2 South American and understands Spanish but does not like to speak it. Not to mention when we watched the olympics opening ceremony he was chanting USA USA USA the whole time. I'm like dude how did this guy get so patriotic incredible but also a great thing to see. He is American and he knows it. He is actually making me more patriotic than I have ever been, yeah I have been one of those Americans fairly loyal to the old countries in the past but yeah that probably went back to the inferiority complex and now that I am learning other languages I am really appreciating English and its history not to mention my own country even as screwed up as it is right now.

Edited by mustwander on 17 February 2010 at 10:10pm


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