Cultural Extinctions or Digital Revival: The Future of Language Learning
Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Archive, has issued a stark warning: “Of the 7,000 languages estimated to exist, half will have disappeared by the end of this century.” [1] I imagine this prediction of impending cultural extinctions will attract a certain amount of elite attention and concern but will otherwise pass largely unnoticed by the wider world.
For as long as I can remember, I have had an unrequited love affair with languages. There is no language that I would not like to learn at least a little of, but there is equally no language—apart from English itself—in which I have managed to achieve anything like fluency, despite efforts which continue to this day.
I owe something of my linguistic curiosity to my mother. When, during the late 1950s, we would take our family caravan on the long trek to the West of Ireland for a fortnight’s holiday in the month of August, one of the most stirring things we would encounter was the sound of native Irish speakers going about their business. We didn’t understand what was being said, but the sound of another language being spoken was beguiling.
Though we were Protestants, there was some evidence of Irish scholarship on my mother’s side of the family. These “scholars,” always spoken of with reverence had, as I understood it, attended Trinity College in Dublin and studied Irish language and literature to an advanced level. It seems probable that this family interest in Irish studies was at least in part due to the fact that my mother’s great grandfather, Peter Foley, born 1831, had been a native Irish speaker who had converted to the protestant faith at the time of the Irish famine.
Irish was not taught in Newry High School when I attended or, to the best of my knowledge, in any of the state schools of Northern Ireland at that time, but my parents, I have no doubt, would have approved if we had been offered the chance to learn. In the absence of Irish, I struggled for two years with Latin and took French to O-level. My accent was not bad, I was told, but that was the limit of my talent. My mother provided a significant advantage in my studies by acquiring a vinyl-record-based language course, Asimil — an early and progressive approach to the learning of a new language which involved listening to native French speakers and repeating what they said. A few phrases stuck with me from Asimil, most notably, “Que pensez vous de la situation politique?” I managed to weave this and a few other memorable and easily deployed phrases into my responses in French examination and earned a grade three at O-level for my troubles; but that was the pinnacle of my achievement and clearly I was never going to be a scholar in French or any other language.
In the anglophone world, there is little incentive to learn languages for the purpose of getting by in another country. As I have said in public on at least one occasion – sung, to be accurate –
Money talks in English
On foreign soil you’ll find your way
For every corner trader
Speaks the language of the USA.
For most purposes English has become the international language that Esperanto once aspired to be. Casualties of this dominance—languages like Irish, Welsh, and Scots Gaelic, which were aggressively and systematically marginalised—have only in recent times established recognition of their cultural worth. They have established the necessary respect to acquire resources for a revival of sorts, but in many cases, this re-evaluation has arrived too late.
But what is wrong with having a single shared language through which we can all communicate? The practical advantages are obvious.
The irony is that, so far as English speakers are concerned, English as a bridge language works best for non-native-English speakers. Some become very fluent, and that’s not necessarily by speaking with native English speakers. It is more difficult, however, for native English speakers to learn other languages, because so many people want to practice and improve their own English and do not have the patience to work with someone who is stumbling to get by in French, German, Spanish, or Italian.The understandable consequence is that most native English speakers who go abroad simply don’t think it’s worth the effort to learn even a few words of the local lingo. Why bother?
Language learning rumbles on in school as it has always done, better taught now, I am sure, than when I was a pupil. But in schools foreign language learning remains the pursuit of the gifted or those with the knack for languages. The great majority fall by the wayside and never feel the deficit when they go on package holidays to Greece and Spain and Turkey.
This gloomy picture, however, does not tell the full story. Language learning is enjoying something of a renaissance. A 2024 study from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, offers evidence that “With the rise of digital audio platforms, podcasts have emerged as a significant medium for acquiring knowledge outside formal educational settings.” [2] Unsurprisingly, this informal self-education includes language learning, with audio podcasts offering an excellent resource for the purpose.
The fact that so many language learning podcasts exist at all is powerful evidence that this is not just a passing fad. The Coffee Break franchise, for example, offers 10 different language courses including Scots Gaelic and Japanese. They claim to offer over 1500 different lessons, and this month alone have delivered these lessons to nearly 2million learners. [3]
But what about those 3500 languages which Mandana Seyfeddinipur suggests will have disappeared by the end of this century. Can language podcasts also be their saviour?
I imagine that in some cases the answer could be “yes,” though in other instances I would guess these marginalised languages exist in remote places and will not have access to the resources which have enabled Welsh and Irish and Scots Gaelic to make a comeback of some description. The great linguistic sharks will continue to cruise the cultural oceans and swallow up the endangered minnows.
In many spheres English continues to dominate, despite the importance of French and Spanish, but we all know that Chinese is the future. Yet, is all this testosterone-fuelled jostling to be the dominant international language really the only way forward? Esperanto has also established a place in the world of the podcast. Or, alternatively, you can learn the language in “five minutes a day” on Duolingo.
Esperanto was created in the 19th Century by Ludwig Zamenhof, and has survived long enough to establish its status as a serviceable tool of communication. It is designed to be easy to learn and is perfectly regular in its grammar. It is an excellent introduction to language learning for children. “[It] is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers of which there are an estimated 2,000. Usage estimates are difficult, but estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000.” [4] Its purpose has never been to replace other languages. Its potential to facilitate the continuing existence of marginalised languages remains untapped.
Endnotes
[1] Endangered languages and vanishing landscapes
[2] Podcasts and Informal Learning: Exploring Knowledge Acquisition and Retention
[3] Coffee Break Languages
[4] Wikipedia article on Esperanto
Title Image cropped from: Esperanto – alfabeto, by Eugenio Hansen, original open source image available here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esperanto_-_alfabeto_-pt.svg
Carruchan
Language Problems
Cultural Extinctions or Digital Revival: The Future of Language Learning
Mandana Seyfeddinipur, Director of the Endangered Languages Archive, has issued a stark warning: “Of the 7,000 languages estimated to exist, half will have disappeared by the end of this century.” [1] I imagine this prediction of impending cultural extinctions will attract a certain amount of elite attention and concern but will otherwise pass largely unnoticed by the wider world.
For as long as I can remember, I have had an unrequited love affair with languages. There is no language that I would not like to learn at least a little of, but there is equally no language—apart from English itself—in which I have managed to achieve anything like fluency, despite efforts which continue to this day.
I owe something of my linguistic curiosity to my mother. When, during the late 1950s, we would take our family caravan on the long trek to the West of Ireland for a fortnight’s holiday in the month of August, one of the most stirring things we would encounter was the sound of native Irish speakers going about their business. We didn’t understand what was being said, but the sound of another language being spoken was beguiling.
Though we were Protestants, there was some evidence of Irish scholarship on my mother’s side of the family. These “scholars,” always spoken of with reverence had, as I understood it, attended Trinity College in Dublin and studied Irish language and literature to an advanced level. It seems probable that this family interest in Irish studies was at least in part due to the fact that my mother’s great grandfather, Peter Foley, born 1831, had been a native Irish speaker who had converted to the protestant faith at the time of the Irish famine.
Irish was not taught in Newry High School when I attended or, to the best of my knowledge, in any of the state schools of Northern Ireland at that time, but my parents, I have no doubt, would have approved if we had been offered the chance to learn. In the absence of Irish, I struggled for two years with Latin and took French to O-level. My accent was not bad, I was told, but that was the limit of my talent. My mother provided a significant advantage in my studies by acquiring a vinyl-record-based language course, Asimil — an early and progressive approach to the learning of a new language which involved listening to native French speakers and repeating what they said. A few phrases stuck with me from Asimil, most notably, “Que pensez vous de la situation politique?” I managed to weave this and a few other memorable and easily deployed phrases into my responses in French examination and earned a grade three at O-level for my troubles; but that was the pinnacle of my achievement and clearly I was never going to be a scholar in French or any other language.
In the anglophone world, there is little incentive to learn languages for the purpose of getting by in another country. As I have said in public on at least one occasion – sung, to be accurate –
For most purposes English has become the international language that Esperanto once aspired to be. Casualties of this dominance—languages like Irish, Welsh, and Scots Gaelic, which were aggressively and systematically marginalised—have only in recent times established recognition of their cultural worth. They have established the necessary respect to acquire resources for a revival of sorts, but in many cases, this re-evaluation has arrived too late.
But what is wrong with having a single shared language through which we can all communicate? The practical advantages are obvious.
The irony is that, so far as English speakers are concerned, English as a bridge language works best for non-native-English speakers. Some become very fluent, and that’s not necessarily by speaking with native English speakers. It is more difficult, however, for native English speakers to learn other languages, because so many people want to practice and improve their own English and do not have the patience to work with someone who is stumbling to get by in French, German, Spanish, or Italian.The understandable consequence is that most native English speakers who go abroad simply don’t think it’s worth the effort to learn even a few words of the local lingo. Why bother?
Language learning rumbles on in school as it has always done, better taught now, I am sure, than when I was a pupil. But in schools foreign language learning remains the pursuit of the gifted or those with the knack for languages. The great majority fall by the wayside and never feel the deficit when they go on package holidays to Greece and Spain and Turkey.
This gloomy picture, however, does not tell the full story. Language learning is enjoying something of a renaissance. A 2024 study from the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, offers evidence that “With the rise of digital audio platforms, podcasts have emerged as a significant medium for acquiring knowledge outside formal educational settings.” [2] Unsurprisingly, this informal self-education includes language learning, with audio podcasts offering an excellent resource for the purpose.
The fact that so many language learning podcasts exist at all is powerful evidence that this is not just a passing fad. The Coffee Break franchise, for example, offers 10 different language courses including Scots Gaelic and Japanese. They claim to offer over 1500 different lessons, and this month alone have delivered these lessons to nearly 2million learners. [3]
But what about those 3500 languages which Mandana Seyfeddinipur suggests will have disappeared by the end of this century. Can language podcasts also be their saviour?
I imagine that in some cases the answer could be “yes,” though in other instances I would guess these marginalised languages exist in remote places and will not have access to the resources which have enabled Welsh and Irish and Scots Gaelic to make a comeback of some description. The great linguistic sharks will continue to cruise the cultural oceans and swallow up the endangered minnows.
In many spheres English continues to dominate, despite the importance of French and Spanish, but we all know that Chinese is the future. Yet, is all this testosterone-fuelled jostling to be the dominant international language really the only way forward? Esperanto has also established a place in the world of the podcast. Or, alternatively, you can learn the language in “five minutes a day” on Duolingo.
Esperanto was created in the 19th Century by Ludwig Zamenhof, and has survived long enough to establish its status as a serviceable tool of communication. It is designed to be easy to learn and is perfectly regular in its grammar. It is an excellent introduction to language learning for children. “[It] is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers of which there are an estimated 2,000. Usage estimates are difficult, but estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000.” [4] Its purpose has never been to replace other languages. Its potential to facilitate the continuing existence of marginalised languages remains untapped.
Endnotes
[1] Endangered languages and vanishing landscapes
[2] Podcasts and Informal Learning: Exploring Knowledge Acquisition and Retention
[3] Coffee Break Languages
[4] Wikipedia article on Esperanto
Title Image cropped from: Esperanto – alfabeto, by Eugenio Hansen, original open source image available here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Esperanto_-_alfabeto_-pt.svg
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About Stephen Shellard
I am a retired College lecturer, having worked originally in supported programmes but latterly having taught social science subjects, Psychology and Politics, though my degree was in Sociology. I am from Newry in Northern Ireland, but now live in Dumfries in South West Scotland. https://carruchan.wordpress.com/about/