One of my favorite language learning myths is the idea of the uncontrollable mixing. Some people avoid learning another language because they are worried they will confuse languages. In my experience learning about a dozen languages, I’ve only come to understand all of them better with each addition. Instead of confusing my native language, it turns out that after adding so many languages to my tool belt, each one helped my English.
Bulgarian & Russian
I was introduced to Bulgarian and Russian as a young child, so they occupy a unique place in my mind. They don’t have the benefits of languages I learned as an adult, where I understand the inner workings of the language. In fact, I just “hear” if that sounds right. However, they don’t have the benefit of my true native language because I can’t sophisticatedly talk about most topics.
With such an interesting place in my brain, Bulgarian and Russian taught me a valuable English lesson from those early years. I learned that English uses progressive tenses way more than necessary. I always wondered why I didn’t need to use progressive tenses for things happening right now. They sounded right to me, but I couldn’t understand how languages could function without such an overuse of progressive tenses as we use them in English.
French
Learning this language in high school, French had the benefit of my malleable teenage brain with the budding logical faculties of a high schooler. Through my years of French, I came to the realization that English is uniquely weird in some ways. Sure, I knew several languages in my childhood, but it wasn’t until I had a 3rd point of reference to know what was unique to those Slavic languages and what was unique to English. It turns out a lot is unique to English.
English doesn’t have grammatical gender. English has a small selection of conjugations. Modern English uses the same word for formal and informal “you.” These features may not be strange in other parts of the world, but it is especially strange among its closest relatives and neighbors. In the same way that a monolingual English speaker only has one point of reference, having 2 (or a similar 3) languages doesn’t give you the full picture of what is normal and what is strange. It wasn’t until I got another branch – Romance languages – that I realized what is unique about Germanic English and Slavic Bulgarian/Russian. French being so different from English helped my English in the long term.
Korean
Korean was the first language I learned originating outside of Europe, and it was the hardest challenge I’ve had in language learning. I had no idea that we take so many features in European languages for granted. We assume this is the way it always is. Once, you leave Europe, you can realize this common Indo-European style.
Korean rewired my brain in so many ways. One way was rethinking what a conjunction is. Before, I never questioned words like “and” or “but” or “so.” Korean made me hyper-analyze those words because they could not be translated 1:1. Before Korean, “and” was that word I just translated literally into French, Bulgarian, or Russian. After Korean, “and” could be a connector for logically disconnected sentences, a connector for nouns with the same role in a sentence, or a connector for sentences with implicit logical connection but no causation. Simplifying all this grammatical mumbo jumbo, Korean helped my English by making me aware of the logic we use when using simple conjunctions.
Another grammatical feature I did not realize was unique to European languages until I encountered Korean was the reorganization of sentences with long subjects. European languages love to move long subjects to the end and (sometimes) using a pleonastic pronoun where that subject was. Translation: we can say “It’s hard to dance.” We move the true subject (to dance) to the end and place an “it” in the subject’s place.
To dance is hard > It is hard to dance.
To gain weight is easy > It is easy to gain weight.
I never realized how much we do this in almost all European languages. Korean made me aware of it.
Another big one is the word “that.” This word is so quintessentially European, but Korean totally avoids the conjunction (almost). Without going into too much detail, other languages do not always say “I think that…” or “He agreed that…” or “You promised that…” Korean made me truly realize what that word does. To be honest, I still don’t understand the word “that”, but I did slightly more after Korean.
Simply put, Korean made me defamiliarize myself with so many features of English that I thought were universal after four languages.
Japanese
Japanese opened my eyes to the Greco-Roman sphere of influence in European languages. Even Eastern Europe is in this sphere with tons of Greek and Latin words for industrial words. English is so influenced by European languages. This may seem obvious, but I didn’t realize how true this is until I saw the way Japanese imported foreign words. Japan was in a totally different cultural sphere of influence, and their language has been heavily affected by the Chinese writing system.
Japanese showed me the alternate ways to form new words using foreign roots. For example, English created the term “internet” using the Latin root inter- and the native English word net. Japanese also has a similar system of mixing Chinese character roots with Japanese words to create unique words. I never realized the extent to which English speakers coin new words using foreign words. This seems counterintuitive because English is our native language not the source of the roots, Latin and Greek, but English and Japanese share this style. Japanese helped my English understand how we use roots to coin new terms.
Latin
The languages we speak are just a snapshot. That’s what I learned from Latin. Learning classical Latin, the grammar, the word choice, the word order feel completely ancient. While things can be vaguely familiar to English speakers, I really got the impression that this is an old language.
That got me to understand my native language and its place in the timeline of humanity. The English we speak is heavily affected by modern concepts. We just accept words that did not exist 200 years ago, let alone 2,000 years ago. The language we speak is just a blink in linguistic history.
Latin made me realize how we gave old words new meanings with new concepts. For example, Latin did not have a word that is used in the same way as “message” is in modern context. Latin had a word for the old meaning of message, the underlying theme. Latin did not have a word for DM.
It made me so much more open to linguistic change. Words change so constantly. If we were linguistic purists, we just wouldn’t be able to describe the modern world around us. Linguistic purism just makes communication harder. Latin helped my English be more descriptive of the world rather than prescriptive.
Swedish
By the time I got to Swedish in my language learning journey, I had a big list under my belt. Somehow, I still kept finding unique things in Swedish.
Considering its proximity to English, my English discoveries were not as life-changing as the others. That doesn’t stop them from making sense.
Swedish made me realize how much the Vikings influenced early English. I knew English was a Germanic language, but I didn’t expect its Germanic cousin to directly influence it with so many words like are, both, die, take, want. These are very significant words, so it shocks me how we deemphasize Old Norse in the story of modern English.
German
Again, with another English cousin, there was more to discover about English. German taught me about the lost depth of English. We lost so much sophistication in the Germanic side of English that people ignore because the Latin-derived are the words of higher education or complexity. If you want to sound sophisticated, you would say “assimilate” (Latin) instead of “blend in.” (Germanic) You might say “residence” (Latin) instead of “house.” (Germanic)
Centuries of Latin as a prestigious language has made English speakers forget how much depth there is in the Germanic side of our language. I did not realize how much nuance there is with English phrasal verbs until I learned German phrasal verbs that work in a similar way.
These words have totally different meanings: let in, let out, let off, let on. However, they play with the abstract meaning of allowing in such a unique way that I haven’t seen outside of Germanic languages.
German made me aware of how interesting the Germanic side of English was, not just the Romance/Latin side. German helped my English embrace every piece of its origin.
Chinese
Building English words is tedious. That’s the feeling I got after dabbling in Chinese. We have so many unique words for concepts that can compound words in Chinese.
Why do we have a unique word for “pistol”? There are no roots to this word. To know this word, you need to memorize the full thing. You can’t understand it in pieces. In Chinese, you can understand compound words in pieces; there usually is some logic.
Chinese helped me understand that there is actually a lot of memorization in English. In Chinese, you can build a lot of words with pieces of older words you know. In English, this does not happen until you are almost a native and can build valid words with ease.
Many English speakers think that Chinese would take a long time to learn because there are thousands of characters to learn. I found the opposite. Chinese made me realize WE have thousands of unique words to memorize, not them.
Turkish
My newest obsession, Turkish, is still teaching me new things. Again, in the search to emulate the style of a 2000 year old language, my English teachers always discouraged possessing gerunds. Turkish taught me this is a totally valid grammar point. Does his staring make you uncomfortable? Are you excited to see our dancing? Nominalizing and possessing verbs is totally normal.
Turkish helped my English embrace grammars my English teachers told me not to.
The lesson I learn again and again
While I learn more and more about structures in other languages that mirror those in English, I open up to all the amazing linguistic tools we have in English. We have so much depth with sophisticated Latin and Greek words, nuanced Germanic words, and unique and influential natively English constructions. English is an extremely expressive language, and every language helps me understand how that manifests itself.
Seeing all the normal ways other languages express themselves, I end up feeling more ripped off by prescriptionist English public education. There is a value to have standards that a lowest common denominator can understand. However, at some point, people fight to keep our English language in a form that isn’t natural to it or to the world’s languages. The English language we have is beautiful as it is, and we should not try arbitrarily to please dead people from 2000 years ago by using their structures.
Learning languages keeps opening my eyes to how we fight over English. Everyone wants language to represent their own thoughts and values, but my experience has told me that we ought to open the language to as many ways of communication as possible. We look at other countries for ideas on how to improve our own; I look at other languages for ideas on how to improve our own. Learning languages from throughout the world (and time) helped my English become more flexible.
To hear more about this language journey I keep alluding to, you can watch my YouTube channel.
For more ways to improve your own language learning, check out this blog.
Keep on learning languages! It’s good for you!
