H.I. #7: Sorry, Language Teachers

Grey and Brady discuss Pi Day, death by airplane and should foreign languages be required in school.

[DavidtheDemigod]

Hahahaha, that ending! I actually laughed out loud.

[WhatsAnOxfordComma]

Brady TOTALLY summed up my thoughts in response to Grey's thoughts about language. Particularly advocating for the empathy you gain with a community greater than your own when you learn another language. Very well spoken.

[NinjaPirateJedi]

Clicked on the CGP Grey in Brady's house link and immediately shouted "THAT'S FROM SPONGEBOB!!! THE SPONGEBOB BC EPISODE!!!" lololol

[slimyweasles]

"You've clarified me into greater anger!" lol

[petermcneely]

As a Latin Teacher, I can relate to all that you've said about curriculum problems in the UK and the US.  Both the fruitlessness of language teaching, and sciences.  Three ideas to add to the conversation.  (1) Latin teaching doesn't just open you to other cultures, but gives you a sense of other times and puts the modern world into some kind of chronological context in a way that history class rarely can.  (2) Languages don't translate.  I know that for most practical purposes they do, and I understand that computers may be able to do this all soon.  But, poetry is killed in translation, the art of language is "lost in translation".  Nothing has helped myself and my pupils to understand literature and the beauty of language than examining foreign literature. (3) The problem with both science and arts teaching may be trying to compromise with too much in the curriculum, and trying to only cover what's necessary.  If we doubled down, and required real fluency in at least one foreign language, or similarly required much more than rudimentary science exposure, we might be better off.  By doing this we would get past all the mechanical, learn-by-rote elements of any subject.    

[xnlwuxi]

I have been forced to learn English in school for eight years and am now able to listen to this podcast. It wasn't fun but it proved very useful. Despite this, most of the French I also had to learn wasn't that useful and is gone now.

[Purrfect_Werecat]

west coast is best coast sir, Perfectly Standard Time

[santosfuentes]

"I will edit this, out, this is... the editing out, song" So cute!

[tehpwnerer]

"the language of love?" - hilarious! XD
btw: learning english is very rewarding.
now i have access to quality podcasts like this.

[Canadian_Princess]

I'm currently learning Japanese so that I can teach English in Japan. I think that acquiring a second language is an invaluable skill if you're going to use it.

[chocorchid]

Proposing technology replace real world foreign language interaction is a rather first world and English-centric concept. In many countries outside of the US or UK and commonwealth nations, said technology is totally inaccessible. As a Russian immigrant to the US, as a French, Spanish, and ESL teacher, and as an avid traveler, there have been many moments where I haven't had the luxury of wi-fi/4G/electronic translating device to use as a crutch in daily experiences. Additionally, when you show others that you've made an effort to actually learn their language instead of merely relying on technology, you display a degree of respect and humility towards whomever you happen to be speaking with. In short, I entirely agree with Brady. 

[CouldBeMathijs]

When you live in Belgium and you had to learn Dutch, French, English and German in school.

[TheHydraccana]

The photo's from spongebob i think :P

[RachelMUssery]

What about moving the language learning to an earlier point in the school system so it comes during more formative years and is therefore more effective?

[MANU]

About 1:10:00, just want to point out that if your birth language isn't english, there is no longer just holidays and occasional moments when you will be required to speak another language fluently enough to get the amount of informations needed out of your pipe line to the other person. There is no easy answer to this (I think), but I am very grateful that I had to learn English it opened up so much opportunities to me. I would probably not be able to work in my field without that, so until we get to the star-trek translator, it is still a good and important thing to learn this stuff even it it is not in a school as we think of it, but certainly it is good business that people communicate efficiently.

[Kokorisu]

The issue of languages is not whether or not they're useful. They're made useful through how you're taught said language. I am Spanish, and speak English and German fluently, and I can babble in French enough to orient myself and survive alone in France.

Grey here trips over something I've seen him struggle with whenever languages are discussed on this show, and it's his anglocentrism. One can be very cynical and very comfortable in dismissing the teaching of languages when you are born into the current lingua franca of the world. I find it very hard to believe that if we lived in an alternate universe in which another language had risen to become the main international language, that he'd say the same.

Grey, your success is largely based on languages being relevant. The fact that the rest of us spend years of our lives learning English is what allows for your business to be an international one. It is what is internationalizing the world. That we are the ones making the effort for you shouldn't belittle it.

Also, you might be interested in reading of the benefits of bilingual learning for the development of the brain. That languages are taught wrong right now doesn't mean that the benefit of learning languages is actually a lot higher (even from a behavioral point of view) than say Physics ever will be. Being bilingual *actually* changes the way you think. Learning two languages actually helps your brain develop across the board, if done anywhere before the age of 7.

You might've missed your chance to do so, but that shouldn't make it the default right position. I feel like the U.S. as a whole would benefit greatly from say, teaching spanish as a native language from birth, being that it's very relevant to you, and will be in the future, for example. The problem is that your metrics always take into account learning languages as foreign ones, when the actual developmental advantage comes from learning them as native tongues.

[beempboomp]

I was fored into 5 years of French, and now I can still only pick out words in a coversation. I think if they taught practical French instead of endlessly conjugating verbs it've been useful.

[LilyBailey]

The image is from the Prehistoric Spongebob Squarepants Special! I've only seen it 7 million times... But hey, look, its coming in handy!

[donniedamato]

"I'm not the one who's gonna get the D" -CGPGrey

[rover]

Thanks for putting these on Youtube. This channel has ended up becoming my main form of notification for when the audio podcast has come out on iTunes.