Why I study languages I may never speak

Studying World Languages

The Holy Grail of language acquisition is the ability to speak another language.  And I have no quarrel with that.  Communicating in a new language is, I think, pretty thrilling.

But recently I was questioning why I continue to study Irish Gaelic, faithfully devoting time to it each and every day.

Maybe our family travels will take me to Ireland in the near future. Maybe I will be able to read a sign or two in the Dublin Airport.  Or maybe I will understand a snatch of conversation as I crowd in with other tourists to view the Book of Kells at Trinity University.

But my true motivation in studying Irish Gaelic is none of the above.  The truth is I like the effect that even a small amount of this Celtic language has on my brain.  Let me explain.  My daily routine is to practice four languages on my favorite web-based language program, Duolingo.

Duolingo Owl

When I practice French, Portuguese, and Spanish, which are all Latin-based languages that I have studied formally, I can answer Duolingo's questions pretty much on automatic pilot.  Sometimes I even daydream and make silly typing mistakes.  But I always leave Irish Gaelic practice to the end, because I know this language will require me to actually THINK.

The first challenge is the structure of the Irish sentence.  After years of thinking of a normal English sentence as a subject, a verb, and an object, in that order, I have to make a conscious effort to construct an Irish sentence with a verb, a subject, and an object, in that order.

English:  He loses his cat every night.

Irish (literal) Loses he his cat every night. (Cailleann sé a chat gach oiche.)

And this small change is not as easy to internalize as one might think. I can't tell you how many times I have been bleeped by the Duolingo Owl for an incorrect response by failing to put the verb first in the Irish sentence.

The same Irish sentence (Cailleann sé a chat gach oiche)  also presents another brain challenge - keeping languages straight in the mind.  The third Irish word, "a," meaning "his" is the same word as a word very familiar to me in Portuguese - "the" as in a gata- the cat. So Duolingo has another chance to bleep me for mistranslating "his," a possessive pronoun for the definite article "the."

An even bigger brain challenge in Irish that is new to me is the "prepositional pronoun," that is, a combination of a preposition and a pronoun.  An example is uaithi, meaning "on her." My mind is still trying to cope with the Irish translation of "She wants food" as Tá bia uaithi, literally, "food is on her."

One hears much talk these days about the importance of keeping one's brain active and flexible. Crosswords I enjoy; Sudoku I don't; but analyzing other languages, even if I never achieve fluency, makes my brain add new pieces of learning.  And that must be doing something positive for my brain health.

         

Musings on Language Errors

Do you want to be corrected when you are speaking a foreign language?  If I ask a group of adult language learners that same question, the majority will vote yes for receiving correction.  And many learners are absolutely adamant that they need and want correction. How else will they ever learn to produce error free speech, they plead. It sounds so logical, doesn't it? Make a mistake, get corrected, say everything right the next time.  Step 1, step 2, step 3. Too bad learning a foreign language is not that straightforward.

Here is the argument against error correction.

When you are participating in a conversation in a foreign language, your mind is extremely busy, trying to pronounce sounds, choose words, and put phrases and sentences together.  Your goal is to communicate meaning.  If someone (generally with the best of intentions) corrects your language, in most cases your mind cannot process the information.  Your personal grammar making machine located in your mind can't absorb the information quickly enough to make your language more correct in the future.

If you are still with me, thinking through this thorny issue, the next logical question is, "Okay, if correcting my language errors does not lead to a more accepted version, how will I ever improve my language skills?" And most people, given the choice, really do want to speak more correctly.  The solution is for the learner to listen to and read enough standard language that the brain begins to compare your evolving second language with the more standard pronunciation, word choice, and phrase and sentence structure of native speakers.  Complicated?  Not really,  Children learn their first language by this method all the time.

Now, that being said, I was reflecting recently about the role of error correction in my favorite online language learning program, Duolingo. When I make an error, Duolingo definitely brings it to my attention by a bleeping sound, an X , and the correct solution.

And I believe that I do indeed profit from the correction of my errors, because when I'm given another chance by the patient computer program, I often can produce the correct response. That realization led me to consider the difference between language learning on Duolingo and face-to-face conversations.  

The first difference that comes to mind is that on Duolingo, I am not hurried.  I can carefully consider my error, read other people's comments about the question, or even defend my answer by reporting a problem to Duolingo.  Therefore, I can internalize the information much better than in a conversational exchange where I have to consider the presence of another person, keep the conversation going, and even possibly overcome my embarrassment at having made the error. After all, Duolingo doesn't care if I make an error; it just rewards me for getting the right answer by making a cheerful sound and moving a bar forward so that I can earn points.

My conclusion is that many kinds of language experiences are valuable for language acquisition, but the experiences call for different language learning techniques.  As for me, I'll continue to remind my live conversation partners that I don't want to be corrected, just understood.  But I'm looking forward to conquering some obscure grammar rules on Duolingo by taking its corrections to heart.