Why learning languages in 2024 is just NOT worth it

No, it isn't worth it.

You're probably not going to succeed.

So don't even bother trying.

So I'm this guy who has over a million followers here at YouTube.

And I talk about the joys of language learning and how we can

all learn and all this stuff.

But I have to confess that there are moments when I have my doubts.

Is it really worthwhile learning languages?

Can it be fun?

And I'm reminded of a story told to me by a friend of mine who was traveling.

He was in a, I can't remember whether it was Paris or Tokyo or Istanbul or

Buenos Aires, but some city where they spoke a language other than English.

And so he was, uh, at this cafe, he had his, uh, you know, he's going to

review his social media or whatever.

And he sits beside this attractive, uh, you know, girl and he starts staring

at her and then he kind of says to her in English, she says, you have a

lovely smile, which he thought was a really good sort of, uh, pickup line.

And she looks at him in a very unfriendly way and mutters

something in the local language.

So undeterred, he sort of whips out his iPhone.

And he speaks into his iPhone in English, and the iPhone then

speaks in the local language.

Also saying, you have a lovely smile.

At that point, the girl calls the waiter over and she's pointing

in at the, at him and, and, you know, uh, obviously very unhappy.

And she has moved to another part of the cafe.

So the moral of the story is to me, like, why bother?

Why bother learning a language?

You know, he went to the trouble of, you know, using his iPhone to generate

his pickup line there in, in the local language, and he was still rejected.

So yeah, I question therefore, why bother?

Because learning a language, you know, has to be hard work.

There is an expression, no pain, no gain.

And that's certainly true in language learning.

If you don't subject yourself to drills, to quizzes on things that you have

hardly had a chance to get used to in the language, like the subjunctive

in French or something, if you don't go to You know, you go to a class

and sit there and, uh, maybe you have to read in front of other people.

And if you read well, then people are jealous and don't like you.

And if you read badly, they are, they laugh at you or they, it's

annoying to have to listen to you.

So it's just not a good situation, but you have to do that.

You got to review, you know, stacks and stacks of flashcards.

And of course you keep forgetting them.

And, and it's just a lot of pain.

The whole process is quite painful, you know, and at the end of all this

effort, it's Are we going to just be rejected the way my friend was rejected?

I even hear of people who learn a language and go to the country where the language

is spoken and they trot out whatever they're able to do in the language

and the people reply in English after all that effort to learn the language,

like, why should I even bother if you're not going to humor me when I try to

use the language that I'm learning?

Uh, now there are people who say the opposite.

There are people who say that in fact, learning can be fun, that, uh, the

brain will get used to the language.

The brain is designed to do that.

Eventually with enough exposure, we're going to be able to start using, even with

some difficulty, as long as we are not afraid that gradually we will improve.

You know, I often mentioned the fact that never has there been so

much interesting content available to us in just about any language.

And never have there been so many people online helping us in the early stages

of our learning of any given language.

So the conditions have never been better.

I hear this message and I personally have delivered this message

here, uh, to encourage people.

But is that realistic?

So today I'm having one of my darker moments and I'm

saying, no, it isn't worth it.

You're probably not going to succeed, so don't even bother trying.

A lot of people pay lip service to the idea that they want

to learn another language.

My advice is don't bother.

In the book that I wrote in 2003 about language learning, I mentioned the parable

of the butterfly by Zhuangzi, Chinese Taoist philosopher of 2, 500 years ago,

where he imagined himself a butterfly, and then when he awoke and he realized that

he wasn't a butterfly, he was Zhuangzi, and then he Then he says, I don't know

now whether, in fact, I'm a butterfly that now thinks he's Zhuangzi or was I a

Zhuangzi who imagined himself a butterfly.

So using the parable of Zhuangzi and having exposed to you some of my dark

thoughts about language learning, uh, I'm not sure now whether the Steve that

questions the usefulness of language learning is the real Steve, Or whether

I was just pretending to be that.

And in fact, the Steve, the enthusiastic Steve is the real Steve.

I leave it up to you to figure that out, but do try to bear in mind the

fact that it is the 1st of April.