Nod and smile if you’ve assumed any of the following to be true:

• Some languages are inherently more difficult than others.
• Some languages are inherently more logical and beautiful than others.
• Some languages sound funnier than others.
• There is always a proper way of articulating a word in a language.
• The best kind of language is produced by native speakers.
• The best way to learn a language is through immersion or study abroad.

Keep smiling and read on.

These assumptions are a few of the widely held beliefs about language learning. In the last section you learned that you don’t need to share a language to communicate with someone, much less know it perfectly. But maybe you still think that you need at least a year or two in a language class before you begin trying to speak. Perhaps you think you’ll never be able to speak like a native, so you are discouraged to try. These beliefs are the examples of language ideologies.

language Ideologies

Michael Silverstein, one of the leading figures in linguistic anthropology, defined these ideologies as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use” (Silverstein, 1979, p. 193). Interestingly, these ideologies are ubiquitous but they do not come from human reasoning. Instead, they show us how people feel about and perceive a particular language or languages in general.

Do Language Ideologies Matter?

Imagine a scenario where a job applicant is judged negatively in an interview based on their regional dialect, despite being highly qualified. This implies that the interviewer holds a standard-language ideologyand we can infer that the interviewee’s dialect is considered less prestigious and professional.

To know more about the case of Pakistan, read an opinion by Punjani and Khan (2020).

It is important to note that language ideologies do not always have negative impacts. If they are constructive and progressive beliefs about language diversity, these ideologies can bring a massive change in making the world more tolerant and diverse for all. Language ideologies are game changers! To visualize and understand the power of a language ideology that believes in preserving endangered and local languages, look at the example of UNESCO’s project in the Amazon region of South America, which focuses on safeguarding linguistic and cultural heritage.

Language Learning Myths: Questioning the Obvious

Language ideologies are everywhere and we want you to notice that they contribute to your own language learning process as well. For example, if you think Hebrew is too complex of a language to learn, you will probably not choose to learn it. And if you subscribe to the idea that language learning in general is difficult, you may not even start to learn at all. This TedTalk by Mathew Youlden explains that learning any language can be an easy task if one starts the journey with questioning their own myths.

Since this is the first chapter of this book, let’s take the opportunity to debunk some obvious myths about language learning right from the beginning. For example, in the last section we saw that we can communicate even when we feel that we do not know a language well enough to do so. The idea that communication is limited to language is one of the common myths. Let’s explore what some of the other ones are.

Myth 1: You can only learn languages easily when you are young. I’m too old now!

They are referring to the critical period hypothesis. There is a big discussion in the subfield of Linguistics called Second Language Acquisition (SLA) about how age plays an important role in learning languages. But what exactly the role is remains a debate among scholars. Penfield and Roberts (1959) first proposed the hypothesis that our ability to learn languages gets diminished after a biologically determined phase. The hypothesis promotes the notion that the sooner a child starts learning a language the better.

However, this remains only a hypothesis to this day!

Yes, it’s true that children tend to learn seemingly effortlessly in their naturalistic and immersive environments, unlike adults who tend to put themselves in a conscious state of mind to learn a language. But many adults learn languages very well! It is never too late to learn a language, even fluently. Claiming that it is ‘easy’ for children to learn a language is debatable. Even with constant immersion and simplified motherese, it takes babies many months to say their first word and children take several years to develop their first language completely. Let’s say 4-6 years! And they continue to become more sophisticated across more topics and domains as they mature into adulthood.

So can we say it’s really that easy for children? It is not a one-night transformation for adults either. Language learning can take a lot of time and that’s okay. Adults have the advantages of being able to consciously dedicate themselves to the task, to be more cognitively mature, and to already speak at least one language. In short, it is completely possible to learn a language at any age you wish to do so. If you want to know more about this topic, listen to Kaitlyn Tagarelli on Am I too old to learn a new language?

Myth 2: You can learn a language, but only if you have language in your DNA. 

Myth 4: Choose one or the other! Languages must be pure!