Marina: 0:11

NERRRRRRD.

Jeremiah: 0:14

You're calling Cicero a nerd. He wrote that.

Marina: 0:23

Hello, and welcome to How to Language, a podcast about language learners past, present, and future. I'm Marina.

Jeremiah: 0:31

And I'm Jeremiah.

Marina: 0:33

And for today's episode, we're going to explore the history of language learning, particularly in the ancient period, culminating in one of the biggest turning points of all time in the history of language learning.

Jeremiah: 0:45

This episode will be the season one finale and after this we're gonna take a break to plan for season two. Didn't realize this was a seasonal show. Well, you should have been paying closer attention

Marina: 0:57

So for anybody who knows Jeremiah they will know that this is a very Jeremiah y episode.

Jeremiah: 1:03

Why do you say that?

Marina: 1:05

Because you are all about that ancient life. You literally speak Latin. So, this isn't like, it's not very surprising that you're interested in the history of, the history of language learning. Um, but specifically, why did you want to talk about it today?

Jeremiah: 1:21

Um, yeah, I mean, you're right, it's definitely very me, uh, especially ancient history, but also just the history of language learning in general, I and it's also interesting because it's kind of hard to find information on it for all periods, which is true about a lot of things historically, but language learning is a big one because, with a lot of language teaching and learning, particularly for languages that have writing systems, which not all do, It can be hard to know about the entire scope of how people in the past learned languages because if they weren't learning through writing or reading, then by nature, there's not going to be a lot of evidence for it. I also think that what we do know about how people learn languages in the past, whether it was in the ancient period or, early modern period of the 20th century, it can be useful for learners now to know about that because it shows what kind of things have stayed the same, which can be kind of good to know, to know like, okay, this is foundational stuff that is stood the test of time, but it can also show how a lot of things used to be common practice, but just really aren't anymore. And there's probably a good reason for that. And a lot of those things, fell out of use in terms of best practice have stayed around in the way that just, you know, people study languages or the way that they're taught in some cases. I know that sounds a little vague, but we're going to get to all of it. Long story short, I think it can be, it can be good to know as with all history, it can be good to 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 it to your current learning approaches.

Marina: 3:00

Okay, so speaking of ancient history, why don't we start there, with the history of language learning. Can you, uh, set the scene for us?

Jeremiah: 3:09

Yeah, for sure. So first of all, when we talk about the ancient period, we are at least, at least in, in, Europe and the Mediterranean area generally, we're talking about, ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Roman Empire, kind of like. Late Bronze Age to Iron Age kind of period. Ancient, you know, before Medieval, and that's when feudalism comes onto the scene. So when we talk about ancient history, it's really, I forget the exact like cutoffs from, from history class, but I can tell you that it starts at the earliest at the invention of writing. And I think it probably ends sometime around when feudalism starts, but mostly what we're talking about today is ancient Greece and especially ancient Rome, since that's kind of my area of interest. And I won't say expertise because I'm not, you know, I'm a, I'm an amateur, uh, Romeaboo. Anyway, setting the scene. When you talk about ancient Rome, it's really covering a huge period of history. So now, right now I'm just talking about, you know, late Republic and kind of early empire, ancient Rome, which I don't know how much that means to you, but I feel like most people know that Rome used to be a Republic and then it was an empire because a bunch of stuff happened.

Marina: 4:17

All the Romaboos out there will know what you're talking about.

Jeremiah: 4:20

Yeah, they will. So ancient Rome, whether you're talking about the late Republic or the empire was first of all, a very class polarized society. You had very, very wealthy people who were of the nobility or below them who were of I guess, not really a merchant class, but they weren't like blood nobility necessarily, but they could be just as wealthy as actual blood nobility. And then way below them, you had, regular working people, whether they were not exactly peasants, because peasants is kind of more of a feudal thing, but people who lived in the countryside, which was a lot of people, had their own farms, which over time became less and less of a thing as the really, really rich Romans bought up more land and used slaves to till the land and to grow food and to grow cash crops and things. So that's basically the other big, big class was slaves. Slaves were all over the place in ancient Rome. And the reason I'm talking about the class situation in ancient Rome is because it is going to be kind of a theme for talking about the whole language learning through history thing. And you'll see what I mean. Another important thing to note about 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, also dignitaries, mercenaries, I think people think about the distant past and they think, well, transportation must have been a lot harder back then, which it was, and so they think, well, was it really all that interconnected? And I can tell you the Mediterranean especially was very interconnected, and it didn't hurt that over time Rome came to control all of it, which made it a lot safer. I'm not saying that having a giant and, you know, destroy all these other, um, You know, political situations was, was a good thing objectively but it did make the seas a lot safer for, you know, not getting robbed by pirates or

Marina: 6:18

Weird, weird little silver lining of imperialism.

Jeremiah: 6:22

Yeah. Anyway, my point is people got around back then and so As you probably imagine, uh, if you went to the docks in ancient Rome, you would hear all kinds of languages. Whether it was Gaulish, or Amharic, or Punic, or, uh, Hebrew, or obviously Latin, or Greek. A lot of Greek, probably. Iberian. Just a lot of them. Especially since, because the idea of nations. of people who all had, like, a whole lot of stuff in common wasn't as clear back then because there just wasn't a high enough level of economic development to really, like, tie a lot of people together. The idea of different languages versus different dialects was probably a lot fuzzier. if you were in even just Italy, there were a bunch of languages that were spoken in Italy that weren't necessarily mutually intelligible because there was a lot more distance between people back then.

Marina: 7:11

hmm. That makes sense. Yeah.

Jeremiah: 7:12

Yeah, so the idea of like, oh, I'm a Roman and I speak Latin, but I'm gonna learn Gaulish and that way I'll be able to talk to everybody in Gaul. No way Jose You know, it's it's gonna be a lot more complicated than that

Marina: 7:24

So based on what you just said, that probably means that being multilingual is pretty common in the ancient world. Is that right?

Jeremiah: 7:31

Yeah, definitely. Just, you know, for a lot of reasons. Um, if you were just a regular average everyday person, or a merchant, or whatever, it would help to not even necessarily like know several different languages. Like, I know. And I know Iberian and I know Gaulish and I know Latin. Probably it was more of a question of like, I am good at communicating with people because I've developed skills to like quickly learn the rudiments of the language of whatever place I'm in for the purpose of whatever job I'm doing there, whether I'm a mercenary or whether I'm a trader or what have you. So there's that. But you know, it's hard to find You know, conclusive evidence for what exactly that was like. That's kind of more of an educated guess, but I can say that in the upper classes it's definitely a proven fact that being multilingual was common for them as well, but it looked different, right? They weren't necessarily learning like Gaulish because if you are a, uh, a Roman noble who never leaves the city, except when it's really hot and you go up 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 is Greek. Uh, Cicero, Caesar, the first emperor of Rome, Augustus, they all spoke Greek. It was very, very, very common for Roman nobles to speak Greek. Funnily enough, part of it was because they considered Latin to be like, you know, not as good of a language as Greek. Like, Greek was like, if you spoke Greek, then you, um, you were like more erudite than, than, than the rabble who only speak Latin. Latin was kind of like a regular everyday language, but Greek was like more of a language of poetry and more of a language of art and stuff.

Marina: 9:10

If you knew Greek, that meant that you would use words like erudite in casual conversation.

Jeremiah: 9:15

That's right. I don't know Greek, but Latin now is what Greek was then.

Marina: 9:20

Could've fooled me. you mentioned that, people kind of acquired languages a little more haphazardly than maybe, maybe that's not the right word, than we do now.

Jeremiah: 9:30

Yeah, because first of all, they didn't have Duolingo. They didn't really have you know, normal people who, who didn't like go to school, didn't have, usually, like, really structured language learning resources available. They just had other people. And maybe, if they could read, which maybe they could, maybe they couldn't, you know, maybe books or something, which we'll get to.

Marina: 9:49

So, there aren't any ruins in Ancient Rome of, like, community colleges or language schools or anything like that?

Jeremiah: 9:58

No. Okay. But I will, I mean, I will talk about in a second how there was language teaching, but it was probably, you know, especially for more upper class people. all that said, speakers of these other languages, whether it was Oscan or Etruscan or Gaulish or Aramaic or Egyptian or Phrygian, you know, most of them who interacted with Romans or Greeks on a regular basis probably knew Latin 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 how something was supposed to be said was to talk to somebody who spoke the language and not even printed books. If, uh, if you wanted a book. about the language that you're trying to learn, which there probably weren't really language textbooks. It was more that people just kind of like got a book in that language and studied it. but if you wanted one, you would have to copy it or get somebody else to copy it. But yeah, just to reiterate before we move forward, um, everything that follows about the ancient period is based on textual evidence, so stuff that people wrote down, and that's for the simple reason that back then, like I said, there was no recording technology, so the only way to know things about ancient language is through written texts, and also to a lesser extent by comparing languages that still exist today to learn about how the language was back then, but when it comes to actually learning about how people learned the language, really written texts is all there is. And since the working classes had much lower literacy than the ruling classes, And since it's the ones with the power, obviously, who write the history books, most of what we know about the ancient world is not only disproportionately about the rich and the powerful, but also portrays them in a disproportionately favorable light. So, Cicero, Caesar, Augustus, like I said, they were all members of the nobility. So that brings us to the question of how actually did people learn other languages? And when I say people, in this case, like I said, I mean primarily the nobility who had the time and the resources and the funds to actually get education in another language and not just learning Greek haphazardly by hanging out in the market. Supposedly, from what I read, learners often started by reading, weirdly enough. I mean, literacy, particularly among the nobility, was pretty high back then. So reading, memorizing, and reciting little stories and dialogues out of, you know, these little books. And from their readings and their recitations and all that, they got basic vocabulary and grammar just in context. And these texts that they got, which, like I said, were probably copied from other texts. They were, for one thing, that's interesting, coherent. They were coherent texts, um, not isolated sentences like on Duolingo. So you can picture a little book and it's got a story in it. It's a simple story and you can still find books like this today. Like this is a pretty common language learning method. There's a little book with two columns. The text on the left was the language that you know, and the text on the right was the language you're learning, like Greek. And then it's just two copies of the same story. One in Latin, one in Greek, and you speak Latin. And so you can be like, Oh, I know Latin. It says this here. And then look over at the Greek column and be like, Oh, this in Greek means this in Latin. And you just, part of it is you just kind of brute force it.

Marina: 13:16

And just just hold on and, and pray That's right. You figure out what the text means.

Jeremiah: 13:22

Yeah. And you know, you had, you also had a tutor, like if you were Roman nobility and you were learning Greek probably as, as, as a teenager or a kid, you had your Greek tutor and they would explain things and all that. topics for these, for these texts included simple stuff that you still see today, like getting dressed in the morning, going to school, visiting a sick friend, getting a job.

Marina: 13:45

That's kind of interesting. Those are highly, relevant situations that they would be able to apply immediately in their daily life. So that's pretty cool. That's something that we do still today.

Jeremiah: 13:55

Yeah. And hey, there's one of those things that I mentioned about Knowing about how people learned languages in the past kind of gives you some hints about what, what is fundamental language learning stuff that is still important today. Basically, what we're looking at here is the translation method, which has persisted for thousands of years since then, and still is around today. It is unpopular today. in most language learning contexts except funnily enough for learning ancient or dead languages like Latin and Old Norse. And a big part of the reason for that is because most people aren't speaking Latin and Old Norse nowadays. You don't have to know them to speak them or to, you know, talk to The fishmonger about getting your fish for the weekend.

Marina: 14:43

Yeah, that's how I learned Latin. Was the, the, the translation method. We had a book that was very similar to what you were just describing. Where I should actually know, it didn't have any English in it, it was just Latin. And you were supposed to You learn the vocabulary at the beginning and then you read the passage and you're supposed to kind of figure it out.

Jeremiah: 15:00

Exactly. And yeah, the reason for that is because, you know, people aren't really producing new stuff in Latin that much anymore. You're mostly reading old authors and you learn Latin so that you can read those because it's, it's just cool read it how it was intended to be read in the original language. Makes it easier to appreciate the jokes, for one thing.

Marina: 15:20

Mm, yeah, all the text that we would read in Latin was usually, like, about ancient Rome. it was a story that takes place in ancient Rome, or it was an actual, like, text that was written back then and we were translating. although my Latin teacher, would sometimes write his own little passages and sentences in Latin about modern things. So like one time he gave us an assignment where it was like a passage explaining the plot of Star 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 unfolded and realize that it was about Star Wars.

Jeremiah: 15:55

Oh, that's fun. Wait, this makes me want to get out my Latin textbook and read an example. I just want to read some Latin, wait. Okay. For those of you listening in, I went and got my copy of Wheelock's Latin. And the reason I did that is because it really does use the translation method a lot. That's really what it's about. In the beginning it teaches you about the grammar and then, bam, you're into the, uh, you get a vocab 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 the English translations, you just have to figure it out. Here's one[Jeremiah reads a passage 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 this says because first of all, it's been a while. And second of all, the translation 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 of the translation method because you're just working with written text. You're, and you're just translating. And so there's really no speaking or listening involved. So, how do people learn how to, like, speak? And especially for people who maybe didn't know how to read and didn't have access to the translation method.

Jeremiah: 17:28

True that. Well, first of all, if they're not doing pronunciation, then let me guess, people in your class probably read it like this. Uh,[Jeremiah reads another passage in Latin with a ridiculous American accent], Oh wait, I slipped into actually pronouncing it correctly for a second there. Fiantibi Fidelis. Is that about right?

Marina: 17:54

Okay. Do not call me out like that ever again. We knew that the V's were pronounced 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 most of 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 just hard to tell ancient descriptions of language classes don't really mention conversation exercises. I guess they weren't seen as being super important. Probably because if you were taking one of these classes and you were a member of the nobility Then you were probably learning Greek not so that you could talk to actual Greeks and have a conversation like a real person But instead you were just learning it so that you could like 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 languages They probably learned a language so they could speak it, not just to recite poetry. But of course, most of what we know about ancient language learners is about the nobility and they were learning it to recite poetry. So it kind of skews the data. It's possible that for people who are deliberately learning a language so that they can speak it with other speakers, classes were immersive and taught entirely in the target language and that's assuming they took classes, you know, if they were just kind of figuring it out. And they were a motivated learner, but really all they had to go off of was their conversations with other speakers who were certainly not trained pedagogues. it was probably a lot of immersion and a lot of trial and error. For learners who couldn't read or didn't study in a class setting, yeah, they probably learned mostly through practice. Like we've talked about before, that means solving social problems using whatever language resources they had acquired. And there's some important stuff there. Solving social problems, that's, you know, what practice is in a language context, using the language resources you have access to. It's not so much a matter of, I know the language, and now I can talk to anybody about anything. That's not even how it is nowadays. In a realistic context, it really is about learning the language. You kind of make your own tools and then you try to do stuff with them and you fail a certain percentage and then you learn from that. I will say this though. It is likely that learners of prestigious languages like Latin and Greek. who themselves were not Romans or Greeks, but were, you know, Gauls or Carthaginians or Syrians or whatever, it is likely that they made a lot of errors because they're literally doing trial and error and had speech that was strongly accented with the phonology of their first language, what people nowadays would call a thick accent. And there is evidence, actual textual evidence that these people were looked down on and seen as stupid, sadly.

Marina: 20:43

Not much has changed.

Jeremiah: 20:44

Not much has changed. Unfortunately, people are still treated that way. Anyway, for example, there's a Roman play called Poenulus by Plautus, or I think that's how you say it in English. In Latin, it's Plautus. And in it, the main character actually is a Carthaginian character. And just for context, Carthage was like another really big city, in the Mediterranean during the earlier Roman Republic. And they were Uh, public enemy number one for the Romans, and so if you were a Carthaginian already, you probably had a harder time getting along with Romans anyway. But the main character in this play is a Carthaginian, and he has a, you know, a pretty low level of Latin proficiency it seems like, and he also just speaks Punic a lot, that's the Carthaginian language. He speaks Punic a lot in the play. Which also interestingly is, uh, one of the rare sources in the, in Latin writing that has Punic language in it. Because we really don't know that much about the Punic language. But his speech is mocked by the other characters and it's kind of a big joke the entire play.

Marina: 21:51

That's so interesting. was the Punic language not, did it not have a writing system?

Jeremiah: 21:56

That's a good question. I think, I mean, no, I think it did because Punic is a Semitic language. and I think it comes from Phoenician.

Marina: 22:05

Oh, oh.

Jeremiah: 22:06

Because the Carthaginians were Phoenician settlers and the Phoenicians came from the Levant. and that is actually where the alphabet that we use, the Latin alphabet, but also the Greek alphabet, the uh, Cyrillic alphabet. All of those come from the Phoenician alphabet,

Marina: 22:24

Okay, so that was a great overview of, like, ancient Europe and how they kind of went about learning languages, especially in the Roman empire So, 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, past the Middle Ages and past that kind of era, how, how did, how did, 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 way that people learn languages is highly, highly influenced by their material conditions and the material conditions of whatever is happening in their society at the time. And one of the biggest sea changes in material conditions, particularly for Europe, but also all of Europe's unfortunate victims, was It's the period where colonization and colonialism started to come onto the world stage. And a big, not necessarily a starting point for that, but a pretty huge turning point was 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He came to the Americas, even though he never admitted that that's what he did, he always, he maintained to his deathbed that he had actually found Asia. So he was a much better sailor than he was a cartographer, I guess. But when he came to the Americas and he met the indigenous people, a lot of communication was accomplished, quote unquote, through gestures. And I say, quote unquote, accomplished because that guy also inferred a lot from gestures, because of course, of course you were going to like gestures. aren't a language and every culture has a different kind of gestural repertoire and what a gesture means in one language will be different from that same gesture in another language. But basically he just conveniently interpreted the gestures of the indigenous people in whatever way was most favorable to him. So he was like, look, they're gesturing. That means that they think we're gods 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 probably weren't saying that, but like I said, the basic problem with that is that different cultures have different gestural associations. So for example, pinching your nose in one culture, like in our culture, if you pinch your nose, it means you think something is stinky, but it might mean something 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, 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 a bad guy. Anyway. where gestures failed and where, the colonizers were just like, you know what, we, to some extent, need to be able to talk to these people so that we can ask them where their gold is. Um, we need people who speak the indigenous languages, but I'm not going to learn it and you know, my boys aren't going to learn it. So why don't we, uh, take one of them and kidnap them and take them back to Spain or something so that we can force them to learn Spanish and then we can use them as an interpreter. And that's exactly what they did. Columbus didn't really come up with that, obviously. He actually took a page from the Portuguese. They would, uh, before this, they would take West Africans captive and force them to learn Portuguese in Lisbon so that they could then be used as interpreters. And this actually remained a pretty common practice for centuries after Columbus, quote unquote, discovered the Americas.

Marina: 26:19

Yeah. Pretty, uh, pretty terrible thing on top of the already large pile of terrible things that 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 the book On Savage Shores. excellent book that talks about this 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 noting that, It was kind of an early colonial period when the world was still being quote unquote, discovered. And it was really just a period of primitive accumulation where, you go around with your boys and your, your muskets and you just take stuff. Um, and going around and taking stuff is great for European industry, which is a big part of why Europe was able to advance economically to the point that it eventually did. But past a certain point, there's just no more world to gobble up. And that's the point where, you know, good old fashioned colonialism doesn't really cut it anymore. And I talked about this in the last episode, I think, but you get into a period of imperialism where you just leech off of your territorial holdings. But, returning to Europe. Oh, I will say before the 18th going back to language learning, the ma, uh, the main language that was taught in schools before the 18th century was, hey, our old friend Latin, that's also where we get the term grammar school, because what was taught was Latin grammar. And the reason for that is because from the medieval era to the 18th century, Latin was the language of education, it was the language of science, it was the language of academia, and here comes our friend class again. If you were a part of the class of people who got to go to school, then that's the language you learned. But in the 18th century, modern languages like French started to be taught using the same methods as Latin had been taught, which, I think we know what they are. Grammar drills and translation are favorite. Finally, in the 19th and especially the 20th centuries, this is where it starts to get interesting. Finally, new methods of language teaching start to emerge. First of all, you have like language. 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 final topic for the day. Um, a very interesting example of one of the new methods that exploded onto the scene in the 20th 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 bit of a soft spot for it just because for the very few people that 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 was a recognized need for translators and for interpreters who 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 commissioned universities, like 50 of them, to develop programs to accomplish this because the grammar translation method would not cut it. And the result was the Army Specialized Training Program. And if you can think of a more generic 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 a teacher, it was actually a student, a native speaker who wasn't necessarily a teacher, and a linguist. A

Marina: 30:33

linguist?

Jeremiah: 30:34

A linguist. A student, a native speaker, and a linguist walk into a bar, okay, and they would study together. 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 the language. The linguist knows linguistics.

Marina: 30:54

What purpose do they serve?

Jeremiah: 30:56

I'll tell you. It's actually really interesting. And then the student, obviously, their purpose is to ideally learn the language. Mm hmm. So, the native speaker's role is to just provide phrases and conversation practice. You know, they don't actually know necessarily, like, on a linguistic level, how their language works, and they certainly wouldn't necessarily know how to teach it. And that's what the linguist is there for. The linguist is there even if they don't know the language in question because they're a linguist they can like pick up on kind of the structural aspect of it fairly early on and provide structure and context and other juicy things for the learner to structure the experience. And you might be thinking, well, that doesn't really sound like a method. That just sounds like throwing three people into a bag, shaking it up and seeing what comes out. And you're right. But in classic, uh, us army fashion, you don't need a method as long as you have intensity and drills. Exactly. And that's exactly what it was. Um, so they would study for 10 hours a day, six, six days a week. for several weeks at a time. I think two sessions of like six weeks. And yeah, obviously the method itself wasn't all that scientifically sound, certainly not scientifically revolutionary but the intensity combined with, first of all, the students were highly motivated. I think they were probably self selected. So as far as students and time commitment, it was really a sweetheart deal because of those things. the students who actually did it, it produced really strong results for them. Like they actually got really good.

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 the charts.

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 in World War II, I think that's probably what I would want to do. Yeah. I wouldn't want to be storming the beaches or flying the planes or anything.

Marina: 32:55

That's true. Like, if you got drafted, this would 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 in like 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't the audiolingual method, by the way. This is the, this is what laid the groundwork for the audiolingual method, particularly the emphasis on oral practice and also just the drilling, the drills, drill, drill, drill. audiolingual method was, I mean, it derived from this, and it was a dramatic break from the centuries of language learning that came before, Because, until World 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 language teaching. Whether it was, you know, Latin, way back in the day, or even modern languages in the after those got reintroduced. It was, it was, it was reading and it was grammar and it was writing, but the audio lingual method just straight up flipped that, flipped it right on its head and focused on listening and speaking, not on reading and writing, mainly through intensive drills and an emphasis on structure.

Marina: 34:11

I mean, that makes sense because in the war, that was their priority was speaking and listening, intercepting messages and stuff like that. Reading and writing probably weren'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 learning evolve over time really have a lot to do with materially what's going on, like what's the purpose, what is the context that the learner is in, you know, the, the methods kind of change to suit the times. So drills and repetition that really is audio lingualism in a nutshell. It's a lot of the teacher saying a sentence at you, even if you have no idea what it means, and you just say it back, and you try to say it exactly right, again and again and again. And then they throw in some other stuff. Like they say a sentence, like, for example, if you're learning English, they say like, he throws the ball and then you repeat, but you say, she throws the ball. So making like slight variations to just see what's possible in terms of changing things, but you still don't know what it means. Really just brute forcing, learning the language to speak it in the most brute force way you 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 that way.

Jeremiah: 35:31

No exactly Yeah, I think the biggest takeaway from that is the shift in focus to speaking and listening, which is funny because that's the one thing that language, aside from sign languages, has all, have always had in common is the speaking and the listening. So I don't know why people have been so focused on reading and writing. I mean, I do know why I just explained why, but still.

Marina: 35:54

It also kind of sounds like the audio lingual method was kind of had something to do with like behaviorism and conditioning.

Jeremiah: 36:03

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. It, uh, it was based on behaviorism because that was really the pop psychology theory at 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 teach pigeons 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 could condition associations between, like, words that are written down on a piece of and, they would have a pigeon select the correct word or something like that and they would get food as a as a reward and they thought oh this pigeon's learning how to read no the pigeon's not learning how to read they're just 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 if you understood the language that you were producing all that mattered was that you were producing it because language in their eyes was a behavior not an internal thing. It was, yeah, it was a behavior that you could learn through repetition and over time you would 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 audio lingualism because it was really kind of one of the first groundbreakers and. really marked year one for not just doing grammar translation forever and ever. It was really, um, the start of a Cambrian explosion of different methods and even post methods. I won't tell you what that means, I'll tell you next season. we could talk for hours about the different language teaching methods that gained popularity in the 20th century, but I think we should end it with audio lingualism because at least in the U S it's a key point. Like I said, where language learning shifted away from the grammar translation method that really had dominated for centuries, millennia, even. And. Away from that and towards the incredibly diverse terrain of language learning methods that we know today because there are still a lot Everybody is like my method that I invented is the best because I sprinkled in a little 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 and American 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 from the 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 people learned language in the past had a lot to do with the material conditions of the society. The learning was embedded in. and also the material conditions of the learners themselves. So let's like really quickly in review talk about what those conditions were in the ancient period. What we know about ancient language learners is mostly about members of the ruling class. We talked about why they weren't learning Syrian or Gaulish because they had no desire or need to. And instead, what they were learning was Greek and they did it so that they could read and recite poetry. Right. That speaks to really the class, character of the people who were, who were learning Greek in that way, what their priorities were and what they didn't have to worry about. You know, they didn't have to worry about needing to know Greek so that they could survive and work and put food on the table because they had slaves to do that. And so they had time and energy to devote to reading and reciting poetry. In the early modern period, Latin was and had been the science, uh, the language of science and education because it helped to draw a clear line of demarcation between the haves and the have nots. Again, class. when English, French, and those other, vulgar quote unquote languages, when those were brought into the, these spaces. There was pushback, because it made the commanding heights of society and culture more accessible to regular people, and the people who were in those commanding heights did not like that, right? The ruling classes again. In the colonies, language learning had a much more utilitarian aspect, because language in that context was just one tool among many for getting the better of indigenous people to more easily displace and exploit them. Get to the 20th century, all of this highfalutin language stuff of centuries past, you know, the reciting the poetry and the science and whatever that went out the window to some extent when it came up against the sheer necessity of putting bodies in the field in World War II, having soldiers, whatever their class background, but you know, obviously mostly workers, having them know the local languages, gave the U. S. military an edge in really everything. It just helps to know the local language. Give them an edge in things like reconnaissance, to maintaining order in occupied territories, to even like interrogation, right? It wasn't all butterflies. As for the present, that I think raises the question, what is the material basis for language learning 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 silence because you don't have our podcast to listen to for a few weeks.

Marina: 41:52

Thank you for listening to this episode of How to Language, where we talked about how people learned languages in the past. This is our season finale, but we will be back in summer of 2024 with a whole new slate of new episodes. to keep in the loop on updates and when the new season will be released, you can follow us on Instagram and X at HowToLang.

Jeremiah: 42:16

See you next time.

Marina: 42:17

We'll see you later.