Language Learning Politics

A entirely unrelated note first: My publishing friend’s Kickstarter for the anthology We Make the Village has hit it’s first stretch goal! Thank you for your support!

Now on to our originally scheduled post.

There is a problem in the adult language learning community that I don’t see getting attention.

It’s a social problem. It’s a political problem. Because it’s a political problem, I’m a bit nervous about writing about it here. But I think it’s important to address (or at least I thought it was a good idea when I initially wrote this post.)

Here’s the problem.

Many – I would say the majority – of other language learners you encounter casually online (which, if you’re an adult in a small town trying to learn a language through a self-assembled learning process, is where you’re going to do most of your social interaction around language learning) make the assumption you have political views that lean in one direction.

Major language learning apps also make political assumptions. And this is harmful to the idea that anyone can and should be welcome to learn another language.

I am, at the moment, a paying subscriber to both the DuoLingo and the Babbel language learning apps.

DuoLingo (which has other, more methodological, less political, issues as well, which I was warned about and which have become more and more noticeable as I’ve progressed in my learning) regularly gives you practice sentences that I am certain discourage people with certain political or social points of view.

I myself am sometimes slightly put off by some of their social-emphasis/political choices, and I consider myself a fairly moderate person, politically.

To me, it’s clear they have decided it is to their best interest to play to people most likely of a more left-wing persuasion. Obviously, as a private company, they have a right to make whatever decision they want about their company’s target audience. They must believe it is to their financial advantage, and they might be right.

I have read more than one language learner make statements along the lines of “Right-wingers/Republicans/Conservatives don’t learn and don’t have interest in learning other languages anyway.” As if not one single person who has ever voted for even a moderately-right-wing party has ever spoken more than one language.

This is clearly nonsense.

It’s difficult to quickly find information on if there is a statistically detectable correlation between political tendencies and the tendency towards picking up another language. I admit there does seem to be some evidence of a modest difference, and it does seem that you are slightly more likely to learn another language if you have more left-leaning views, but the difference is, indeed, modest at about 5 percentage points from the estimates I’ve seen.

I wonder how much of that difference today comes from more conservative would-be learners entering the language learning space as adults and discovering they’re not particularly welcome.

I am told that Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur have less of a political lean. Rosetta Stone, which I have sampled through my library, come across, I’m sorry to say, as extremely dated, and even though I have access to some of their courses for free, I am not using them, because they are very boring.

I would like to try Pimsleur. Pimsleur is the most expensive option, which is why I am not yet a subscriber. Because it’s the most expensive major app, the price alone creates an unwelcoming barrier.

Babbel has kept more or less away from overt social messaging, so far, as far as I’ve noticed. (I am aware that I might not notice a leaning if it is too close to my own.)

However, it does contribute to a less overt, but still, in my opinion, political or social-view bias problem.

And that is the view that favours informality over formality.

Now, perhaps this is especially noticeable in a language like German (or French) which have grammatical differences between formal and informal address.

Something like 25% of the world’s languages have these systematic formal versus informal pronoun distinctions. Historically, English also did have a Thou-thee vs. You-ye, but mainstream English no longer uses this distinction, it’s only in minor, mostly religious (or historical) contexts you’ll find use of thou these days.

When you learn your first language, you learn the foundations in an unstructured, contextual way, which I think naturally favours informality and that is fair enough.

However, some of us, and I’d guess it’s more likely the some of us with perhaps slightly conservative views on some aspects of life – (Side note: I disagree with mainstream Canadian conservative policies in several important areas, so please don’t make assumptions about my what I believe in just because for the purposes of this post, I’m taking the view of a slightly more conservative person.) – Some of us would prefer to learn a next language in a more formal register first. Why? Because, really, it just strikes me as the polite way. I’d rather default to overly formal and overly polite, even if that is perceived as stuck up, archaic, out-of-touch, and rude, than default to too familiar, casual, presumptuous and rude.

Yes, I get that either way can be a bit rude, depending on the situation, but I think it’s more likely to be offensive to be too familiar than too formal.

So I’m a bit sad that after about six and a half months of studying German through language apps, podcasts, and books, I’ve learned to default to the informal. I notice this when I try talking to myself or writing in German.

This might be partially my fault, for not doing thorough research on learning options, but I think it’s also partially Babbel’s fault. (DuoLingo is absolutely at fault here too, and is more informal than Babbel, but I’ve already complained about them.) And by extension, it’s a flaw of the entire language-instruction industry.

To try and be fair to Babbel, it does tell you early on that you should initially favour the formal. And it tries to teach you both. The problem is that it also allows you to “take your own path” through it’s lessons, and, because I’ve never used Babbel before and have no guide, I early on took a diversion through a lesson block that I was likely not ready for, and it gave me a lot of “du.” It has since not really reverted back to giving me a dominance of formality which I would prefer. I would really like if there was an option to say “Hey, please just give me (formal) “Sie” grammar lessons!” But as far as I can tell, this is not an option.

(It would also be nice to turn off part of the “reviews” that come up which include words from different German dialects, because I was just idly curious about one dialect one night and didn’t really mean to go down that rabbit hole, either.)

The books I’ve been reading so far mostly use the “du.” (I have simply picked up three randomly recommended “easy reading for language learning” type books.)

The podcasts/videos I encounter on YouTube favour informality as well. (Naturally enough, YouTube is generally a very informal place, but it would be nice if an option for learners popped up that favoured the formal. If you know of one, please tell me!)

In general, there does not seem to be enough easily accessible for beginners in the formal register. And, unfortunately, I expect my brain has already wired itself towards the informal, even though that would not be my preference.

A third political/social problem or concern that I have, is that the quickest accessible podcasts and videos and so forth, favour big cities. (I knew the first German language learning podcast I followed was based in Berlin, I was somewhat saddened to discover recently that my “second” podcast also has a creator with a Berlin background.)

I know a lot of people live in big cities. The majority of people live in big cities, that’s why they are big cities.

But I also know, as someone who grew up in a secondary city and who now lives in a small town, that there are other existences, and that the viewpoints on life and language can be a little different if you don’t live in a major city. It would be nice to get a bit more of that from Germans.

Yes, I could have done and could do more work in finding learning resources which match my desires. But, you know what? Learning a new language is… a bit difficult. And, I am a human, and I have been taking the easiest paths towards that learning.

There are many ways and reasons that lead someone to living in a smaller place. There are many ways and reasons for someone to be moderate or moderately conservative politically, and there are, I’m sure a number of reasons to favour formality over informality. (Just as the opposite is true.)

Someone who lives outside a metropolis, and/or someone with a mainstream political point of view different from your own is not, just because of that, necessarily less intelligent, or less curious about the world and it’s languages.

It would be nice if these people (like me) were made to feel a bit more welcome in the language learning space. That’s really all I have to say. Thanks for reading all of this!

If you have any suggestions or ideas, leave them in the comments!