lawzard

I’m sure we’ve all encountered a protagonist who, for some reason or another, had to learn a language and learn it fast. They might have spent their time slaving over books, learning with an instructor, practicing with a native, or something else, but the result is always the same. After a few dedicated (maybe) weeks—BAM! The protagonist is completely fluent in the language and will never have any difficulty with it ever again at any point in their life. They won’t even make minor mistakes; it’s as if they’re a native speaker.

I’d just like to say that of all the absurd, undeserved powers fantasy protagonists get, this is the one I most want. I’ve been studying French for the past four and a half years and Spanish for the past two, and I am not fluent in either. My French is passable and my Spanish… Well, let’s just not talk about it.

My point is that I can assure you based on personal experience that fluency does not work that way in the real world. There are a couple reasons for this.

1. The capacity to learn language greatly decreases after childhood.

Children are essentially linguistic sponges, by which I mean they are remarkably good at learning languages. There are plenty of theories as to how exactly the process of language acquisition works, but regardless of which is true, there is hard scientific evidence that proves children under the age of ten are better at learning foreign languages than their elders. For example, a child can learn to speak a language as well as a native through prolonged exposure, whereas someone older generally needs to have someone explain how the language they’re learning works.

But even children can’t learn languages as fast fantasy protagonists, who are nearly always teenaged or older. I find this extremely annoying because it smacks of stupidity and thoughtlessness. If it were really that easy to learn languages, why the hell would there be multiple levels of language courses at high schools and universities? Wouldn’t just one course be enough? And why would governments pay translators and interpreters such large salaries? Couldn’t they just include a couple weeks of language study in their employees’ training and have everyone be fluent?

Seriously. Anyone who has tried to learn a language beyond childhood can attest to the difficulty. I’m not at all saying it’s impossible for older people to learn languages, just that it’s something that takes dedicated effort over a long period of time. Yes, there are some people who have a talent for learning languages, and yes, learning a language does become easier if you’ve already learned a different language before that one. Even then, though, it’s not an overnight process. True fluency takes years to develop, even among those who are especially linguistically receptive.

2. Memorization =/= fluency.

The general perception I get from fantasy authors is that learning a language is nothing more than memorizing a bunch of words and phrases, and that perception is sadly mistaken.

Fluency is inherently creative. If you think about the way you use English (or whatever your primary language is) on a daily basis, you’re not just repeating a stock set of phrases you learned when you were a child. You’re constantly creating new, unique sentences that you’ve never heard or said before to accurately express what you want or need to express. And to be able to creatively use language, you have to have an understanding (if only an implicit one) beyond just what a word or expression means.

Even supposing just memorizing words could make a person fluent, it would be impossible to learn enough words to become fluent in the amount of time fantasy protagonists take. The lowest estimate I’ve seen for the average amount of words a person regularly uses is 20,000 and the highest is 60,000. Assuming our protagonist has thirty days to learn the language, they would have to learn at least 667 words a day and at most 2,000, and that’s not even considering the fact that words can have multiple meanings. Unless the protagonist has some sort of magic that provides them with perfect memory, it’s impossible.

Besides, just knowing what a word or expression literally translates to doesn’t mean you understand the subtle rules that govern its usage. To use a basic and quick example, French has two subject pronouns that would translate to “you,” which are tu and vous. Both pronouns can be used to directly address a single person, but they’re not interchangeable. The difference? Formality. You would address your family and close friends as tu and strangers and superiors as vous. I’ve seen quite a few English speakers make the mistake of using vous for everything when first learning French, and while this alone doesn’t make you impossible to understand, it’s enough to mark you as a non-native speaker.

If a fantasy protagonist would make even a minor mistake like this one, I would weep with joy. It would show that the author had actually considered that not all languages are exactly the same.

3. In the real world, there are varying levels of fluency.

I mentioned earlier in this article that although I speak French, I am not fluent. I do, however, have what some people would call travel fluency. If you dropped me by air into a French speaking country, I could probably survive long enough to get a plane ticket home. I’d be in trouble if the person I shared a seat with on the train tried to start up a conversation with me, though.

Of course, fantasy characters never seem to just be travel fluent; like many things, fluency is much more black and white in fantasy than it is in real life, and like many things in fantasy, this is really unrealistic. That whole cramming to learn a language super fast thing would be slightly more believable if the characters in question merely had travel fluency or at least had a limited enough fluency in their target language to make speaking with natives somewhat difficult.

Here’s something else to consider: it is much easier to comprehend a foreign language than it is to produce it. For example, I used to know a girl whose grandparents were from Sri Lanka and they usually spoke Sinhala to her. She could understand the language reasonably well, but she spoke it poorly. Why is it that fantasy protagonists never find themselves in similar situations, where they understand what’s being said to them but aren’t quite sure how to phrase an appropriate response?

Another important thing to note about comprehension is that you don’t necessarily have to understand every single part of what someone is saying to you to understand what they mean. If you’re reasonably competent at speaking the language, you can understand the gist and get by. Just keep in mind that going by the gist can lead to errors. A guy in my French class last year heard the sentence, “Je voudrais une chambre pour une personne” (“I would like a room for one person”) and mistook it for “Je voudrais une chambre avec une personne” (“I would like a room with a person”) because he was just going by the gist of what he heard.

Personally, I think a character’s unfamiliarity with the language they’re trying to speak is a potentially interesting addition to a story. It could be a way to squeeze in a couple of jokes at the very least, but it could also be much more. An inability to effectively communicate could easily be a plot point, or a source of character development. If nothing else, varying levels of fluency can be used to add a bit of realism to the story.

Conclusion

Fluency is not a particularly difficult phenomenon to portray correctly, but even so, we’re still forced to swallow things like protagonists who learn the entirety of a language in a matter of weeks. I think the root of the problem is that most fantasy authors live in predominantly monolingual countries where fluency in multiple languages isn’t an everyday issue, so it doesn’t occur to them that they’re doing anything wrong. And since fantasy authors seem averse to doing research in general, they’re certainly not going to want to do research about language that would lead them to realize what they’re doing.

Not that extensive research would be required. All it takes is awareness and a little common sense, and the optimistic side of me wants to believe that those qualities aren’t beyond fantasy authors.

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