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Is learning new languages actually worth it for adults?
I have met people who have lived in a country for years, are intelligent and have studied hard. Yet they are far from a native speaker. Those who haven't spoken their new language for years seem to lose it. Is picking up French/German/Spanish worth it? It seems like an enormous investment to develop worse language skills than the average native 12-year-old. Even when it comes to enjoying the culture in the native language, I am not even sure it would be the case. A person who learned latin and read Caesar's memoirs in the original latin would probably get less out of it due to their lacking latin than reading a translated copy.
I studied a language for 6 years in school. Along with everyone I know who hasn't studied their extra language extensively post school I can barely write a paragraph in it. Was it a giant waste of time to have Spanish or French an hour a week for 6 years when the results are lacking?
If learning a language meant learning it to the point of fluency or near native ability, I could see the point. However, most learners seem to spend countless hours learning without being able to have a conversation that doesn't require effort from both parties.
Unless you're in a country where the vast majority don't speak English, it probably isn't worth it.
And that's leaving aside that we're right on the cusp of ubiquitous, seamless real-time translation for pretty much any language, so the marginal benefit of learning another better than a decent ML model can explain it to you is going to be slim if existant at all. The technology exists, as do proof of concepts, there simply isn't a convenient packaging for it. You still get most of the way with Google translate on a phone. But something like GPT-4 can explain the nuances that a more basic, albeit adequate, translating software can miss, so you won't even lose out on the cultural nuances.
There is no plausible real-time translation solution that (in real life; deepfakes are obviously possible on Zoom) makes your mouth make the words as they are spoken. So digital translation is always going to be lower status than learning the language yourself. That said, I agree that it’s becoming less and less necessary.
I agree, I can't imagine any situation where somebody would actually socialise or do any significant work using machine translation. Google Translate (and whatever comes next) can be helpful for translating emails or websites, and for media we already have dubs and subtitles. But most people who learn a language do so to use their new language in the same way they use their mother tongue, to talk to people.
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