It is interesting that we get sometimes emails not really connected to the language learning software that we are selling. Once I got an email asking about where in Switzerland to learn Arabic and as we take pride to help anybody who contacts us I digged out some addresses and emailed them back.
Today I got an email from someone asking how long it will take to speak Chinese Mandarin like a native. Well my first thought was to reply “You will never be able to speak Mandarin like a native” but then I thought that would be a little bit too harsh and probably discourage him from starting to learn Mandarin and I answered him a little bit more indirectly. But please let me explain why this was my first thought.
Speaking a language like a native –what does that mean? It would mean to have completely inherited the language. It would mean not only to speak absolutely accent free, use correct grammar at all times and more importantly using of correct colloquial language which requires a deep understanding of the culture of the language. Most of us at L-Ceps have travelled extensively and lived in foreign countries for many years but from the thousands of people that we met, the only ones that could speak a second language like a native were actually bi-lingual educated persons. I have met many people that could speak a language perfectly, could negotiate complex contracts in that language but still from the 1st sentence they spoke it was apparent that this language is not their mother tongue.
I remember one guy from Finland with whom I have studied in the UK many years back. His parents were in the diplomatic corps and he grew up in Spain and Italy. When we once met other students from Spain what amazed me most was not only that he could speak that language like a native but his whole body language was that of a Spanish guy. That day, I realized how hard it is to master a language.
Well now you probably wonder why we are selling language learning products and at the same time in our blog tell people that they will not be able to learn a language like a native. This is because we believe that this is not important. We believe that it is important to learn a language the correct way, to step-by-step improve your language skills until you are able to speak the language on a high level and be able to have complex conversations but why would you like to sound like a native –if you are not a native? Leave the native language to the natives!
Learning a language is hard work and takes time and I sometimes get amused when I read advertisements like “Learn Spanish in 30 days”. But I will write more about this and my own experiences in learning Asian languages in another blog entry.
