As a native English person, it’s hard to learn a foreign language. In fact, really hard. It’s a struggle. Let’s talk about 3 struggles that only native English language learners understand.
A few days ago in a bar, I met an Italian-Polish lady who, quite frankly, really irritated me. We had started talking about foreign language learning, and native-English speakers. She said to me,
“You need to learn languages. I speak 5 languages. The average number of languages that a European speaks nowadays is 3, minimum: they speak their native language, English, and another European language. Native English people need to up their game because they’re lagging behind. It’s ignorant and pathetic.”
This lady had no idea that I’m an active polyglot who studies language learning and writes a blog for native-English speakers who want to learn foreign languages. I said:
“Well, I have quite a lot of compassion for their situation.”
To which she replied:
“Compassion?! That’s a strong word.”
Who calls “compassion” a strong word?
The word “hate“? Sure. But compassion?
I think it’s safe to say that I shan’t be talking much with that lady again.
The fact of the matter is, when it comes to the pure number-counting game of “Oh, so how many languages do you speak?” non-native English speakers have a huge advantage. Let’s talk about why. In this article, I list 3 struggles only native English language learners understand.
Struggle 1: You’re disheartened and embarrassed
You’re disheartened, because you see all these foreigners who can speak your language fluently, and often others too, and yet all you can do is string together a sentence in your native language. It feels pathetic, and you think that the lady from the bar has a point. On the cultural front, native English speakers are a linguistic embarrassment.
I’m here to offer some empathy. Why? Because, we’re very bad at making accurate, fair comparisons with others. We’re always using skewed metrics. The truth of the matter is, if you were in their situation, and had lived their life, with their experiences and exposure to multiple languages, you would speak just as many languages as they do. But, at least, if we’re going to compare our abilities to speak foreign languages with that of our non-native counterparts, then we’ve got to be fair and readjust the metric of what a “linguistic accomplishment” actually is.
So let’s think about that lady in the bar for a minute. She speaks Italian, Polish, English, Spanish, and German. Here native languages are Italian and Polish. So really, when she boasts about the fact that she speaks 5 languages and you should too, really, what we have full permission to hear, as native English speakers, is that:
Now, it’s still pretty awesome that she’s managed to learn to fluency 2 foreign languages, off her own back. All credit to her. But let’s not kid ourselves that she has a whopping 5 linguistic accomplishments. It was quite ironic, in that moment in the bar with Little Miss “I speak 5 languages”, where the supposed “ignorance” really lay. I said:
Here’s another example. When I met my current housemate, I was so disheartened when I learned that she’s fluent in 4 languages, because I knew how hard I’d worked before that point, just to get to my measly 3. And she hadn’t devoted her life and time to being a language-learning fanatic. In fact, far from it. But then I looked at her context and applied the metric:
My housemate’s parents immigrated from Bulgaria to Spain when she was 3 years old. She has lived in Catalonia on the east coast of Spain, ever since. Her parents have always spoken to her in Bulgarian. On the east coast of Spain, she was exposed to and used both Spanish and Catalan every day in her schooling and social life. For all intents and purposes, she’s native in Spanish and Catalan: not a hint of an accent and she never searches for expressions or makes non-native grammatical slip-ups. And she speaks English. So now let’s taking a closer look at what she has “accomplished” linguistically, rather than just looking at how many languages she speaks.
So when we native English speakers look up to multilingual foreigners and slide away in embarrassment that we haven’t accomplished anything much, we should bear this in mind. Often, neither have they.
You’re less alone than you think, and you’re certainly a lot less stupid and ignorant than people might make you feel. The difference isn’t ability or effort or intelligence: it’s context. This is one of the struggles only the native English understand. Your unique struggles as a native English language learner, make sense. I understand. Give yourself credit by looking at the situations of foreigners more objectively.
Struggle 2: You don’t believe that you can actually do it
Here is the second of the struggles only native English understand. One of the biggest struggles standing in your way is that, as a native English speaker, you probably don’t already have the experience behind you of fluency in a second language. So you don’t know what it feels like to fluency articulate yourself without English, or start seeing the world and thinking without the lens of English. English is all you know. Most likely, you’ve studied a language in school: maybe you even enjoyed it. But, because, here you are, still only really able to hold a conversation in English, your confidence is shot. It’s shot to pieces. Because, you’ve tried, and yet you still can’t. And the foreigners can, with ease.
I understand. Why would you believe you can do it if you have no evidence that that’s true? Why would you believe you can do it if you only have evidence of the contrary: that you’ve tried – maybe a few times – to no avail?
When a foreigner decides to learn German, or French, or Japanese, they don’t face this same hurdle that we face, because they already know that they can learn and speak fluently and think in a foreign language, because they’re already so good at English. They already know that it’s possible, and they have the confidence (and the experience) to know how to do it.
Struggle 3: People don’t understand why you’d bother learning another language
Here is another of the struggles only native English language learners understand: as soon as you speak English, the world is your oyster. You can travel to other countries, and people will almost always understand you. Just about every kind of job opportunity is available to you. You can work internationally. You can make friends internationally. Foreigners learn English because it opens up the social and economic world for them. They can get better jobs, have better experiences, and have a higher quality of life. But you? You probably won’t get any of those things from learning a foreign language.
Because there’s simply no necessity. Necessity is a big motivator in propelling people’s language learning: when we’re a child, we learn the language of our families because we have to. When there are no employment opportunities in our country besides underpaid manual labour, we have to learn another language. But you don’t have any of that. Unless you’re going into a very specific career field, not only do you really not need another language but it probably won’t even be that useful for you. So people don’t understand you.
I’ve watched and been part of many conversations where foreigners have said, “I’m learning English” or “I want to learn English” and the reply has been “Great! That’s a really good idea. It’ll be so useful for your career. You should definitely do that.” But when I say to people, “I’m going to learn French” or (God forbid) “I’m learning Esperanto” people say, “But why? What’s the point?”
I have friends who are native English and grew up speaking English, but they have a family heritage of Tagalog, Yiddish, Portuguese or Spanish. And yet they don’t speak those languages, and feel a bit ashamed about it, and disconnected from their cultural roots as a result. But it’s not your fault: simply, you’re not getting the exposure to the language, and other people aren’t letting you have it, because the world is absolutely full to the brim with English, English, English.
People don’t understand the idea of learning a language because it’s pretty, because you like it, because you connect with it in some way, because it feels part of your identity. And so you don’t get the encouragement and support that you deserve when you have ambitions and dreams. That’s why I’m here.
Main-Takeaway:
It’s hard to believe in yourself.
It’s hard to believe that you can learn foreign languages, to a really high level, when no one understands what it’s like for you.
You deserve compassion.
I get it.
I’m here for you.
Call-to-Action:
Try using the metric we learned today to reframe your linguistic accomplishments relative to other people your age. Keep doing it until you realise that:
- you’re stronger than you think, and
- context trumps intelligence every time when it comes to language learning.
Looking for more?
If you’re interested in hearing from native English polyglots who are experts in language learning, and know the journey you’re going through, I recommend these folks:
Benny Lewis, founder of Fluent in 3 Months
Olly Richards, founder of I Will Teach You a Language and Story Learning
Richard Simcott, founder of Speaking Fluently and the Polyglot Conference
Chelsea-Rae Moses, founder of Chat with Chelsea (Most of her content is delivered in foreign languages, so make sure you find an English one! This link takes you to an English video.)
And, of course, if you’d like to read more of my content, check out some of these:
How to start learning vocabulary in 4 steps: beginners (free resources)
What a “lexical item” is and why you need to know about it
Can I really learn a language by binge-watching Netflix?