Real Language Acquisition Requires Comfort with Inexactitude

When people start learning a language, the goal is simple: to become more proficient in the target language. But the definition of "proficiency" varies. Some are serious enough to acquire a language to get a foreign job, live in a foreign land, and marry a foreign partner. Some are more casual: just enough to engage in basic banter during short-term travels and the joy of learning some phrases in the process is sufficient. But at all levels of seriousness, the keyword is "interaction": language acquisition is simply not something to be done alone for the sake of being alone.

That interaction need not be initially human. Ultimately, language is used to link a person with another. But in the beginning, in the absence of even the most basic knowledge of the language, a non-human interface, like a textbook, a language-learning software, or more commonly today, an AI chatbot, would be more productive to get the basics going. In my recent effort to acquire the basics of Arabic, the Duolingo app has been especially helpful. Its gamified interface ensures that I pick up a brand-new alphabet and the fundamental building blocks of the most common phrases.

Yet, whether casual or serious, the language learner cannot hide behind the non-human learning tools forever. Without practicing with real humans, the language acquired will always be as dead as Latin, literary to the learner but not practical. The goal of getting a job, marriage, or just banter would never come. Moreover, the learner would never really know whether their learning has been sufficient for interaction until taking it up with a human. Thus, facing humans with a new language has to happen with the full knowledge that mistakes will be made.

No doubt, that transition from non-human to human learning is mentally taxing. While my Arabic is far from that level, I still recall my days learning Swahili when living in Tanzania between 2015 and 2017. Despite having classes with a teacher every day, I was unable to overcome the mental block of speaking to a native Swahili speaker in real conversations until perhaps a year into the classes. The fear that I simply did not have enough vocabulary to even ask the other party to clarify, much less pick up what they said, ensured that I was too embarrassed to say anything that was not to go through a translator.

Looking back, that embarrassment almost feels silly. When I did eventually open my mouth, it was more than enough to engage in casual banter that I (and those who I spoke to) often wondered why I had not opened my mouth much earlier in my language acquisition journey. But that is the power of the mental block: the fear of making mistakes, not being understood, and feeling tongue-tied goes beyond anything that can be rationally explained through the progress reports from the teacher and the scores on Duolingo lessons, making any encouragement, both internal and external, to speak up feel hypocritical.

That inexactitude of one's feeling toward language acquisition, and one's level of comfort with it, will determine just how much one will, well, learn the language. Some will never get over it. The Japanese hesitation to interact beyond their social circle for fear of breaking some unwritten social taboos will ensure that for most, language learning will forever stay on paper and the digital screen. They will lose interest in learning further before they put up the courage to interact with real humans to find joy and motivation to learn more.

To be comfortable with the inexactitude will require a fundamental reset of expectations. Most adults will never become fluent in a foreign language learned in their 30s and beyond without serious immersion in an environment where they will constantly make mistakes and be subjected to situations where they do not understand what is going on. Those who really want to learn need to be comfortable with the constant embarrassment of making mistakes and being misunderstood. Those who are not comfortable with those inevitable errors will never move beyond pressing buttons on Duolingo.

So while acquiring a language has a simple goal, the mentality behind it, the learner would soon find, is not so simple. Would the urgency and seriousness of the acquisition be strong enough to warrant the mental stress that is placed through the need to ultimately come face to face with the ultimate test of real-life conversations with native speakers? For many, the answer is a resounding no, held back by the personal and social conviction that a good public image stipulates a strict avoidance of any risk of social faux pas. In the maintenance of that good grace, they will never be comfortable with inexactitude.