Confused and inspired

I am both confused and inspired by the wild non-academic massive take of "amateurs" learning languages and intensively writing about their adventures. The confusion comes from the sheer volume of what is available around and the variable interest of what is expressed. The inspiration comes from the fact that they more than often thrust forward methods but also attitude toward the task of language learning that have nothing to do with school, with the universities delivering language curriculums. And beyond the bragging, slamming, in your face hyper inflated ego of a Khatzumoto at All Japanese all the time dot com, there are many things to be inspired with. As that author mentions in one article, he did not invent his methodology but got inspired by others, while adding his own dimension. Where he succeeds is in communicating about the task, the efforts, the work, the travail that is language acquisition. And the effort to communicate is stretching on a long term, repetitive scale laced with readers comments. It makes at times for a lot of noise, but it is the noise and the serendipity of nudgets of gold that pops up from time to time that is totally new and exiting. Before, you would buy a book and read about "how to learn any language". You might have loved or hate that book, be inspired or be bored, but when you reached the last page, the only things allowed was to read again, or just forget about at it. The author too had no means to expand into sequels, a conversation with the unknown or what else. "Amateurs" confide more than often how they are inspired by reading these blogs, reading about the efforts of others. And it is exactly where the major shift has been taking place in the matter of language acquisition, and maybe in other subjects as well. It is non-academics that are sustaining, keeping alive the conversation. For sure, it is noisy and not everything is inspiring, but is has created a formidable window through which the wind of pounding and pouring around a subject that means efforts is in constant maelstrom. And it is a good thing. It does not takes place much in the interpretation realm although some are pioneering the concept and act of writing about the profession in a different tone than the upper stiff lipped Victorian manner that is inevitably the tone of professionally trained interpreters born and raised at least 20 to 30 years prior to the internet. Their circumstances must be understood in a historical dynamic context, just like those who are starting and dare muse about their wares in blogs recently. They don't belong to a world of open conversation though. The inspiration you may get for technics on improving, self-training and the like may be from now on fished out of the messy pond of online expressions mostly lead by less professional than yourself.

And this makes a total difference. Take this very poor blog for instance. It has some anonymous readers but it does not generate any conversation, even offline. In a sense, it simply reflects the absence of discussion between professional interpreters, that is, outside microconfidential circles. In the open, there is nothing, which is no news. Amateurs are pouring new blood into the void. That would be the standard old fart like comment on all this. But it is wrong. They are not pouring anything because there has been no circulation system to pump blood inside. They are a different system and the blood that flows in it. And when it comes to language acquisition, some if not the majority seem to be very honest with the task. They don't brag about learning Chinese in 5 minutes. Long term effort is an open mantra in what they write about, and writing about the effort - and encouraging readers in doing so - is one of the major impact they have been infusing in the task of language acquisition. They mostly are promoters of self-learning and this directly pertains to this blog because liaison interpreting being in many cases a profession learned and self-made on the job, training for competence development and systematization of technics and processes has to be performed mostly on a self-training basis. There is mostly nothing around, and there has been mostly nothing around before the Internet advent. Once language is acquired to a high level, you generally don't talk nor speak nor read nor listen about higher level and above language further acquisition. All the Japanese language learners I know that started before the Internet never would talk about their past subject of studies. Yes, sure, you don't talk about maths and physics once you leave highschool unless you focus into those subjects at a higher level. But in professional settings, there is nothing I know I am inspired of that is written by specialists - you know, research articles in hard to find or too costly to purchase. And invite you not to despise too much and too broadly what amateurs tell about self-learning of languages because there are points to be inspired with.