I lived in Latin America and learned quite a bit of Spanish. I have lived in Saudi Arabia for twenty years and have learned almost no Arabic. Apparently, I learn languages in bed.
Learning a foreign language, especially to the level of fluency, becomes increasingly difficult after the onset of puberty, and almost impossible upon adulthood, for most people.
People who learned a second (or more) language as a child acquire new languages as an adult much more easily. This includes ASL, which is a foreign language that uses English words. So, it’s in large part biology, not stubbornness.
I guess, depending on your definition of “word”.
My relatives didn’t come home here for the culture. They came here to escape the evils of 20th Century Europe.
Having said that, most of them did learn English. The ones who didn’t were the eldest members of our family who didn’t work and mostly just spent time with the family.
In Thailand, they call that the “pillow dictionary.” 
I knew a girl in the 80s/90s whose parents were Lithuanian immigrants and her father came over as an adult with his mother (her grandmother). In all the decades she was alive in the United States, she didn’t speak a word of English. She would also pretend not to understand any English and would just give you a stony stare although her family knew she understood at least some of it.
This was in the Chicago suburbs and, while Chicago itself has a Lithuanian immigrant population, the same can’t be said for Downers Grove and Woodridge. From what I understand, she just didn’t socialize with anyone outside the family unless it was on the phone. I couldn’t tell you exactly why she never “tried” – maybe she did and it was just too much for her at her age. Maybe she was bitter about leaving her life in Lithuania and decided “fuck these guys”.
There must be a middle ground, which most people fall into, between having a “mental block” against learning new languages as an adult and being able to speak the local dialect without any trace of an accent after two weeks.
That said, it is also true that practice makes perfect, so if you don’t immerse yourself in speaking and reading a language, you won’t learn it well, no matter how many decades you spend.
I know there’s something about it being to learn a new or multiple languages before a certain age which. I know people whose parents immigrated while they were still young (two who were eight at the time) and they’re able to speak perfect English and I’ve been told, their former country’s language perfectly also.
I lived in Japan from just after my birth to four years old and I’m told I only spoke Japanese because I was primarily taken care of our maid. But other than the bad words, I can’t speak Japanese at all. And no, we weren’t rich, apparently domestic help back then was really cheap. Hmmm…I’ll have to ask my brother and sisters how we communicated back then.
Not always, at all. It depends a lot on the original culture and on the reception culture; the US is an outlier both ways, although not as much for reception nowadays as they used to be.
For many people there is in part a problem of expecting too much too quickly. Since at first the new language makes no sense, includes sounds they can’t make (or sometimes even differentiate), etc., if they can fall back on their original language they stop working on it. They feel bothered by the fact that they’re not improving, but while not actually doing anything that would be conductive to improvement. Because as anybody with a working memory knows, we all had perfect grammar, spelling and vocabulary in our first language by the time we were three hours old.
Just last weekend I visited a friend in Amsterdam who’s lived there for 18 years and still doesn’t know the language, bar a few words (he’s British).
He’s a teacher in an international school so work is conducted in English, his friends are an international mix (including Dutch), so English is the unifying feature, and you’d be hard pushed in Amsterdam to meet someone who didn’t speak fluent English. So he’s just never had the need to learn - and clearly hasn’t pushed himself to try.
My guess is that all of these people have tried to and have learned a few words or phrases or whatever. The Observer still thinks that this person hasn’t tried to learn the new language, but they actually have learned some of it. I think this is called reverse confirmation bias.
Learning a language starting from zero is different and more difficult than learning anything else from zero…Because you feel so damn stupid.
It’s very embarrassing, and deeply frustrating, to be an adult, but speak like a baby.
Go into a store: “I want dat ding”, pointing with your finger. “No not dat ding, de udder ding”.
When you really wanted to say “no, I’m looking for the rustic style with the waterproof lining and additional pockets with zippers.”
It’s a very difficult stage to go through–a couple of years of painful, embarrassing situations. Every day and every night, every time you step out of your house.
So you want to retreat into your small little cocoon, within your family and other speakers of your native language
But, as painful as those few years are, I think it’s far worse to intentionally spend the rest of your life like that.It’s just sad.
And in some cases, it is just plain wrong–for example, to raise children when you can’t speak to their teacher.
Yeah, if you live in a community speaking the Old Language you can get by quite well.
I remember my grandmother saying that her parents spoke only the Old Language but understood English. And the kids understood them and responded in English.
(Although one great grandparent moved to another part of the country and picked up English later.)
On the one hand: Once lived in an area with a French-Canadian station on cable. Loved to watch old movies late at night on it. Started to pick up some French. And I can barely converse in English (they tell me). So later visiting places like Quebec City I could get by for tourist purposes.
On the other hand: That was a similar Indo-European language. Throw me into an Arabic or Japanese world and I’d probably sink like a rock.
It might depend on your expectations. My merchant-sailor, later diplomat, uncle remarked that one of the things which had helped him with Finnish was that he’d known from the start it wasn’t related to any of the languages he already spoke; he didn’t try to find similarities which he already knew wouldn’t exist. Some of his coworkers heard ‘Finnish’ and did something akin to professionally, slowly, carefully and while trying to keep their dignity, shoot out of the door.
Haha. Very true. It takes time, but the first language didn’t take any time! Frustration.
I was in my 60’s when I learned to speak Maya Yucateca. I studied it at the University of Campeche. And the common language was Spanish, which I was trying to learn at the same time. In the capital city, no one spoke Maya. I would go to the mercado everyday, as the fruit and vegetable venders all spoke Maya. And chat with them. I always had pen and paper to write down new words and phrases.
Learning Maya was not easy for me. Maybe my age? I had to beat it into my head with a hammer. But it was very important to me. The Maya are beautiful people and you would never understand their culture without the language.
I now live in a pueblito where 90% of the inhabitants speak Maya. When I first moved here, they wouldn’t answer me when I spoke Maya. They found it strange that a green-eyed honkie would speak Maya. Once they discovered I knew more than “good morning” in their language, they slowly opened up.
I have slept in their palapas, and shared meals with them. They don’t use utensils. Just hands. A little tricky when you are eating soup. They taught me to make a spoon out of a tortilla. None of this would have been possible if I didn’t speak the language.
My dog understands commands in Maya. Which never fails to bring smiles to these incredible peoples.
To me, learning the languages has made all the difference in the world.
I spent four years in Germany and two years in Belgium without learning local languages other than what was on a menu. This was precisely because I lived and worked with Americans and had no time or money for language lessons. It was frustrating when I traveled to other European countries and was on my own for a week or three in a country where English was uncommon. When I finally joined the foreign service, I was thrilled to finally learn Portuguese and French so that I could actually communicate in the host countries without pointing, miming or trying to find someone to translate for me. It makes for a much more enjoyable time.
One of the questions I ask when I’m offered a job in a place in which I don’t speak the local language (my stays tend to be 6-12 months) is whether the company will help me get language lessons. The answer is usually a surprised “oh, the work is all in English” “yes, but there’s several hours in a day, plus two days in a week, that I’m awake and not at work.”
There’s even been companies which provided on-site lessons in the local language to workers whose jobs were supposed to be in it, but since my team’s job called for English we weren’t allowed to sign up. There was also a country (Sweden) where it was legally impossible for me to sign up for language lessons (I needed a local Tax ID to be able to either hire a teacher or sign up for the free lessons; was denied one as “not applicable” with no further explanation and told to speak with the people who help refugees; coworkers from several European countries had stories of 3-4 years to get the ID).
The case of consultants on project-based contracts is very different from that of long-term expats, but whether short or long-term, not helping your imports with language doesn’t help retention.
Well…
My Irish ancestors in the 1860’s “moved somewhere” mainly in search of food, which was in short supply back home. In such short supply a couple million people died for lack of it.
My Russian ancestors “moved somewhere” because back home they were in danger of extermination. Those that didn’t leave were, in fact, obliterated.
In both cases the “why” was for survival reasons, not because they gave a damn about the “culture” of where they were going. They were looking for a place to survive, and could have wound up somewhere else like, I dunno, Brazil or Mexico or Australia or Nigeria. As it happened, the US let them in, but the choice was not based on caring about the culture, it was about being a refugee needing a place to survive. Not everyone who leaves home does so willingly.
At least in the case of my Russia grandparents and great-grandparents they did learn English - but they all seemed to know two or three languages before they even came here and in general those who are already bilingual or polyglot are more likely to pick up yet another language.
As a matter of fact, when my parents were fleeing Europe they applied for visas from the US, Canada, and Australia, among other places. The only reason I’m an American is because they were the first country to grant my parents a refugee visa. Some of my relatives ended up in Canada.