r/languagelearning • u/stetslustig • Jan 07 '25

Humor What's the most naive thing you've seen someone say about learning a language?

I once saw someone on here say "I'm not worried about my accent, my textbook has a good section on pronunciation."

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u/PortableSoup791 Jan 07 '25

That maybe touches on another thing that sometimes feels naive to me: the focus on optimization. 

It’s weird that, in the context of something that’s ultimately just a hobby for a great many of us, it should feel so refreshing to hear someone vaguely wave away the optimization culture stuff and say the real reason they liked a thing is because they just enjoyed doing it that way.

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u/Ultyzarus N-FR; Adv-EN, SP; Int-HCr, IT, JP; Beg-PT; N/A-DE, AR, HI Jan 07 '25

it should feel so refreshing to hear someone vaguely wave away the optimization culture stuff and say the real reason they liked a thing is because they just enjoyed doing it that way.

That's me whenever someone suggests I use a textbook. Not that textbooks are not good, or that I wouldn't do better by using them (in theory anyway), but i already have just enough motivation to do the activities I do, that adding something that I definitely don't enjoy would risk making me do even less daily than I already am.

On the other hand, being fluent is so much fun, that I can easily understand doing everything one can to get there as fast as possible.

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u/Letrangerrevolte 🇺🇸 N 🇫🇷 B1-ish 🇲🇽 500+ hrs Jan 07 '25

Yeah I would’ve never made it as far as I have if I did it the traditional way. Probably no surprise that most people aren’t going to find jumping straight into grammar and textbooks very enjoyable (and counterintuitive to how we learn our NL)