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Languages and inferiority complex | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hombre gordo Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5587 days ago 184 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Portuguese, Korean | Message 1 of 29 15 February 2010 at 4:45am | IP Logged | ||
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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 Edited by hombre gordo on 15 February 2010 at 7:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5851 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 29 15 February 2010 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||
"Europeans are all fluent in 7 or 8 languages". There's no truth at all in this claim! You should have critically examined this by looking for more infos about Europeans und the language situation in different European countries. For example there are quite a lot of older Germans who haven't learned any foreign language in their life and try to learn their first words of English in specialised beginner courses for that age group. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paskwc Pentaglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5681 days ago 450 posts - 624 votes Speaks: Hindi, Urdu*, Arabic (Levantine), French, English Studies: Persian, Spanish | Message 3 of 29 15 February 2010 at 8:55am | IP Logged | ||
I'm wary of starting political debates, but is this not a personal belief passed off as fact? 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| nescafe Senior Member Japan Joined 5413 days ago 137 posts - 227 votes | Message 4 of 29 15 February 2010 at 9:06am | IP Logged | ||
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What you have experienced in your sociology class is quite similar to what I have experienced in Japanese school!
Japanese teaschers are, at least when I was a stundent, all left wings, always speak ill of their own country. They say: All Japanese have to be deeply sorry for everything the past Japanese imperialism did, we are all guilty for our ancestor's invasion. Japan is an island, small, miserable country, people do not know the world. Look at Chinese! how good they are at language! They can speak English easily and very fluently, but how about us? No one can speak English! How inferior we are! etc. So I am suprised at you, a native English speaker, saying that you feel an inferiolity complex about language. Most Japanese feel inferiority complex for not being able to speak "English". I think this is the main reason for Japanese not being good at language: English is one of the hardest language for Japanese, but Japanese are likely to feel guilty of learning a lnguage than English. I think, if you did your best on your study, you do not need to feel inferiority complex. You did your best, There is no better than the best. Edited by nescafe on 15 February 2010 at 9:11am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6772 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 5 of 29 15 February 2010 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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You had some poor teachers, Nescafe. Promoting language learning is one thing, but an unhealthy fixation on one
other language (English) and having an inferiority complex about it is another. (They really thought the Chinese were good at English? Har har…) And in reality, Japanese probably know more about the world than most people, given the advanced state of their society and media and their enormous travel industry. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Asithassa Tetraglot Newbie Greece Joined 5624 days ago 10 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Greek*, English, Italian, Ancient Greek Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, German, Japanese, Welsh | Message 6 of 29 15 February 2010 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I understand how you feel since I have suffered from people's misconceptions, too.
I have heard several times things like: "You will never learn Finnish on your own- you will confuse all these languages- a new language at YOUR age? I'd forget it if I were you". The question is how to ignore them. I have tried to avoid certain people or avoid discussing my dreams and goals with certain people because I tend to get upset when they say this kind of stuff. Even though I KNOW that they are wrong, I can't help start wondering... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5407 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 7 of 29 15 February 2010 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had the completely different experience. In Serbia as in most Balkans we all gain superiority complexes. We are taught in a similar manner as you were taught that somehow you are primitive and barbaric, but we are taught that we are the most civilized and advanced civilization in the world (yet we are the most backward in whole of Europe). However, we were somewhat encouraged to learn foreign languages, one foreign language is compulsory in what would be an equivalent of your middle school and two in high school.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Siberiano Tetraglot Senior Member Russian Federation one-giant-leap.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6497 days ago 465 posts - 696 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, ItalianC1, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Serbian | Message 8 of 29 15 February 2010 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | ||
On topic: I did feel inferiority of being fluent in English and knowing no other language. The crowd in my town is really refined, and people learn languages. Strangely, if you stick your nose outside of the Uni and the town, there's not much use of the language, and others try to put you down for knowing languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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