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Language Studies in the Past? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes  Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 1 of 50 12 May 2009 at 11:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Do you think people in the past were smarter or better disciplined than us today when it comes to language studies?
They managed to learn languages to a really high standard without any of the tools we have today. They had only the most basic material, a regular book.. Not even cassette tape! As for foreign media, I guess they were lucky if they could tune in to a crackling radio station.. My grandmother for example, speaks excellent German and worked for a while as a secretary doing bilingual work for the Swedish government. Her only "immersion" was regular classes in school and a brief holiday to Austria! She even makes comments when German TV actors use poor grammar, that's how good she is... Admittedly her accent is probably rather strong. But it's a mystery to me how she and other old people can be so good at foreign languages. I could list some more examples of old people speaking foreign languages really well, but no doubt you can think of some of your own. What is / was there secret? What can we learn from them? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Dark_Sunshine Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5767 days ago 340 posts - 357 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 2 of 50 12 May 2009 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Young people back then (no idea how old your gran is) who were fortunate enough to have access to education were more disciplined at nearly everything. There wasn't anything else to do, or be distracted by, and young people had less social freedom and disposable income.
I read on here that a lot of the young (?) forum members get distracted from studying by computer games that they're addicted to, web forums, facebook etc. That simply wasn't a problem fifty odd years ago. We have so many choices today, it takes more discipline to stay focused on one thing :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6448 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 3 of 50 12 May 2009 at 2:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with Dark Sunshine. We live in an age of distraction; it's so easy to get on the internet to do one thing, and end up doing a dozen others. It's difficult to learn anything, especially a language, if you can't focus on it for more than 10 minutes at a time.
For example, while I like using Anki for vocabulary, I've found that the computer is simply an awful place for me to study. There are just too many things screaming for my attention - email, Facebook, this damnable forum. I do much better with a stack of books (grammars, dictionaries), some paper, and a few different colored pens. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leonidus Triglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 6328 days ago 113 posts - 123 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: German, Mandarin | Message 4 of 50 12 May 2009 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Now, here's the modern Luddites-polyglots, give them a piece of paper and good old book and they are happy and jolly! :) I totally agree, Internet and other things are immensely distracting, it sucks. You don't need too much material to learn a language, but there is no such thing as too much focus.
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| Olympia Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5983 days ago 195 posts - 244 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Old English, French | Message 5 of 50 12 May 2009 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've always wondered about this, too. Especially when it comes to people like Mezzofanti. Another thing I've
noticed is that older people who took a language in school (almost always French) seem to remember quite a bit of it, while younger people seem to forget most of whatever language they learned in school almost immediately after they leave. I don't believe I could have learned the way I did without modern "conveniences." I am always on YouTube watching videos or looking for new music on iTunes. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6274 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 6 of 50 12 May 2009 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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There were probably fewer distractions in the past. People, by and large, seem to have had better memories - there was not the information overload there is now.
I remember reading about the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone. In his youth he worked as a weaver, but had ambitions to enter the ministry. He needed some grounding in Latin for this, so he had a book on the basics of Latin with him. He would do some weaving, read a line in the textbook, do some more weaving and so on. Multi-tasking it would be called, now. On the other hand, the Internet gives learning advantages, as well as distractions. It just takes a little self-discipline. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Russianbear Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6777 days ago 358 posts - 422 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, Ukrainian Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 50 12 May 2009 at 4:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am not convinced they were any better at languages in the past. Besides, how distant a past are we talking? Is it two generations ago? If so, my knowledge of English alone would put me ahead of my grandparents, who either knew only Russian or, at best, Russian+Ukrainian (which is not exactly a challenging linguistic feat).
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 50 12 May 2009 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||
Me too. I spend a lot of time listening to TV programs and podcasts in many languages to hear the spoken word, but the core of my study methods are paperbased. I also appreciate that the internet has opened up for a wealth of texts about relevant matters in a bewildering array of languages, but it wasn't there when I started to learn languages in the 60s. But even the 1960s were better than the 1860 because we had good dictionaries and grammars, libraries, rather humane schools and lo and behold, television from several countries. I still find it in amazing feat that some persons before my time managed to learn languages without even these things. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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