[aleph_minus_one]

> None of this people opining “just learn the language” have learned a second language while working as adults, let alone learned German.

I am very certain this is not true. The "just learn the language" people are typically rather people who are very talented in learning new languages (and often indeed to this as adults as a personal hobby - often even with languages from very different families), and thus are often not easy to convince that not everybody is as talented in language learning as they are.

Believe me, I know this kind of people:

I just want to quote some polyglot person who very casually said: "Being fluent in five languages is not something to be proud of - this is rather minimum standard." (she had the opinion that rather keeping fluent in 10 [!] languages is something that takes steady learning efforts to retain the obtained level in all of the 10 languages).

[pessimizer]

I've always heard it said that "polyglot" starts with the fourth language. The opinion is that to have a at-home (family) language, an outdoor (regional) language and a market (capital) language is too common to be considered truly exceptional. Once you pick up the fourth, you're getting into hobby territory.

Kató Lomb (maybe the first official "simultaneous translator" wrote about gaining, losing, and maintaining languages entertainingly and in detail.

edit:

"Polyglot: How I Learn Languages" https://www.tesl-ej.org/books/lomb-2nd-Ed.pdf

"With Languages in Mind: Musings of a Polyglot" https://www.tesl-ej.org/pdf/ej78/WLIM.pdf

[tharkun__]

This reminds me of Xiaomanyc.

When I first found the channel I was like "wow that dude speaks so many languages so well!".

He does not. I can't really judge for most languages of course, but for the ones I can, he really isn't good at all :shrug:

[delis-thumbs-7e]

I do typos and grammar mistakes in four languages (only two of them fluently) and it’s pretty easy to learn basic vocabulary, read a bit of a comic book and order coffee with a thick accent. A lot of “polyglots” who can do basic phrases in 11 languages and make videos about it on YouTube. There’s people who genuinely speak plenty of languages fluently, but they are quite humble about it. Reaching B1 after completing A2 is 200-300h of study, preferably in a class. That’s a lot for a working adult with a family.

However, there is plenty of people who think that they speak a language because they can order a coffee in some language close to theirs and have never lived in a foreign country for any extended period of time, ie. don’t know what they are talking about, and arguing from the position of complete ignorance say “just learn the language”.

The idea that there’s one country with one language is very recent actually, part of the nationalistic idealism of 19th Century. Most of the history, as it is still today, any nation is a mishmash of cultures, languages, dialects of various kinds and origins, there of course always being some official one (used to be Latin, then French, now it’s TikTok-memes). The fact that pur systems cannot facilitate that multitude is a shame and I believe those systems that can will succeed.

[neonstatic]

Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Quite often they will also learn languages that are very similar (French, Spanish, and Italian), count that as 3 and believe it's always this easy.

The kind of people that I know and have in mind are not this way. They often rather compete for the most complicated and different language families. :-)