Among other projects, one activity I've been spending more time on since all the COVID-19 stuff got rolling is ramping up the intensity of my foreign language studying. In this post, I am going to explicate why I currently find studying European languages (mainly focusing on Russian, some French/Spanish, a tad bit of German) more worth my time than making progress studying the East Asian languages, which I've already spent years studying.

In summary, I am finding that by studying the European languages, I gain access to much richer materials—much of the content you'll find in the East Asian languages (especially online) is derivative of thinking better developed and articulated in Europe. ¹ Thus, since I'm not living in East Asia, there's very little practical value to get from studying these languages. ²

As I'm not drawn to stuff like... Tang dynasty poetry or exploring Buddhism more, it doesn't really make sense for me to invest time in developing skills in the E. Asian languages beyond having conversational (and maybe blogging) skill. Read all the way through this article for some practical take-aways.

Modern Languages

There used to be something that was fairly common in some circles called "Classical education". People would learn how to read Greek and Latin and would learn about the associated civilizations with these languages.

I haven't looked in depth into the history, but I think starting especially around the late 19th century, there were big shifts in the Western world towards studying modern languages. For many, that meant French which was serving as the "language of diplomacy" as well as being the language many writers, scientists, and other eminent intellectuals used.

Now, Modern Languages are often the only languages young students have available to study in classes. It seems like we have lots of spicy choices—a large university may offer courses in languages like Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Arabic or even Quechua (an indigenous American language). ³

Now, what is the utility of studying modern languages? And, why are anglophones so notoriously not interested in it?

In short, the Anglophone overlords (e.g. some really bad brits, some Americans with a lot of money and industry) have pushed the culture of their societies everywhere. ⁴ As with US dollars, English is used and recognized nearly everywhere in the "belly of the beast" and where its tentacles touch around the globe. The soft power of the Anglophone world (esp. its American manifestations through things like Hollywood and now the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, ...Netflix)

Occasionally, you'll get a nerd—like myself—who gets the idea in their head, "well, I'm of Chinese ethnicity so I might as well follow through and learn Chinese". Rather than finding my "rich cultural heritage", I instead find a very shallow, low-brow accessible culture and then geopolitics. There is some fun and uniqueness to studying any language, e.g. the sounds of those languages. But in terms of the content available in many languages—well sometimes it appears to be feds all the way down. ⁵

A Musical Comparison

By in large, Asian pop music just copies already existing Western genres. You can find skillfully executed vocals in Korean R&B, but it is still basically just the American engineered R&B.

On the other hand, you will find that in "classical music", you see many different forms of music that don't follow the 3-7 minute able-to-be-played-on-the-radio (with commercial breaks) format that characterizes much of popular music today.

The study of modern languages is often like hearing the same 4 chords mashed over and over again with a different language over it. That's why it is so easy for people to do stuff like... cover Disney songs in a whole bunch of different languages. Many modern languages can be thought of as the "disneyfication" of languages. While there may be some different in garment and skin color, if the semantics are just the same voices talking, what new utility does a language offer?

Conclusion

If you're going to study foreign languages, don't just be a dummy like me and study a whole bunch of languages all expressing the same sorts of things/ideas. This is okay to do if you have people around you with whom it will be useful to use these languages (e.g. learning Hungarian because you have a Hungarian co-worker spend many hours with). Rather, study different languages with purpose—have something you need to use those languages for. Then, motivation to study will come naturally. Here's some examples from my experience of how different modern languages I study can be useful,

• Spanish is often used in California and can be used to read non-Anglophone perspectives on things from primary sources
• French/German can be used to explore the thought of people from centuries past; this is a very inexpensive hobby as many materials are available on public domain (e.g. through Project Gutenberg)
• Chinese can be used to study how the New World Order is being rolled out in a different land—you can "jump the language barrier great firewall" ³

What is even better, though, is to study some content first (or try to do something, e.g. make friends with the people speaking a different language at the local bakery), and then let your language learning follow. I would say for lots of "cultural enrichment", you don't even need to study a foreign language.

You'll learn more from studying Shakespeare in depth than from studying 2 years of Japanese. This is because you'll spend so much time just fixated on forms (of characters, of the sound of the language) studying Japanese, you won't be able to read anything interesting at all.

Remember: the wise monolingual speaker—or someone using a second language in accented/broken speech—is much more edifying to speak with than some clown who speaks seven languages with fluency. Clickbait YouTube has countless examples of people showing off how they can show off; does parroting some local flavor teach you anything?