Cambridge Journals Online

Learning world languages

For most of us languages aren't all that easy to use, or learn – whether we have been born into one or several languages, or have to learn one or more ‘alien’ languages, with alien writing systems. This may just be part of the general hurly-burly of life, and is certainly the usual way of things in, say, India, Nigeria and the Philippines, or it may happen in the comparative calm of classroom and library (nowadays widely regarded as the ‘proper’ way to learn languages, even if it is not always the most effective). The first of these is, as it were, the ‘marketplace’ tradition (learning as you go), the second the ‘monastery’ tradition (classrooms, timetables, exams, and accreditation).