March 20, 2024 • 42 mins
We can all agree that learning another language is a challenge. Now imagine doing it with no textbooks, no recordings, and no Duolingo. In the Season 1 finale, travel back in time with Jeremiah and Marina to examine how people learned languages in the past, along with what modern-day language learners can learn from them.
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Marina (00:11):
NERRRRRRD.
Jeremiah (00:14):
You're calling Cicero a nerd.
He wrote that.
Marina (00:23):
Hello, and welcome to How to Language, a podcast about
language learners past, present,and future.
I'm Marina.
Jeremiah (00:31):
And I'm Jeremiah.
Marina (00:33):
And for today's episode, we're going to explore the
history of language learning,particularly in the ancient
period, culminating in one ofthe biggest turning points of
all time in the history oflanguage learning.
Jeremiah (00:45):
This episode will be the season one finale and after
this we're gonna take a break toplan for season two.
Didn't realize this was aseasonal show.
Well, you should have beenpaying closer attention
Marina (00:57):
So for anybody who knows Jeremiah they will know that
this is a very Jeremiah yepisode.
Jeremiah (01:03):
Why do you say that?
Marina (01:05):
Because you are all about that ancient life.
You literally speak Latin.
So, this isn't like, it's notvery surprising that you're
interested in the history of,the history of language
learning.
Um, but specifically, why didyou want to talk about it today?
Jeremiah (01:21):
Um, yeah, I mean, you're right, it's definitely
very me, uh, especially ancienthistory, but also just the
history of language learning ingeneral, I and it's also
interesting because it's kind ofhard to find information on it
for all periods, which is trueabout a lot of things
historically, but languagelearning is a big one because,
with a lot of language teachingand learning, particularly for
(01:42):
languages that have writingsystems, which not all do, It
can be hard to know about theentire scope of how people in
the past learned languagesbecause if they weren't learning
through writing or reading, thenby nature, there's not going to
be a lot of evidence for it.
I also think that what we doknow about how people learn
(02:03):
languages in the past, whetherit was in the ancient period or,
early modern period of the 20thcentury, it can be useful for
learners now to know about thatbecause it shows what kind of
things have stayed the same,which can be kind of good to
know, to know like, okay, thisis foundational stuff that is
stood the test of time, but itcan also show how a lot of
(02:25):
things used to be commonpractice, but just really aren't
anymore.
And there's probably a goodreason for that.
And a lot of those things, fellout of use in terms of best
practice have stayed around inthe way that just, you know,
people study languages or theway that they're taught in some
cases.
I know that sounds a littlevague, but we're going to get to
(02:45):
all of it.
Long story short, I think it canbe, it can be good to know as
with all history, it can be goodto know so that you don't repeat
the same mistakes of the past,but you can also learn from what
worked in the past and apply itto your current learning
approaches.
Marina (03:00):
Okay, so speaking of ancient history, why don't we
start there, with the history oflanguage learning.
Can you, uh, set the scene forus?
Jeremiah (03:09):
Yeah, for sure.
So first of all, when we talkabout the ancient period, we are
at least, at least in, in,Europe and the Mediterranean
area generally, we're talkingabout, ancient Greece, ancient
Rome, Roman Empire, kind oflike.
Late Bronze Age to Iron Age kindof period.
Ancient, you know, beforeMedieval, and that's when
(03:31):
feudalism comes onto the scene.
So when we talk about ancienthistory, it's really, I forget
the exact like cutoffs from,from history class, but I can
tell you that it starts at theearliest at the invention of
writing.
And I think it probably endssometime around when feudalism
starts, but mostly what we'retalking about today is ancient
Greece and especially ancientRome, since that's kind of my
(03:53):
area of interest.
And I won't say expertisebecause I'm not, you know, I'm
a, I'm an amateur, uh, Romeaboo.
Anyway, setting the scene.
When you talk about ancientRome, it's really covering a
huge period of history.
So now, right now I'm justtalking about, you know, late
Republic and kind of earlyempire, ancient Rome, which I
don't know how much that meansto you, but I feel like most
people know that Rome used to bea Republic and then it was an
(04:15):
empire because a bunch of stuffhappened.
Marina (04:17):
All the Romaboos out there will know what you're
talking about.
Jeremiah (04:20):
Yeah, they will.
So ancient Rome, whether you'retalking about the late Republic
or the empire was first of all,a very class polarized society.
You had very, very wealthypeople who were of the nobility
or below them who were of Iguess, not really a merchant
class, but they weren't likeblood nobility necessarily, but
(04:42):
they could be just as wealthy asactual blood nobility.
And then way below them, youhad, regular working people,
whether they were not exactlypeasants, because peasants is
kind of more of a feudal thing,but people who lived in the
countryside, which was a lot ofpeople, had their own farms,
which over time became less andless of a thing as the really,
(05:04):
really rich Romans bought upmore land and used slaves to
till the land and to grow foodand to grow cash crops and
things.
So that's basically the otherbig, big class was slaves.
Slaves were all over the placein ancient Rome.
And the reason I'm talking aboutthe class situation in ancient
Rome is because it is going tobe kind of a theme for talking
(05:24):
about the whole languagelearning through history thing.
And you'll see what I mean.
Another important thing to noteabout setting the scene is that
cities, especially like Rome,were really brimming with people
from all over Europe, Asia,Africa, whether they were
merchants or slaves, alsodignitaries, mercenaries, I
think people think about thedistant past and they think,
(05:47):
well, transportation must havebeen a lot harder back then,
which it was, and so they think,well, was it really all that
interconnected?
And I can tell you theMediterranean especially was
very interconnected, and itdidn't hurt that over time Rome
came to control all of it, whichmade it a lot safer.
I'm not saying that having agiant and, you know, destroy all
(06:09):
these other, um, You know,political situations was, was a
good thing objectively but itdid make the seas a lot safer
for, you know, not gettingrobbed by pirates or
Marina (06:18):
Weird, weird little silver lining of imperialism.
Jeremiah (06:22):
Yeah.
Anyway, my point is people gotaround back then and so As you
probably imagine, uh, if youwent to the docks in ancient
Rome, you would hear all kindsof languages.
Whether it was Gaulish, orAmharic, or Punic, or, uh,
Hebrew, or obviously Latin, orGreek.
A lot of Greek, probably.
(06:43):
Iberian.
Just a lot of them.
Especially since, because theidea of nations.
of people who all had, like, awhole lot of stuff in common
wasn't as clear back thenbecause there just wasn't a high
enough level of economicdevelopment to really, like, tie
a lot of people together.
The idea of different languagesversus different dialects was
probably a lot fuzzier.
(07:03):
if you were in even just Italy,there were a bunch of languages
that were spoken in Italy thatweren't necessarily mutually
intelligible because there was alot more distance between people
back then.
Marina (07:11):
hmm.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Jeremiah (07:12):
Yeah, so the idea of like, oh, I'm a Roman and I
speak Latin, but I'm gonna learnGaulish and that way I'll be
able to talk to everybody inGaul.
No way Jose You know, it's it'sgonna be a lot more complicated
than that
Marina (07:24):
So based on what you just said, that probably means
that being multilingual ispretty common in the ancient
world.
Is that right?
Jeremiah (07:31):
Yeah, definitely.
Just, you know, for a lot ofreasons.
Um, if you were just a regularaverage everyday person, or a
merchant, or whatever, it wouldhelp to not even necessarily
like know several differentlanguages.
Like, I know.
And I know Iberian and I knowGaulish and I know Latin.
Probably it was more of aquestion of like, I am good at
communicating with peoplebecause I've developed skills to
(07:55):
like quickly learn the rudimentsof the language of whatever
place I'm in for the purpose ofwhatever job I'm doing there,
whether I'm a mercenary orwhether I'm a trader or what
have you.
So there's that.
But you know, it's hard to findYou know, conclusive evidence
for what exactly that was like.
That's kind of more of aneducated guess, but I can say
that in the upper classes it'sdefinitely a proven fact that
(08:17):
being multilingual was commonfor them as well, but it looked
different, right?
They weren't necessarilylearning like Gaulish because if
you are a, uh, a Roman noble whonever leaves the city, except
when it's really hot and you goup to your Villa, uh, In the, in
the hills where it's cooler.
you don't need to know Gaulish.
What you are gonna know isGreek.
Uh, Cicero, Caesar, the firstemperor of Rome, Augustus, they
(08:41):
all spoke Greek.
It was very, very, very commonfor Roman nobles to speak Greek.
Funnily enough, part of it wasbecause they considered Latin to
be like, you know, not as goodof a language as Greek.
Like, Greek was like, if youspoke Greek, then you, um, you
were like more erudite than,than, than the rabble who only
(09:02):
speak Latin.
Latin was kind of like a regulareveryday language, but Greek was
like more of a language ofpoetry and more of a language of
art and stuff.
Marina (09:10):
If you knew Greek, that meant that you would use words
like erudite in casualconversation.
Jeremiah (09:15):
That's right.
I don't know Greek, but Latinnow is what Greek was then.
Marina (09:20):
Could've fooled me.
you mentioned that, people kindof acquired languages a little
more haphazardly than maybe,maybe that's not the right word,
than we do now.
Jeremiah (09:30):
Yeah, because first of all, they didn't have Duolingo.
They didn't really have youknow, normal people who, who
didn't like go to school, didn'thave, usually, like, really
structured language learningresources available.
They just had other people.
And maybe, if they could read,which maybe they could, maybe
they couldn't, you know, maybebooks or something, which we'll
get to.
Marina (09:49):
So, there aren't any ruins in Ancient Rome of, like,
community colleges or languageschools or anything like that?
Jeremiah (09:58):
No.
Okay.
But I will, I mean, I will talkabout in a second how there was
language teaching, but it wasprobably, you know, especially
for more upper class people.
all that said, speakers of theseother languages, whether it was
Oscan or Etruscan or Gaulish orAramaic or Egyptian or Phrygian,
you know, most of them whointeracted with Romans or Greeks
(10:20):
on a regular basis probably knewLatin and Greek just because you
kind of had to.
That said, there were no apps,there were no computers, there
were no recordings, right?
So the only way to hear howsomething was supposed to be
said was to talk to somebody whospoke the language and not even
printed books.
If, uh, if you wanted a book.
about the language that you'retrying to learn, which there
(10:41):
probably weren't really languagetextbooks.
It was more that people justkind of like got a book in that
language and studied it.
but if you wanted one, you wouldhave to copy it or get somebody
else to copy it.
But yeah, just to reiteratebefore we move forward, um,
everything that follows aboutthe ancient period is based on
textual evidence, so stuff thatpeople wrote down, and that's
(11:01):
for the simple reason that backthen, like I said, there was no
recording technology, so theonly way to know things about
ancient language is throughwritten texts, and also to a
lesser extent by comparinglanguages that still exist today
to learn about how the languagewas back then, but when it comes
to actually learning about howpeople learned the language,
really written texts is allthere is.
And since the working classeshad much lower literacy than the
(11:24):
ruling classes, And since it'sthe ones with the power,
obviously, who write the historybooks, most of what we know
about the ancient world is notonly disproportionately about
the rich and the powerful, butalso portrays them in a
disproportionately favorablelight.
So, Cicero, Caesar, Augustus,like I said, they were all
members of the nobility.
So that brings us to thequestion of how actually did
(11:45):
people learn other languages?
And when I say people, in thiscase, like I said, I mean
primarily the nobility who hadthe time and the resources and
the funds to actually geteducation in another language
and not just learning Greekhaphazardly by hanging out in
the market.
Supposedly, from what I read,learners often started by
(12:08):
reading, weirdly enough.
I mean, literacy, particularlyamong the nobility, was pretty
high back then.
So reading, memorizing, andreciting little stories and
dialogues out of, you know,these little books.
And from their readings andtheir recitations and all that,
they got basic vocabulary andgrammar just in context.
(12:30):
And these texts that they got,which, like I said, were
probably copied from othertexts.
They were, for one thing, that'sinteresting, coherent.
They were coherent texts, um,not isolated sentences like on
Duolingo.
So you can picture a little bookand it's got a story in it.
It's a simple story and you canstill find books like this
today.
Like this is a pretty commonlanguage learning method.
(12:51):
There's a little book with twocolumns.
The text on the left was thelanguage that you know, and the
text on the right was thelanguage you're learning, like
Greek.
And then it's just two copies ofthe same story.
One in Latin, one in Greek, andyou speak Latin.
And so you can be like, Oh, Iknow Latin.
It says this here.
And then look over at the Greekcolumn and be like, Oh, this in
(13:11):
Greek means this in Latin.
And you just, part of it is youjust kind of brute force it.
Marina (13:16):
And just just hold on and, and pray That's right.
You figure out what the textmeans.
Jeremiah (13:22):
Yeah.
And you know, you had, you alsohad a tutor, like if you were
Roman nobility and you werelearning Greek probably as, as,
as a teenager or a kid, you hadyour Greek tutor and they would
explain things and all that.
topics for these, for thesetexts included simple stuff that
you still see today, likegetting dressed in the morning,
(13:42):
going to school, visiting a sickfriend, getting a job.
Marina (13:45):
That's kind of interesting.
Those are highly, relevantsituations that they would be
able to apply immediately intheir daily life.
So that's pretty cool.
That's something that we dostill today.
Jeremiah (13:55):
Yeah.
And hey, there's one of thosethings that I mentioned about
Knowing about how people learnedlanguages in the past kind of
gives you some hints about what,what is fundamental language
learning stuff that is stillimportant today.
Basically, what we're looking athere is the translation method,
which has persisted forthousands of years since then,
(14:16):
and still is around today.
It is unpopular today.
in most language learningcontexts except funnily enough
for learning ancient or deadlanguages like Latin and Old
Norse.
And a big part of the reason forthat is because most people
aren't speaking Latin and OldNorse nowadays.
(14:36):
You don't have to know them tospeak them or to, you know, talk
to The fishmonger about gettingyour fish for the weekend.
Marina (14:43):
Yeah, that's how I learned Latin.
Was the, the, the translationmethod.
We had a book that was verysimilar to what you were just
describing.
Where I should actually know, itdidn't have any English in it,
it was just Latin.
And you were supposed to Youlearn the vocabulary at the
beginning and then you read thepassage and you're supposed to
kind of figure it out.
Jeremiah (15:00):
Exactly.
And yeah, the reason for that isbecause, you know, people aren't
really producing new stuff inLatin that much anymore.
You're mostly reading oldauthors and you learn Latin so
that you can read those becauseit's, it's just cool read it how
it was intended to be read inthe original language.
Makes it easier to appreciatethe jokes, for one thing.
Marina (15:20):
Mm, yeah, all the text that we would read in Latin was
usually, like, about ancientRome.
it was a story that takes placein ancient Rome, or it was an
actual, like, text that waswritten back then and we were
translating.
although my Latin teacher, wouldsometimes write his own little
passages and sentences in Latinabout modern things.
(15:41):
So like one time he gave us anassignment where it was like a
passage explaining the plot ofStar Wars.
Jeremiah (15:47):
Cute.
Marina (15:48):
And didn't tell us it was about Star Wars and we just
had to like, see how it unfoldedand realize that it was about
Star Wars.
Jeremiah (15:55):
Oh, that's fun.
Wait, this makes me want to getout my Latin textbook and read
an example.
I just want to read some Latin,wait.
Okay.
For those of you listening in, Iwent and got my copy of
Wheelock's Latin.
And the reason I did that isbecause it really does use the
translation method a lot.
That's really what it's about.
(16:15):
In the beginning it teaches youabout the grammar and then, bam,
you're into the, uh, you get avocab you get a vocab list, and
then you get some stuff to read.
And it's in it's in Latin.
And they don't give you theEnglish translations, you just
have to figure it out.
Here's one[Jeremiah reads apassage in Latin out loud]
Marina (16:38):
NERRRRRRD.
Jeremiah (16:41):
You're calling Cicero a nerd.
He wrote that.
Marina (16:43):
Uh, yeah.
Jeremiah (16:45):
and, and here's the funny thing.
I don't actually know what thissays because first of all, it's
been a while.
And second of all, thetranslation method, um, is not
actually the best.
Marina (16:55):
Don't tell my Latin teacher that.
Yeah.
Sorry, Okay.
So, so right.
So you just read Latin out loud,you know, with like the correct
pronunciation and everything,but that's not something that,
you know, It's really part ofthe translation method because
you're just working with writtentext.
You're, and you're justtranslating.
And so there's really nospeaking or listening involved.
(17:17):
So, how do people learn how to,like, speak?
And especially for people whomaybe didn't know how to read
and didn't have access to thetranslation method.
Jeremiah (17:28):
True that.
Well, first of all, if they'renot doing pronunciation, then
let me guess, people in yourclass probably read it like
this.
Uh,[Jeremiah reads anotherpassage in Latin with a
ridiculous American accent], Ohwait, I slipped into actually
pronouncing it correctly for asecond there.
(17:50):
Fiantibi Fidelis.
Is that about right?
Marina (17:54):
Okay.
Do not call me out like thatever again.
We knew that the V's werepronounced like W's.
Like, we knew that.
We weren't that out of touch.
Jeremiah (18:04):
Okay, that's good.
Marina (18:06):
But yeah.
That's, that's kind of what mostof my Latin class sounded like.
Jeremiah (18:11):
But you asked about speaking and what about people
who couldn't read.
And unfortunately, it's justhard to tell ancient
descriptions of language classesdon't really mention
conversation exercises.
I guess they weren't seen asbeing super important.
Probably because if you weretaking one of these classes and
you were a member of thenobility Then you were probably
learning Greek not so that youcould talk to actual Greeks and
(18:34):
have a conversation like a realperson But instead you were just
learning it so that you couldlike sit around and be a nerd
and read poetry however,presumably most people who
learned a language In real life,you know, not just the nobility
people had to learn languagesThey probably learned a language
so they could speak it, not justto recite poetry.
But of course, most of what weknow about ancient language
(18:55):
learners is about the nobilityand they were learning it to
recite poetry.
So it kind of skews the data.
It's possible that for peoplewho are deliberately learning a
language so that they can speakit with other speakers, classes
were immersive and taughtentirely in the target language
and that's assuming they tookclasses, you know, if they were
just kind of figuring it out.
And they were a motivatedlearner, but really all they had
(19:17):
to go off of was theirconversations with other
speakers who were certainly nottrained pedagogues.
it was probably a lot ofimmersion and a lot of trial and
error.
For learners who couldn't reador didn't study in a class
setting, yeah, they probablylearned mostly through practice.
Like we've talked about before,that means solving social
problems using whatever languageresources they had acquired.
(19:39):
And there's some important stuffthere.
Solving social problems, that's,you know, what practice is in a
language context, using thelanguage resources you have
access to.
It's not so much a matter of, Iknow the language, and now I can
talk to anybody about anything.
That's not even how it isnowadays.
In a realistic context, itreally is about learning the
(20:00):
language.
You kind of make your own toolsand then you try to do stuff
with them and you fail a certainpercentage and then you learn
from that.
I will say this though.
It is likely that learners ofprestigious languages like Latin
and Greek.
who themselves were not Romansor Greeks, but were, you know,
(20:20):
Gauls or Carthaginians orSyrians or whatever, it is
likely that they made a lot oferrors because they're literally
doing trial and error and hadspeech that was strongly
accented with the phonology oftheir first language, what
people nowadays would call athick accent.
And there is evidence, actualtextual evidence that these
people were looked down on andseen as stupid, sadly.
Marina (20:43):
Not much has changed.
Jeremiah (20:44):
Not much has changed.
Unfortunately, people are stilltreated that way.
Anyway, for example, there's aRoman play called Poenulus by
Plautus, or I think that's howyou say it in English.
In Latin, it's Plautus.
And in it, the main characteractually is a Carthaginian
character.
And just for context, Carthagewas like another really big
(21:05):
city, in the Mediterraneanduring the earlier Roman
Republic.
And they were Uh, public enemynumber one for the Romans, and
so if you were a Carthaginianalready, you probably had a
harder time getting along withRomans anyway.
But the main character in thisplay is a Carthaginian, and he
has a, you know, a pretty lowlevel of Latin proficiency it
seems like, and he also justspeaks Punic a lot, that's the
(21:29):
Carthaginian language.
He speaks Punic a lot in theplay.
Which also interestingly is, uh,one of the rare sources in the,
in Latin writing that has Puniclanguage in it.
Because we really don't knowthat much about the Punic
language.
But his speech is mocked by theother characters and it's kind
of a big joke the entire play.
Marina (21:51):
That's so interesting.
was the Punic language not, didit not have a writing system?
Jeremiah (21:56):
That's a good question.
I think, I mean, no, I think itdid because Punic is a Semitic
language.
and I think it comes fromPhoenician.
Marina (22:05):
Oh, oh.
Jeremiah (22:06):
Because the Carthaginians were Phoenician
settlers and the Phoenicianscame from the Levant.
and that is actually where thealphabet that we use, the Latin
alphabet, but also the Greekalphabet, the uh, Cyrillic
alphabet.
All of those come from thePhoenician alphabet,
Marina (22:24):
Okay, so that was a great overview of, like, ancient
Europe and how they kind of wentabout learning languages,
especially in the Roman empireSo, let's move forward a little
bit in time.
Jeremiah (22:36):
A little bit, yeah.
Marina (22:37):
Um, a lot in time.
Um, and so how, you know, pastthe Middle Ages and past that
kind of era, how, how did, howdid, at what point did things
kind of take a turn?
Jeremiah (22:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think a theme that will start to
present itself is that the waythat people learn languages is
highly, highly influenced bytheir material conditions and
the material conditions ofwhatever is happening in their
society at the time.
And one of the biggest seachanges in material conditions,
particularly for Europe, butalso all of Europe's unfortunate
(23:15):
victims, was It's the periodwhere colonization and
colonialism started to come ontothe world stage.
And a big, not necessarily astarting point for that, but a
pretty huge turning point was1492 when Christopher Columbus
sailed the ocean blue.
He came to the Americas, eventhough he never admitted that
(23:38):
that's what he did, he always,he maintained to his deathbed
that he had actually found Asia.
So he was a much better sailorthan he was a cartographer, I
guess.
But when he came to the Americasand he met the indigenous
people, a lot of communicationwas accomplished, quote unquote,
through gestures.
And I say, quote unquote,accomplished because that guy
(23:59):
also inferred a lot fromgestures, because of course, of
course you were going to likegestures.
aren't a language and everyculture has a different kind of
gestural repertoire and what agesture means in one language
will be different from that samegesture in another language.
But basically he justconveniently interpreted the
gestures of the indigenouspeople in whatever way was most
(24:22):
favorable to him.
So he was like, look, they'regesturing.
That means that they think we'regods and they want to be our
slaves.
I mean, if you insist, uh, sure.
And if you say so, I don't know.
And obviously they probablyweren't saying that, but like I
said, the basic problem withthat is that different cultures
have different gesturalassociations.
(24:43):
So for example, pinching yournose in one culture, like in our
culture, if you pinch your nose,it means you think something is
stinky, but it might meansomething totally different in
another culture.
Maybe if you pinch your nose in,you know, I don't know, rural
Austria, it'll be taken as a,Flirtatious, or dare I say rude,
(25:07):
gesture.
Yeah.
So, it should go without saying,haha, double entendre, it should
go without saying.
Marina (25:15):
Oof.
Gestures
Jeremiah (25:16):
alone really aren't enough to get by on and have an
intelligible conversation.
But, you couldn't have told, uh,you couldn't have told Chris
Colon that because he, he was abad guy.
Anyway.
where gestures failed and where,the colonizers were just like,
you know what, we, to someextent, need to be able to talk
(25:38):
to these people so that we canask them where their gold is.
Um, we need people who speak theindigenous languages, but I'm
not going to learn it and youknow, my boys aren't going to
learn it.
So why don't we, uh, take one ofthem and kidnap them and take
them back to Spain or somethingso that we can force them to
learn Spanish and then we canuse them as an interpreter.
(25:59):
And that's exactly what theydid.
Columbus didn't really come upwith that, obviously.
He actually took a page from thePortuguese.
They would, uh, before this,they would take West Africans
captive and force them to learnPortuguese in Lisbon so that
they could then be used asinterpreters.
And this actually remained apretty common practice for
centuries after Columbus, quoteunquote, discovered the
Americas.
Marina (26:19):
Yeah.
Pretty, uh, pretty terriblething on top of the already
large pile of terrible thingsthat he and other colonizers of
this time did.
Jeremiah (26:28):
I know, it's like he was just coming up with awful
stuff to do.
Like, eh, anyway.
Marina (26:32):
Uh, if you want to learn more about this chapter of
history, I would recommend thebook On Savage Shores.
excellent book that talks aboutthis exact thing.
Jeremiah (26:41):
Right on.
Yeah, good Rick.
Marina (26:43):
Okay, so, that was awful.
Jeremiah (26:45):
Yeah, and for the sake of time, let's jump ahead a
little bit again.
Marina (26:49):
So, what happened kind of after that period, getting
into like, the colonial period,I guess.
18th, 19th century?
Jeremiah (27:00):
Yeah, for sure.
So, definitely worth notingthat, It was kind of an early
colonial period when the worldwas still being quote unquote,
discovered.
And it was really just a periodof primitive accumulation where,
you go around with your boys andyour, your muskets and you just
take stuff.
Um, and going around and takingstuff is great for European
(27:23):
industry, which is a big part ofwhy Europe was able to advance
economically to the point thatit eventually did.
But past a certain point,there's just no more world to
gobble up.
And that's the point where, youknow, good old fashioned
colonialism doesn't really cutit anymore.
And I talked about this in thelast episode, I think, but you
get into a period of imperialismwhere you just leech off of your
(27:46):
territorial holdings.
But, returning to Europe.
Oh, I will say before the 18thgoing back to language learning,
the ma, uh, the main languagethat was taught in schools
before the 18th century was,hey, our old friend Latin,
that's also where we get theterm grammar school, because
what was taught was Latingrammar.
(28:08):
And the reason for that isbecause from the medieval era to
the 18th century, Latin was thelanguage of education, it was
the language of science, it wasthe language of academia, and
here comes our friend classagain.
If you were a part of the classof people who got to go to
school, then that's the languageyou learned.
But in the 18th century, modernlanguages like French started to
(28:31):
be taught using the same methodsas Latin had been taught, which,
I think we know what they are.
Grammar drills and translationare favorite.
Finally, in the 19th andespecially the 20th centuries,
this is where it starts to getinteresting.
Finally, new methods of languageteaching start to emerge.
First of all, you have likelanguage.
(28:51):
teaching and not just Latin.
Very exciting.
Marina (28:55):
Teaching of modern languages.
Jeremiah (28:56):
Teaching of modern languages, which is becoming
more and more necessary,especially, and this is, this is
where we'll get to our finaltopic for the day.
Um, a very interesting exampleof one of the new methods that
exploded onto the scene in the20th century was a new method
called the audio lingual method.
Marina (29:18):
Famously awful, but also very revolutionary in the
language learning world.
Jeremiah (29:24):
Yeah, for real.
And I almost have a little bitof a soft spot for it just
because for the very few peoplethat it worked for, it worked
really well.
Marina (29:31):
Sure.
Jeremiah (29:33):
So I'll give a little history again.
When the U.
S.
entered World War II, there wasa recognized need for
translators and for interpreterswho could be quote unquote
fluent in the language.
in German, French, Italian,Chinese, Japanese, Malay, and
other languages.
It was a world war, folks.
I mean, come on.
So the U.
S.
government commissioneduniversities, like 50 of them,
(29:55):
to develop programs toaccomplish this because the
grammar translation method wouldnot cut it.
And the result was the ArmySpecialized Training Program.
And if you can think of a moregeneric name for it than that,
uh, I dare you.
Marina (30:11):
Yeah, it doesn't even have the word language in it.
Jeremiah (30:14):
Specialized.
Marina (30:15):
What's it training for?
It's specialized.
Specialized training for what?
Jeremiah (30:20):
So, the way that they did it in this program was
pretty interesting.
It wasn't just a student and ateacher, it was actually a
student, a native speaker whowasn't necessarily a teacher,
and a linguist.
A
Marina (30:33):
linguist?
Jeremiah (30:34):
A linguist.
A student, a native speaker, anda linguist walk into a bar,
okay, and they would studytogether.
The linguist, first of all,doesn't have to know the
language that's being taught.
So it's a student, a linguist,and a native speaker.
The native speaker knows thelanguage.
The linguist knows linguistics.
Marina (30:54):
What purpose do they serve?
Jeremiah (30:56):
I'll tell you.
It's actually reallyinteresting.
And then the student, obviously,their purpose is to ideally
learn the language.
Mm hmm.
So, the native speaker's role isto just provide phrases and
conversation practice.
You know, they don't actuallyknow necessarily, like, on a
linguistic level, how theirlanguage works, and they
certainly wouldn't necessarilyknow how to teach it.
(31:17):
And that's what the linguist isthere for.
The linguist is there even ifthey don't know the language in
question because they're alinguist they can like pick up
on kind of the structural aspectof it fairly early on and
provide structure and contextand other juicy things for the
learner to structure theexperience.
(31:37):
And you might be thinking, well,that doesn't really sound like a
method.
That just sounds like throwingthree people into a bag, shaking
it up and seeing what comes out.
And you're right.
But in classic, uh, us armyfashion, you don't need a method
as long as you have intensityand drills.
Exactly.
And that's exactly what it was.
Um, so they would study for 10hours a day, six, six days a
(32:01):
week.
for several weeks at a time.
I think two sessions of like sixweeks.
And yeah, obviously the methoditself wasn't all that
scientifically sound, certainlynot scientifically revolutionary
but the intensity combined with,first of all, the students were
highly motivated.
I think they were probably selfselected.
So as far as students and timecommitment, it was really a
(32:23):
sweetheart deal because of thosethings.
the students who actually didit, it produced really strong
results for them.
Like they actually got reallygood.
Marina (32:32):
I bet it did.
Jeremiah (32:33):
Exactly.
10 hours
Marina (32:34):
a day.
If you're on
Jeremiah (32:35):
Duolingo 10 hours a day, dude, you're going to be
flying high.
You're going to be off thecharts.
Marina (32:39):
You should use that as a torture method.
Using it for training?
No.
Jeremiah (32:45):
I know.
I mean, then again, if I was inWorld War II, I think that's
probably what I would want todo.
Yeah.
I wouldn't want to be stormingthe beaches or flying the planes
or anything.
Marina (32:55):
That's true.
Like, if you got drafted, thiswould be an ideal situation.
And then just be an interpreter.
Jeremiah (33:00):
Yeah, literally, because just, I think, yeah, I
think it'd be cool.
And, you know, once you put inlike 2, 000 hours, you get
pretty good at it.
Marina (33:08):
Yeah.
Jeremiah (33:09):
The important thing here, this, this thing by itself
isn't necessarily, this isn'tthe audiolingual method, by the
way.
This is the, this is what laidthe groundwork for the
audiolingual method,particularly the emphasis on
oral practice and also just thedrilling, the drills, drill,
drill, drill.
audiolingual method was, I mean,it derived from this, and it was
(33:31):
a dramatic break from thecenturies of language learning
that came before, Because, untilWorld War II and the sea change
in language teaching in the U.
S.
after World War 1950s, reading,writing, translation, these were
the basis of most languageteaching.
Whether it was, you know, Latin,way back in the day, or even
(33:52):
modern languages in the afterthose got reintroduced.
It was, it was, it was readingand it was grammar and it was
writing, but the audio lingualmethod just straight up flipped
that, flipped it right on itshead and focused on listening
and speaking, not on reading andwriting, mainly through
intensive drills and an emphasison structure.
Marina (34:11):
I mean, that makes sense because in the war, that was
their priority was speaking andlistening, intercepting messages
and stuff like that.
Reading and writing probablyweren't as huge of a deal.
Jeremiah (34:21):
Exactly.
Exactly.
And.
That gets at, again, how the,the, the ways in which language
teaching and language learningevolve over time really have a
lot to do with materially what'sgoing on, like what's the
purpose, what is the contextthat the learner is in, you
know, the, the methods kind ofchange to suit the times.
(34:42):
So drills and repetition thatreally is audio lingualism in a
nutshell.
It's a lot of the teacher sayinga sentence at you, even if you
have no idea what it means, andyou just say it back, and you
try to say it exactly right,again and again and again.
And then they throw in someother stuff.
Like they say a sentence, like,for example, if you're learning
English, they say like, hethrows the ball and then you
(35:06):
repeat, but you say, she throwsthe ball.
So making like slight variationsto just see what's possible in
terms of changing things, butyou still don't know what it
means.
Really just brute forcing,learning the language to speak
it in the most brute force wayyou possibly could.
Marina (35:23):
Mm Sounds awful.
Jeremiah (35:25):
It does sound awful,
Marina (35:26):
but if it works Like some for some people it works.
It works.
I wouldn't want to learn thatway.
Jeremiah (35:31):
No exactly Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from
that is the shift in focus tospeaking and listening, which is
funny because that's the onething that language, aside from
sign languages, has all, havealways had in common is the
speaking and the listening.
So I don't know why people havebeen so focused on reading and
writing.
I mean, I do know why I justexplained why, but still.
Marina (35:54):
It also kind of sounds like the audio lingual method
was kind of had something to dowith like behaviorism and
conditioning.
Jeremiah (36:03):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
It, uh, it was based onbehaviorism because that was
really the pop psychology theoryat the time.
It was popular.
It was popular.
Thank you, B.
F.
Skinner.
Mm hmm.
Remember those guys?
The
Marina (36:15):
Pigeons.
The Pigeons.
Yeah.
They thought they could teachpigeons how to learn languages.
Jeremiah (36:22):
Oh yeah, they did! Wait, tell me, say that, I
don't, I only remember the, the,that, what you just said.
What was the deal with that?
Marina (36:29):
I forget the details, but they thought that they could
create, like, they couldcondition associations between,
like, words that are writtendown on a piece of and, they
would have a pigeon select thecorrect word or something like
that and they would get food asa as a reward and they thought
oh this pigeon's learning how toread no the pigeon's not
(36:52):
learning how to read they'rejust responding to stimuli like
any animal would
Jeremiah (36:55):
exactly and they assumed that humans worked that
way and so it didn't matter ifyou understood the language that
you were producing all thatmattered was that you were
producing it because language intheir eyes was a behavior not an
internal thing.
It was, yeah, it was a behaviorthat you could learn through
repetition and over time youwould just do it.
Marina (37:19):
But we've moved past that as a society.
Yeah,
Jeremiah (37:23):
for the most part, but you know, we, we could, and
there are a lot of other weird,wacky methods.
I wanted to talk about audiolingualism because it was really
kind of one of the firstgroundbreakers and.
really marked year one for notjust doing grammar translation
forever and ever.
(37:44):
It was really, um, the start ofa Cambrian explosion of
different methods and even postmethods.
I won't tell you what thatmeans, I'll tell you next
season.
we could talk for hours aboutthe different language teaching
methods that gained popularityin the 20th century, but I think
we should end it with audiolingualism because at least in
(38:07):
the U S it's a key point.
Like I said, where languagelearning shifted away from the
grammar translation method thatreally had dominated for
centuries, millennia, even.
And.
Away from that and towards theincredibly diverse terrain of
language learning methods thatwe know today because there are
still a lot Everybody is like mymethod that I invented is the
(38:28):
best because I sprinkled in alittle Little this and a little
that and it's made with love
Marina (38:34):
so We've been through, you know, a pretty good chunk of
human history.
At least mostly European andAmerican history.
Jeremiah (38:42):
Yeah, sorry about that.
Yeah.
Marina (38:45):
but, what are some of the big takeaways that modern
language learners can learn fromthe past?
Jeremiah (38:54):
Yeah, I think, uh, the big takeaway for me is that
Which I think people, you know,listeners will find is usually
my takeaway is that how peoplelearned language in the past had
a lot to do with the materialconditions of the society.
The learning was embedded in.
and also the material conditionsof the learners themselves.
So let's like really quickly inreview talk about what those
(39:16):
conditions were in the ancientperiod.
What we know about ancientlanguage learners is mostly
about members of the rulingclass.
We talked about why they weren'tlearning Syrian or Gaulish
because they had no desire orneed to.
And instead, what they werelearning was Greek and they did
it so that they could read andrecite poetry.
(39:37):
Right.
That speaks to really the class,character of the people who
were, who were learning Greek inthat way, what their priorities
were and what they didn't haveto worry about.
You know, they didn't have toworry about needing to know
Greek so that they could surviveand work and put food on the
table because they had slaves todo that.
(39:57):
And so they had time and energyto devote to reading and
reciting poetry.
In the early modern period,Latin was and had been the
science, uh, the language ofscience and education because it
helped to draw a clear line ofdemarcation between the haves
and the have nots.
Again, class.
when English, French, and thoseother, vulgar quote unquote
(40:19):
languages, when those werebrought into the, these spaces.
There was pushback, because itmade the commanding heights of
society and culture moreaccessible to regular people,
and the people who were in thosecommanding heights did not like
that, right?
The ruling classes again.
In the colonies, languagelearning had a much more
utilitarian aspect, becauselanguage in that context was
(40:41):
just one tool among many forgetting the better of indigenous
people to more easily displaceand exploit them.
Get to the 20th century, all ofthis highfalutin language stuff
of centuries past, you know, thereciting the poetry and the
science and whatever that wentout the window to some extent
when it came up against thesheer necessity of putting
(41:03):
bodies in the field in World WarII, having soldiers, whatever
their class background, but youknow, obviously mostly workers,
having them know the locallanguages, gave the U.
S.
military an edge in reallyeverything.
It just helps to know the locallanguage.
Give them an edge in things likereconnaissance, to maintaining
order in occupied territories,to even like interrogation,
(41:25):
right?
It wasn't all butterflies.
As for the present, that I thinkraises the question, what is the
material basis for languagelearning today?
Maybe that's another episode.
Marina (41:36):
I love a good open question to end the season on.
Jeremiah (41:38):
Yeah, something to think about while, you're
driving to work in silencebecause you don't have our
podcast to listen to for a fewweeks.
Marina (41:52):
Thank you for listening to this episode of How to
Language, where we talked abouthow people learned languages in
the past.
This is our season finale, butwe will be back in summer of
2024 with a whole new slate ofnew episodes.
to keep in the loop on updatesand when the new season will be
released, you can follow us onInstagram and X at HowToLang.
Jeremiah (42:16):
See you next time.
Marina (42:17):
We'll see you later.
NERRRRRRD.
Jeremiah (00:14):
You're calling Cicero a nerd.
He wrote that.
Marina (00:23):
Hello, and welcome to How to Language, a podcast about
language learners past, present,and future.
I'm Marina.
Jeremiah (00:31):
And I'm Jeremiah.
Marina (00:33):
And for today's episode, we're going to explore the
history of language learning,particularly in the ancient
period, culminating in one ofthe biggest turning points of
all time in the history oflanguage learning.
Jeremiah (00:45):
This episode will be the season one finale and after
this we're gonna take a break toplan for season two.
Didn't realize this was aseasonal show.
Well, you should have beenpaying closer attention
Marina (00:57):
So for anybody who knows Jeremiah they will know that
this is a very Jeremiah yepisode.
Jeremiah (01:03):
Why do you say that?
Marina (01:05):
Because you are all about that ancient life.
You literally speak Latin.
So, this isn't like, it's notvery surprising that you're
interested in the history of,the history of language
learning.
Um, but specifically, why didyou want to talk about it today?
Jeremiah (01:21):
Um, yeah, I mean, you're right, it's definitely
very me, uh, especially ancienthistory, but also just the
history of language learning ingeneral, I and it's also
interesting because it's kind ofhard to find information on it
for all periods, which is trueabout a lot of things
historically, but languagelearning is a big one because,
with a lot of language teachingand learning, particularly for
(01:42):
languages that have writingsystems, which not all do, It
can be hard to know about theentire scope of how people in
the past learned languagesbecause if they weren't learning
through writing or reading, thenby nature, there's not going to
be a lot of evidence for it.
I also think that what we doknow about how people learn
(02:03):
languages in the past, whetherit was in the ancient period or,
early modern period of the 20thcentury, it can be useful for
learners now to know about thatbecause it shows what kind of
things have stayed the same,which can be kind of good to
know, to know like, okay, thisis foundational stuff that is
stood the test of time, but itcan also show how a lot of
(02:25):
things used to be commonpractice, but just really aren't
anymore.
And there's probably a goodreason for that.
And a lot of those things, fellout of use in terms of best
practice have stayed around inthe way that just, you know,
people study languages or theway that they're taught in some
cases.
I know that sounds a littlevague, but we're going to get to
(02:45):
all of it.
Long story short, I think it canbe, it can be good to know as
with all history, it can be goodto know so that you don't repeat
the same mistakes of the past,but you can also learn from what
worked in the past and apply itto your current learning
approaches.
Marina (03:00):
Okay, so speaking of ancient history, why don't we
start there, with the history oflanguage learning.
Can you, uh, set the scene forus?
Jeremiah (03:09):
Yeah, for sure.
So first of all, when we talkabout the ancient period, we are
at least, at least in, in,Europe and the Mediterranean
area generally, we're talkingabout, ancient Greece, ancient
Rome, Roman Empire, kind oflike.
Late Bronze Age to Iron Age kindof period.
Ancient, you know, beforeMedieval, and that's when
(03:31):
feudalism comes onto the scene.
So when we talk about ancienthistory, it's really, I forget
the exact like cutoffs from,from history class, but I can
tell you that it starts at theearliest at the invention of
writing.
And I think it probably endssometime around when feudalism
starts, but mostly what we'retalking about today is ancient
Greece and especially ancientRome, since that's kind of my
(03:53):
area of interest.
And I won't say expertisebecause I'm not, you know, I'm
a, I'm an amateur, uh, Romeaboo.
Anyway, setting the scene.
When you talk about ancientRome, it's really covering a
huge period of history.
So now, right now I'm justtalking about, you know, late
Republic and kind of earlyempire, ancient Rome, which I
don't know how much that meansto you, but I feel like most
people know that Rome used to bea Republic and then it was an
(04:15):
empire because a bunch of stuffhappened.
Marina (04:17):
All the Romaboos out there will know what you're
talking about.
Jeremiah (04:20):
Yeah, they will.
So ancient Rome, whether you'retalking about the late Republic
or the empire was first of all,a very class polarized society.
You had very, very wealthypeople who were of the nobility
or below them who were of Iguess, not really a merchant
class, but they weren't likeblood nobility necessarily, but
(04:42):
they could be just as wealthy asactual blood nobility.
And then way below them, youhad, regular working people,
whether they were not exactlypeasants, because peasants is
kind of more of a feudal thing,but people who lived in the
countryside, which was a lot ofpeople, had their own farms,
which over time became less andless of a thing as the really,
(05:04):
really rich Romans bought upmore land and used slaves to
till the land and to grow foodand to grow cash crops and
things.
So that's basically the otherbig, big class was slaves.
Slaves were all over the placein ancient Rome.
And the reason I'm talking aboutthe class situation in ancient
Rome is because it is going tobe kind of a theme for talking
(05:24):
about the whole languagelearning through history thing.
And you'll see what I mean.
Another important thing to noteabout setting the scene is that
cities, especially like Rome,were really brimming with people
from all over Europe, Asia,Africa, whether they were
merchants or slaves, alsodignitaries, mercenaries, I
think people think about thedistant past and they think,
(05:47):
well, transportation must havebeen a lot harder back then,
which it was, and so they think,well, was it really all that
interconnected?
And I can tell you theMediterranean especially was
very interconnected, and itdidn't hurt that over time Rome
came to control all of it, whichmade it a lot safer.
I'm not saying that having agiant and, you know, destroy all
(06:09):
these other, um, You know,political situations was, was a
good thing objectively but itdid make the seas a lot safer
for, you know, not gettingrobbed by pirates or
Marina (06:18):
Weird, weird little silver lining of imperialism.
Jeremiah (06:22):
Yeah.
Anyway, my point is people gotaround back then and so As you
probably imagine, uh, if youwent to the docks in ancient
Rome, you would hear all kindsof languages.
Whether it was Gaulish, orAmharic, or Punic, or, uh,
Hebrew, or obviously Latin, orGreek.
A lot of Greek, probably.
(06:43):
Iberian.
Just a lot of them.
Especially since, because theidea of nations.
of people who all had, like, awhole lot of stuff in common
wasn't as clear back thenbecause there just wasn't a high
enough level of economicdevelopment to really, like, tie
a lot of people together.
The idea of different languagesversus different dialects was
probably a lot fuzzier.
(07:03):
if you were in even just Italy,there were a bunch of languages
that were spoken in Italy thatweren't necessarily mutually
intelligible because there was alot more distance between people
back then.
Marina (07:11):
hmm.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
Jeremiah (07:12):
Yeah, so the idea of like, oh, I'm a Roman and I
speak Latin, but I'm gonna learnGaulish and that way I'll be
able to talk to everybody inGaul.
No way Jose You know, it's it'sgonna be a lot more complicated
than that
Marina (07:24):
So based on what you just said, that probably means
that being multilingual ispretty common in the ancient
world.
Is that right?
Jeremiah (07:31):
Yeah, definitely.
Just, you know, for a lot ofreasons.
Um, if you were just a regularaverage everyday person, or a
merchant, or whatever, it wouldhelp to not even necessarily
like know several differentlanguages.
Like, I know.
And I know Iberian and I knowGaulish and I know Latin.
Probably it was more of aquestion of like, I am good at
communicating with peoplebecause I've developed skills to
(07:55):
like quickly learn the rudimentsof the language of whatever
place I'm in for the purpose ofwhatever job I'm doing there,
whether I'm a mercenary orwhether I'm a trader or what
have you.
So there's that.
But you know, it's hard to findYou know, conclusive evidence
for what exactly that was like.
That's kind of more of aneducated guess, but I can say
that in the upper classes it'sdefinitely a proven fact that
(08:17):
being multilingual was commonfor them as well, but it looked
different, right?
They weren't necessarilylearning like Gaulish because if
you are a, uh, a Roman noble whonever leaves the city, except
when it's really hot and you goup to your Villa, uh, In the, in
the hills where it's cooler.
you don't need to know Gaulish.
What you are gonna know isGreek.
Uh, Cicero, Caesar, the firstemperor of Rome, Augustus, they
(08:41):
all spoke Greek.
It was very, very, very commonfor Roman nobles to speak Greek.
Funnily enough, part of it wasbecause they considered Latin to
be like, you know, not as goodof a language as Greek.
Like, Greek was like, if youspoke Greek, then you, um, you
were like more erudite than,than, than the rabble who only
(09:02):
speak Latin.
Latin was kind of like a regulareveryday language, but Greek was
like more of a language ofpoetry and more of a language of
art and stuff.
Marina (09:10):
If you knew Greek, that meant that you would use words
like erudite in casualconversation.
Jeremiah (09:15):
That's right.
I don't know Greek, but Latinnow is what Greek was then.
Marina (09:20):
Could've fooled me.
you mentioned that, people kindof acquired languages a little
more haphazardly than maybe,maybe that's not the right word,
than we do now.
Jeremiah (09:30):
Yeah, because first of all, they didn't have Duolingo.
They didn't really have youknow, normal people who, who
didn't like go to school, didn'thave, usually, like, really
structured language learningresources available.
They just had other people.
And maybe, if they could read,which maybe they could, maybe
they couldn't, you know, maybebooks or something, which we'll
get to.
Marina (09:49):
So, there aren't any ruins in Ancient Rome of, like,
community colleges or languageschools or anything like that?
Jeremiah (09:58):
No.
Okay.
But I will, I mean, I will talkabout in a second how there was
language teaching, but it wasprobably, you know, especially
for more upper class people.
all that said, speakers of theseother languages, whether it was
Oscan or Etruscan or Gaulish orAramaic or Egyptian or Phrygian,
you know, most of them whointeracted with Romans or Greeks
(10:20):
on a regular basis probably knewLatin and Greek just because you
kind of had to.
That said, there were no apps,there were no computers, there
were no recordings, right?
So the only way to hear howsomething was supposed to be
said was to talk to somebody whospoke the language and not even
printed books.
If, uh, if you wanted a book.
about the language that you'retrying to learn, which there
(10:41):
probably weren't really languagetextbooks.
It was more that people justkind of like got a book in that
language and studied it.
but if you wanted one, you wouldhave to copy it or get somebody
else to copy it.
But yeah, just to reiteratebefore we move forward, um,
everything that follows aboutthe ancient period is based on
textual evidence, so stuff thatpeople wrote down, and that's
(11:01):
for the simple reason that backthen, like I said, there was no
recording technology, so theonly way to know things about
ancient language is throughwritten texts, and also to a
lesser extent by comparinglanguages that still exist today
to learn about how the languagewas back then, but when it comes
to actually learning about howpeople learned the language,
really written texts is allthere is.
And since the working classeshad much lower literacy than the
(11:24):
ruling classes, And since it'sthe ones with the power,
obviously, who write the historybooks, most of what we know
about the ancient world is notonly disproportionately about
the rich and the powerful, butalso portrays them in a
disproportionately favorablelight.
So, Cicero, Caesar, Augustus,like I said, they were all
members of the nobility.
So that brings us to thequestion of how actually did
(11:45):
people learn other languages?
And when I say people, in thiscase, like I said, I mean
primarily the nobility who hadthe time and the resources and
the funds to actually geteducation in another language
and not just learning Greekhaphazardly by hanging out in
the market.
Supposedly, from what I read,learners often started by
(12:08):
reading, weirdly enough.
I mean, literacy, particularlyamong the nobility, was pretty
high back then.
So reading, memorizing, andreciting little stories and
dialogues out of, you know,these little books.
And from their readings andtheir recitations and all that,
they got basic vocabulary andgrammar just in context.
(12:30):
And these texts that they got,which, like I said, were
probably copied from othertexts.
They were, for one thing, that'sinteresting, coherent.
They were coherent texts, um,not isolated sentences like on
Duolingo.
So you can picture a little bookand it's got a story in it.
It's a simple story and you canstill find books like this
today.
Like this is a pretty commonlanguage learning method.
(12:51):
There's a little book with twocolumns.
The text on the left was thelanguage that you know, and the
text on the right was thelanguage you're learning, like
Greek.
And then it's just two copies ofthe same story.
One in Latin, one in Greek, andyou speak Latin.
And so you can be like, Oh, Iknow Latin.
It says this here.
And then look over at the Greekcolumn and be like, Oh, this in
(13:11):
Greek means this in Latin.
And you just, part of it is youjust kind of brute force it.
Marina (13:16):
And just just hold on and, and pray That's right.
You figure out what the textmeans.
Jeremiah (13:22):
Yeah.
And you know, you had, you alsohad a tutor, like if you were
Roman nobility and you werelearning Greek probably as, as,
as a teenager or a kid, you hadyour Greek tutor and they would
explain things and all that.
topics for these, for thesetexts included simple stuff that
you still see today, likegetting dressed in the morning,
(13:42):
going to school, visiting a sickfriend, getting a job.
Marina (13:45):
That's kind of interesting.
Those are highly, relevantsituations that they would be
able to apply immediately intheir daily life.
So that's pretty cool.
That's something that we dostill today.
Jeremiah (13:55):
Yeah.
And hey, there's one of thosethings that I mentioned about
Knowing about how people learnedlanguages in the past kind of
gives you some hints about what,what is fundamental language
learning stuff that is stillimportant today.
Basically, what we're looking athere is the translation method,
which has persisted forthousands of years since then,
(14:16):
and still is around today.
It is unpopular today.
in most language learningcontexts except funnily enough
for learning ancient or deadlanguages like Latin and Old
Norse.
And a big part of the reason forthat is because most people
aren't speaking Latin and OldNorse nowadays.
(14:36):
You don't have to know them tospeak them or to, you know, talk
to The fishmonger about gettingyour fish for the weekend.
Marina (14:43):
Yeah, that's how I learned Latin.
Was the, the, the translationmethod.
We had a book that was verysimilar to what you were just
describing.
Where I should actually know, itdidn't have any English in it,
it was just Latin.
And you were supposed to Youlearn the vocabulary at the
beginning and then you read thepassage and you're supposed to
kind of figure it out.
Jeremiah (15:00):
Exactly.
And yeah, the reason for that isbecause, you know, people aren't
really producing new stuff inLatin that much anymore.
You're mostly reading oldauthors and you learn Latin so
that you can read those becauseit's, it's just cool read it how
it was intended to be read inthe original language.
Makes it easier to appreciatethe jokes, for one thing.
Marina (15:20):
Mm, yeah, all the text that we would read in Latin was
usually, like, about ancientRome.
it was a story that takes placein ancient Rome, or it was an
actual, like, text that waswritten back then and we were
translating.
although my Latin teacher, wouldsometimes write his own little
passages and sentences in Latinabout modern things.
(15:41):
So like one time he gave us anassignment where it was like a
passage explaining the plot ofStar Wars.
Jeremiah (15:47):
Cute.
Marina (15:48):
And didn't tell us it was about Star Wars and we just
had to like, see how it unfoldedand realize that it was about
Star Wars.
Jeremiah (15:55):
Oh, that's fun.
Wait, this makes me want to getout my Latin textbook and read
an example.
I just want to read some Latin,wait.
Okay.
For those of you listening in, Iwent and got my copy of
Wheelock's Latin.
And the reason I did that isbecause it really does use the
translation method a lot.
That's really what it's about.
(16:15):
In the beginning it teaches youabout the grammar and then, bam,
you're into the, uh, you get avocab you get a vocab list, and
then you get some stuff to read.
And it's in it's in Latin.
And they don't give you theEnglish translations, you just
have to figure it out.
Here's one[Jeremiah reads apassage in Latin out loud]
Marina (16:38):
NERRRRRRD.
Jeremiah (16:41):
You're calling Cicero a nerd.
He wrote that.
Marina (16:43):
Uh, yeah.
Jeremiah (16:45):
and, and here's the funny thing.
I don't actually know what thissays because first of all, it's
been a while.
And second of all, thetranslation method, um, is not
actually the best.
Marina (16:55):
Don't tell my Latin teacher that.
Yeah.
Sorry, Okay.
So, so right.
So you just read Latin out loud,you know, with like the correct
pronunciation and everything,but that's not something that,
you know, It's really part ofthe translation method because
you're just working with writtentext.
You're, and you're justtranslating.
And so there's really nospeaking or listening involved.
(17:17):
So, how do people learn how to,like, speak?
And especially for people whomaybe didn't know how to read
and didn't have access to thetranslation method.
Jeremiah (17:28):
True that.
Well, first of all, if they'renot doing pronunciation, then
let me guess, people in yourclass probably read it like
this.
Uh,[Jeremiah reads anotherpassage in Latin with a
ridiculous American accent], Ohwait, I slipped into actually
pronouncing it correctly for asecond there.
(17:50):
Fiantibi Fidelis.
Is that about right?
Marina (17:54):
Okay.
Do not call me out like thatever again.
We knew that the V's werepronounced like W's.
Like, we knew that.
We weren't that out of touch.
Jeremiah (18:04):
Okay, that's good.
Marina (18:06):
But yeah.
That's, that's kind of what mostof my Latin class sounded like.
Jeremiah (18:11):
But you asked about speaking and what about people
who couldn't read.
And unfortunately, it's justhard to tell ancient
descriptions of language classesdon't really mention
conversation exercises.
I guess they weren't seen asbeing super important.
Probably because if you weretaking one of these classes and
you were a member of thenobility Then you were probably
learning Greek not so that youcould talk to actual Greeks and
(18:34):
have a conversation like a realperson But instead you were just
learning it so that you couldlike sit around and be a nerd
and read poetry however,presumably most people who
learned a language In real life,you know, not just the nobility
people had to learn languagesThey probably learned a language
so they could speak it, not justto recite poetry.
But of course, most of what weknow about ancient language
(18:55):
learners is about the nobilityand they were learning it to
recite poetry.
So it kind of skews the data.
It's possible that for peoplewho are deliberately learning a
language so that they can speakit with other speakers, classes
were immersive and taughtentirely in the target language
and that's assuming they tookclasses, you know, if they were
just kind of figuring it out.
And they were a motivatedlearner, but really all they had
(19:17):
to go off of was theirconversations with other
speakers who were certainly nottrained pedagogues.
it was probably a lot ofimmersion and a lot of trial and
error.
For learners who couldn't reador didn't study in a class
setting, yeah, they probablylearned mostly through practice.
Like we've talked about before,that means solving social
problems using whatever languageresources they had acquired.
(19:39):
And there's some important stuffthere.
Solving social problems, that's,you know, what practice is in a
language context, using thelanguage resources you have
access to.
It's not so much a matter of, Iknow the language, and now I can
talk to anybody about anything.
That's not even how it isnowadays.
In a realistic context, itreally is about learning the
(20:00):
language.
You kind of make your own toolsand then you try to do stuff
with them and you fail a certainpercentage and then you learn
from that.
I will say this though.
It is likely that learners ofprestigious languages like Latin
and Greek.
who themselves were not Romansor Greeks, but were, you know,
(20:20):
Gauls or Carthaginians orSyrians or whatever, it is
likely that they made a lot oferrors because they're literally
doing trial and error and hadspeech that was strongly
accented with the phonology oftheir first language, what
people nowadays would call athick accent.
And there is evidence, actualtextual evidence that these
people were looked down on andseen as stupid, sadly.
Marina (20:43):
Not much has changed.
Jeremiah (20:44):
Not much has changed.
Unfortunately, people are stilltreated that way.
Anyway, for example, there's aRoman play called Poenulus by
Plautus, or I think that's howyou say it in English.
In Latin, it's Plautus.
And in it, the main characteractually is a Carthaginian
character.
And just for context, Carthagewas like another really big
(21:05):
city, in the Mediterraneanduring the earlier Roman
Republic.
And they were Uh, public enemynumber one for the Romans, and
so if you were a Carthaginianalready, you probably had a
harder time getting along withRomans anyway.
But the main character in thisplay is a Carthaginian, and he
has a, you know, a pretty lowlevel of Latin proficiency it
seems like, and he also justspeaks Punic a lot, that's the
(21:29):
Carthaginian language.
He speaks Punic a lot in theplay.
Which also interestingly is, uh,one of the rare sources in the,
in Latin writing that has Puniclanguage in it.
Because we really don't knowthat much about the Punic
language.
But his speech is mocked by theother characters and it's kind
of a big joke the entire play.
Marina (21:51):
That's so interesting.
was the Punic language not, didit not have a writing system?
Jeremiah (21:56):
That's a good question.
I think, I mean, no, I think itdid because Punic is a Semitic
language.
and I think it comes fromPhoenician.
Marina (22:05):
Oh, oh.
Jeremiah (22:06):
Because the Carthaginians were Phoenician
settlers and the Phoenicianscame from the Levant.
and that is actually where thealphabet that we use, the Latin
alphabet, but also the Greekalphabet, the uh, Cyrillic
alphabet.
All of those come from thePhoenician alphabet,
Marina (22:24):
Okay, so that was a great overview of, like, ancient
Europe and how they kind of wentabout learning languages,
especially in the Roman empireSo, let's move forward a little
bit in time.
Jeremiah (22:36):
A little bit, yeah.
Marina (22:37):
Um, a lot in time.
Um, and so how, you know, pastthe Middle Ages and past that
kind of era, how, how did, howdid, at what point did things
kind of take a turn?
Jeremiah (22:53):
Yeah, I mean, I think a theme that will start to
present itself is that the waythat people learn languages is
highly, highly influenced bytheir material conditions and
the material conditions ofwhatever is happening in their
society at the time.
And one of the biggest seachanges in material conditions,
particularly for Europe, butalso all of Europe's unfortunate
(23:15):
victims, was It's the periodwhere colonization and
colonialism started to come ontothe world stage.
And a big, not necessarily astarting point for that, but a
pretty huge turning point was1492 when Christopher Columbus
sailed the ocean blue.
He came to the Americas, eventhough he never admitted that
(23:38):
that's what he did, he always,he maintained to his deathbed
that he had actually found Asia.
So he was a much better sailorthan he was a cartographer, I
guess.
But when he came to the Americasand he met the indigenous
people, a lot of communicationwas accomplished, quote unquote,
through gestures.
And I say, quote unquote,accomplished because that guy
(23:59):
also inferred a lot fromgestures, because of course, of
course you were going to likegestures.
aren't a language and everyculture has a different kind of
gestural repertoire and what agesture means in one language
will be different from that samegesture in another language.
But basically he justconveniently interpreted the
gestures of the indigenouspeople in whatever way was most
(24:22):
favorable to him.
So he was like, look, they'regesturing.
That means that they think we'regods and they want to be our
slaves.
I mean, if you insist, uh, sure.
And if you say so, I don't know.
And obviously they probablyweren't saying that, but like I
said, the basic problem withthat is that different cultures
have different gesturalassociations.
(24:43):
So for example, pinching yournose in one culture, like in our
culture, if you pinch your nose,it means you think something is
stinky, but it might meansomething totally different in
another culture.
Maybe if you pinch your nose in,you know, I don't know, rural
Austria, it'll be taken as a,Flirtatious, or dare I say rude,
(25:07):
gesture.
Yeah.
So, it should go without saying,haha, double entendre, it should
go without saying.
Marina (25:15):
Oof.
Gestures
Jeremiah (25:16):
alone really aren't enough to get by on and have an
intelligible conversation.
But, you couldn't have told, uh,you couldn't have told Chris
Colon that because he, he was abad guy.
Anyway.
where gestures failed and where,the colonizers were just like,
you know what, we, to someextent, need to be able to talk
(25:38):
to these people so that we canask them where their gold is.
Um, we need people who speak theindigenous languages, but I'm
not going to learn it and youknow, my boys aren't going to
learn it.
So why don't we, uh, take one ofthem and kidnap them and take
them back to Spain or somethingso that we can force them to
learn Spanish and then we canuse them as an interpreter.
(25:59):
And that's exactly what theydid.
Columbus didn't really come upwith that, obviously.
He actually took a page from thePortuguese.
They would, uh, before this,they would take West Africans
captive and force them to learnPortuguese in Lisbon so that
they could then be used asinterpreters.
And this actually remained apretty common practice for
centuries after Columbus, quoteunquote, discovered the
Americas.
Marina (26:19):
Yeah.
Pretty, uh, pretty terriblething on top of the already
large pile of terrible thingsthat he and other colonizers of
this time did.
Jeremiah (26:28):
I know, it's like he was just coming up with awful
stuff to do.
Like, eh, anyway.
Marina (26:32):
Uh, if you want to learn more about this chapter of
history, I would recommend thebook On Savage Shores.
excellent book that talks aboutthis exact thing.
Jeremiah (26:41):
Right on.
Yeah, good Rick.
Marina (26:43):
Okay, so, that was awful.
Jeremiah (26:45):
Yeah, and for the sake of time, let's jump ahead a
little bit again.
Marina (26:49):
So, what happened kind of after that period, getting
into like, the colonial period,I guess.
18th, 19th century?
Jeremiah (27:00):
Yeah, for sure.
So, definitely worth notingthat, It was kind of an early
colonial period when the worldwas still being quote unquote,
discovered.
And it was really just a periodof primitive accumulation where,
you go around with your boys andyour, your muskets and you just
take stuff.
Um, and going around and takingstuff is great for European
(27:23):
industry, which is a big part ofwhy Europe was able to advance
economically to the point thatit eventually did.
But past a certain point,there's just no more world to
gobble up.
And that's the point where, youknow, good old fashioned
colonialism doesn't really cutit anymore.
And I talked about this in thelast episode, I think, but you
get into a period of imperialismwhere you just leech off of your
(27:46):
territorial holdings.
But, returning to Europe.
Oh, I will say before the 18thgoing back to language learning,
the ma, uh, the main languagethat was taught in schools
before the 18th century was,hey, our old friend Latin,
that's also where we get theterm grammar school, because
what was taught was Latingrammar.
(28:08):
And the reason for that isbecause from the medieval era to
the 18th century, Latin was thelanguage of education, it was
the language of science, it wasthe language of academia, and
here comes our friend classagain.
If you were a part of the classof people who got to go to
school, then that's the languageyou learned.
But in the 18th century, modernlanguages like French started to
(28:31):
be taught using the same methodsas Latin had been taught, which,
I think we know what they are.
Grammar drills and translationare favorite.
Finally, in the 19th andespecially the 20th centuries,
this is where it starts to getinteresting.
Finally, new methods of languageteaching start to emerge.
First of all, you have likelanguage.
(28:51):
teaching and not just Latin.
Very exciting.
Marina (28:55):
Teaching of modern languages.
Jeremiah (28:56):
Teaching of modern languages, which is becoming
more and more necessary,especially, and this is, this is
where we'll get to our finaltopic for the day.
Um, a very interesting exampleof one of the new methods that
exploded onto the scene in the20th century was a new method
called the audio lingual method.
Marina (29:18):
Famously awful, but also very revolutionary in the
language learning world.
Jeremiah (29:24):
Yeah, for real.
And I almost have a little bitof a soft spot for it just
because for the very few peoplethat it worked for, it worked
really well.
Marina (29:31):
Sure.
Jeremiah (29:33):
So I'll give a little history again.
When the U.
S.
entered World War II, there wasa recognized need for
translators and for interpreterswho could be quote unquote
fluent in the language.
in German, French, Italian,Chinese, Japanese, Malay, and
other languages.
It was a world war, folks.
I mean, come on.
So the U.
S.
government commissioneduniversities, like 50 of them,
(29:55):
to develop programs toaccomplish this because the
grammar translation method wouldnot cut it.
And the result was the ArmySpecialized Training Program.
And if you can think of a moregeneric name for it than that,
uh, I dare you.
Marina (30:11):
Yeah, it doesn't even have the word language in it.
Jeremiah (30:14):
Specialized.
Marina (30:15):
What's it training for?
It's specialized.
Specialized training for what?
Jeremiah (30:20):
So, the way that they did it in this program was
pretty interesting.
It wasn't just a student and ateacher, it was actually a
student, a native speaker whowasn't necessarily a teacher,
and a linguist.
A
Marina (30:33):
linguist?
Jeremiah (30:34):
A linguist.
A student, a native speaker, anda linguist walk into a bar,
okay, and they would studytogether.
The linguist, first of all,doesn't have to know the
language that's being taught.
So it's a student, a linguist,and a native speaker.
The native speaker knows thelanguage.
The linguist knows linguistics.
Marina (30:54):
What purpose do they serve?
Jeremiah (30:56):
I'll tell you.
It's actually reallyinteresting.
And then the student, obviously,their purpose is to ideally
learn the language.
Mm hmm.
So, the native speaker's role isto just provide phrases and
conversation practice.
You know, they don't actuallyknow necessarily, like, on a
linguistic level, how theirlanguage works, and they
certainly wouldn't necessarilyknow how to teach it.
(31:17):
And that's what the linguist isthere for.
The linguist is there even ifthey don't know the language in
question because they're alinguist they can like pick up
on kind of the structural aspectof it fairly early on and
provide structure and contextand other juicy things for the
learner to structure theexperience.
(31:37):
And you might be thinking, well,that doesn't really sound like a
method.
That just sounds like throwingthree people into a bag, shaking
it up and seeing what comes out.
And you're right.
But in classic, uh, us armyfashion, you don't need a method
as long as you have intensityand drills.
Exactly.
And that's exactly what it was.
Um, so they would study for 10hours a day, six, six days a
(32:01):
week.
for several weeks at a time.
I think two sessions of like sixweeks.
And yeah, obviously the methoditself wasn't all that
scientifically sound, certainlynot scientifically revolutionary
but the intensity combined with,first of all, the students were
highly motivated.
I think they were probably selfselected.
So as far as students and timecommitment, it was really a
(32:23):
sweetheart deal because of thosethings.
the students who actually didit, it produced really strong
results for them.
Like they actually got reallygood.
Marina (32:32):
I bet it did.
Jeremiah (32:33):
Exactly.
10 hours
Marina (32:34):
a day.
If you're on
Jeremiah (32:35):
Duolingo 10 hours a day, dude, you're going to be
flying high.
You're going to be off thecharts.
Marina (32:39):
You should use that as a torture method.
Using it for training?
No.
Jeremiah (32:45):
I know.
I mean, then again, if I was inWorld War II, I think that's
probably what I would want todo.
Yeah.
I wouldn't want to be stormingthe beaches or flying the planes
or anything.
Marina (32:55):
That's true.
Like, if you got drafted, thiswould be an ideal situation.
And then just be an interpreter.
Jeremiah (33:00):
Yeah, literally, because just, I think, yeah, I
think it'd be cool.
And, you know, once you put inlike 2, 000 hours, you get
pretty good at it.
Marina (33:08):
Yeah.
Jeremiah (33:09):
The important thing here, this, this thing by itself
isn't necessarily, this isn'tthe audiolingual method, by the
way.
This is the, this is what laidthe groundwork for the
audiolingual method,particularly the emphasis on
oral practice and also just thedrilling, the drills, drill,
drill, drill.
audiolingual method was, I mean,it derived from this, and it was
(33:31):
a dramatic break from thecenturies of language learning
that came before, Because, untilWorld War II and the sea change
in language teaching in the U.
S.
after World War 1950s, reading,writing, translation, these were
the basis of most languageteaching.
Whether it was, you know, Latin,way back in the day, or even
(33:52):
modern languages in the afterthose got reintroduced.
It was, it was, it was readingand it was grammar and it was
writing, but the audio lingualmethod just straight up flipped
that, flipped it right on itshead and focused on listening
and speaking, not on reading andwriting, mainly through
intensive drills and an emphasison structure.
Marina (34:11):
I mean, that makes sense because in the war, that was
their priority was speaking andlistening, intercepting messages
and stuff like that.
Reading and writing probablyweren't as huge of a deal.
Jeremiah (34:21):
Exactly.
Exactly.
And.
That gets at, again, how the,the, the ways in which language
teaching and language learningevolve over time really have a
lot to do with materially what'sgoing on, like what's the
purpose, what is the contextthat the learner is in, you
know, the, the methods kind ofchange to suit the times.
(34:42):
So drills and repetition thatreally is audio lingualism in a
nutshell.
It's a lot of the teacher sayinga sentence at you, even if you
have no idea what it means, andyou just say it back, and you
try to say it exactly right,again and again and again.
And then they throw in someother stuff.
Like they say a sentence, like,for example, if you're learning
English, they say like, hethrows the ball and then you
(35:06):
repeat, but you say, she throwsthe ball.
So making like slight variationsto just see what's possible in
terms of changing things, butyou still don't know what it
means.
Really just brute forcing,learning the language to speak
it in the most brute force wayyou possibly could.
Marina (35:23):
Mm Sounds awful.
Jeremiah (35:25):
It does sound awful,
Marina (35:26):
but if it works Like some for some people it works.
It works.
I wouldn't want to learn thatway.
Jeremiah (35:31):
No exactly Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from
that is the shift in focus tospeaking and listening, which is
funny because that's the onething that language, aside from
sign languages, has all, havealways had in common is the
speaking and the listening.
So I don't know why people havebeen so focused on reading and
writing.
I mean, I do know why I justexplained why, but still.
Marina (35:54):
It also kind of sounds like the audio lingual method
was kind of had something to dowith like behaviorism and
conditioning.
Jeremiah (36:03):
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
It, uh, it was based onbehaviorism because that was
really the pop psychology theoryat the time.
It was popular.
It was popular.
Thank you, B.
F.
Skinner.
Mm hmm.
Remember those guys?
The
Marina (36:15):
Pigeons.
The Pigeons.
Yeah.
They thought they could teachpigeons how to learn languages.
Jeremiah (36:22):
Oh yeah, they did! Wait, tell me, say that, I
don't, I only remember the, the,that, what you just said.
What was the deal with that?
Marina (36:29):
I forget the details, but they thought that they could
create, like, they couldcondition associations between,
like, words that are writtendown on a piece of and, they
would have a pigeon select thecorrect word or something like
that and they would get food asa as a reward and they thought
oh this pigeon's learning how toread no the pigeon's not
(36:52):
learning how to read they'rejust responding to stimuli like
any animal would
Jeremiah (36:55):
exactly and they assumed that humans worked that
way and so it didn't matter ifyou understood the language that
you were producing all thatmattered was that you were
producing it because language intheir eyes was a behavior not an
internal thing.
It was, yeah, it was a behaviorthat you could learn through
repetition and over time youwould just do it.
Marina (37:19):
But we've moved past that as a society.
Yeah,
Jeremiah (37:23):
for the most part, but you know, we, we could, and
there are a lot of other weird,wacky methods.
I wanted to talk about audiolingualism because it was really
kind of one of the firstgroundbreakers and.
really marked year one for notjust doing grammar translation
forever and ever.
(37:44):
It was really, um, the start ofa Cambrian explosion of
different methods and even postmethods.
I won't tell you what thatmeans, I'll tell you next
season.
we could talk for hours aboutthe different language teaching
methods that gained popularityin the 20th century, but I think
we should end it with audiolingualism because at least in
(38:07):
the U S it's a key point.
Like I said, where languagelearning shifted away from the
grammar translation method thatreally had dominated for
centuries, millennia, even.
And.
Away from that and towards theincredibly diverse terrain of
language learning methods thatwe know today because there are
still a lot Everybody is like mymethod that I invented is the
(38:28):
best because I sprinkled in alittle Little this and a little
that and it's made with love
Marina (38:34):
so We've been through, you know, a pretty good chunk of
human history.
At least mostly European andAmerican history.
Jeremiah (38:42):
Yeah, sorry about that.
Yeah.
Marina (38:45):
but, what are some of the big takeaways that modern
language learners can learn fromthe past?
Jeremiah (38:54):
Yeah, I think, uh, the big takeaway for me is that
Which I think people, you know,listeners will find is usually
my takeaway is that how peoplelearned language in the past had
a lot to do with the materialconditions of the society.
The learning was embedded in.
and also the material conditionsof the learners themselves.
So let's like really quickly inreview talk about what those
(39:16):
conditions were in the ancientperiod.
What we know about ancientlanguage learners is mostly
about members of the rulingclass.
We talked about why they weren'tlearning Syrian or Gaulish
because they had no desire orneed to.
And instead, what they werelearning was Greek and they did
it so that they could read andrecite poetry.
(39:37):
Right.
That speaks to really the class,character of the people who
were, who were learning Greek inthat way, what their priorities
were and what they didn't haveto worry about.
You know, they didn't have toworry about needing to know
Greek so that they could surviveand work and put food on the
table because they had slaves todo that.
(39:57):
And so they had time and energyto devote to reading and
reciting poetry.
In the early modern period,Latin was and had been the
science, uh, the language ofscience and education because it
helped to draw a clear line ofdemarcation between the haves
and the have nots.
Again, class.
when English, French, and thoseother, vulgar quote unquote
(40:19):
languages, when those werebrought into the, these spaces.
There was pushback, because itmade the commanding heights of
society and culture moreaccessible to regular people,
and the people who were in thosecommanding heights did not like
that, right?
The ruling classes again.
In the colonies, languagelearning had a much more
utilitarian aspect, becauselanguage in that context was
(40:41):
just one tool among many forgetting the better of indigenous
people to more easily displaceand exploit them.
Get to the 20th century, all ofthis highfalutin language stuff
of centuries past, you know, thereciting the poetry and the
science and whatever that wentout the window to some extent
when it came up against thesheer necessity of putting
(41:03):
bodies in the field in World WarII, having soldiers, whatever
their class background, but youknow, obviously mostly workers,
having them know the locallanguages, gave the U.
S.
military an edge in reallyeverything.
It just helps to know the locallanguage.
Give them an edge in things likereconnaissance, to maintaining
order in occupied territories,to even like interrogation,
(41:25):
right?
It wasn't all butterflies.
As for the present, that I thinkraises the question, what is the
material basis for languagelearning today?
Maybe that's another episode.
Marina (41:36):
I love a good open question to end the season on.
Jeremiah (41:38):
Yeah, something to think about while, you're
driving to work in silencebecause you don't have our
podcast to listen to for a fewweeks.
Marina (41:52):
Thank you for listening to this episode of How to
Language, where we talked abouthow people learned languages in
the past.
This is our season finale, butwe will be back in summer of
2024 with a whole new slate ofnew episodes.
to keep in the loop on updatesand when the new season will be
released, you can follow us onInstagram and X at HowToLang.
Jeremiah (42:16):
See you next time.
Marina (42:17):
We'll see you later.
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