How to un-learn a language

When things in our lives no longer “spark joy”, the advice we’re given is to thank them for their service and send them on their way. It works for old DVDs and unwanted clothes – but will it work for languages?

“This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you”

Adrienne Rich, “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children”

1. Reasons for un-learning a language

I am writing this piece in “interesting times”. Russia invaded Ukraine; there’s a war going on. There’s upheaval, shock, sadness. There is resistance to Putin’s barbaric decisions.

And in the midst of all this, there is appetite for a re-drawing of maps. The geopolitical ones, showing where countries end and others begin. The cultural ones, showing how influence and inspiration flows, gets cut off, isolated, isolates itself. The mental maps get redrawn, too: power, terror, pride and shame can change the way you think and feel about yourself in relation to others.

All these events may be reasons enough to want to un-learn Russian, if you ever spoke it. To resist, to boycott, to sanction and denounce the influence that comes from taking part in that language community. This is not a new concept. Many people I grew up with got taught Russian at school, like it or not; many were keen to start forgetting the moment they had the choice.

There could be more reasons, too, and these don’t need to just relate to Russian and the current/past/future events around it. Perhaps the language you’ve learned represents a part of your life which no longer fits the new reality around you. Maybe the fact that you speak it and rely on it can hinder what’s going on elsewhere in your life. If I was too heavily reliant on Polish, for example, I’d be missing out on chances to speak other languages.

These might (note, I say “might”) all be reasons to un-learn. But are any of them valid? And if they were, how would you go about un-learning a language?

What follows is my take on these questions. Feel free to disagree with all of the above, and please don’t treat this post as a precise, step-by-step recipe for forgetting or un-learning anything.

2. All un-learning is really new, and stronger, learning on top

We don’t know enough about brains yet to say anything with 100% certainty. But we know enough about people who have brains, and use them, to say this: it’s incredibly difficult to completely kill a neural connection.

It’s enough, sometimes, for a hint of a smell, or a long-forgotten tune, to bring back a whole memory, complete in your head, and appearing all at once. This is Proust’s “madeleine moment” – a sensory trigger might be enough to almost flood your brain with the rush of recollection.

This possibly means that the neural connections made by our brains don’t always die as our brain cells age. Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other related processes wreak havoc to this promise, that’s for sure. But until these set in, our brains seem to retain the links made earlier.

And that’s just the brains. This conversation won’t mention the rest of your body much, but it’s there, and you bring it to life with each memory. The dance moves. The butterflies in your stomach. The memories of childhood illnesses. The reflexes, and where you got them.

So if a single memory is so hard to exorcise – imagine doing this to a language.

3. Languages might be the most powerful viruses your brain got infected with

There are many powerful metaphors for what language does to your brain. For today, I’m choosing to focus on William Borroughs’s and Neil Stephenson’s interpretation of language as a virus.

Except for Borroughs, this was no metaphor at all. The way in which languages take hold of our brains: hijack our thinking, so there’s no easy way to stop the internal monologue – make links all across our lived experience, so we can’t seem to think our way to to pre-language, or outside-language memories: this, for him, was real evidence that languages in our heads were viruses. Not “like” viruses – for him, they were actual ones.

Neil Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” takes this idea and runs with it, presenting an apocalyptic fictional (?) scenario in which an ancient language is used to assert influence over people. I won’t spoil the book for you too much, as it’s a good read, and becoming super-relevant again!

The point to make here is this: if you think you can simply boycott your way out of a language you managed to learn, you’re fooling yourself. Even if it’s just a smattering, a few dozen words here and there, that’s still an influence which can’t simply be wished away.

As stated above, you would need to learn new things, make new connections, and make them much stronger and fresher than the ones you’re trying to replace. It’s a lot like training new muscles to do a task for you, once you decide not to exert the other ones: the new muscles need to get stronger to take over the task, and the old ones never go away – they just don’t work as hard in the new posture you’ve learned for yourself.

So what would it take? If you can only learn new things on top of old ones – and if you’re trying to do this to something as virulent, as powerful as a language – where would you start?

4. Make new, living, connections

A lot of my German words and phrases were learned from English. And a lot of the things I read and listen to in German sit between English and German in my head – either by translation, or by relating to events which are shared across these languages.

If I chose to un-learn English today, I know I would immediately feel the need to “re-link” German to something. It goes beyond finding another language to put on the other side of a flashcard (although this is, mechanically, significant – see below).

Languages live and thrive by connection. Songs, books, photo captions, memes, videos: all of these things live in the rich, interlinked soup of context and culture.

Choosing to take these away means you have to bring new context and new cultures with you. Choosing to un-learn a language doesn’t do away with your yearning for connection: as a social being, “infected” with language, you will seek out songs, words, news, memes, funny videos. Do it in a new language from now on, if you so choose.

5. Learn new rules, moves, and sounds

We already alluded to this above. On some basic level, a language defines many things about how you work.

Categories make sense in your head because of a language. Sentences get shorter or longer from one person to another – because of their languages. Our accents are never “right” or “wrong” – they’re there because other languages literally shape our tongues, mouths, lips and breath one way or another, every second.

This is what you’re up against when un-learning any of it. This is all the new stuff you get to build again. Far from the more cerebral processes of trying to find new books to read and new newspapers to subscribe to, this is what you also need to do, subconsciously, consciously and conscientiously: build the basic blocks of vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar. Train your memory again. Train your mouth again. Train your eyes to see new colour, your hands to gesture.

From scratch, too, if you’re adamant. “Losing an accent” or “making sure you think like a native instead of thinking in language X” are horrible motivations for learning a foreign language, and I would never recommend them. But if you want to un-learn something, it’s your call, and that’s what it takes.

6. New language communities

This is frequently the area which motivates all of the above. You meet new people, and want to become part of their lives. So you decide to learn a lot more of their language – enough to really be part of the community. It’s called “integrative motivation” and is the nice, warm, glowing side of the story. Linguists love it; it makes a good article and a catchy conference paper, gets the likes and the retweets.

There’s obviously the dark side to all this. There’s accent-shaming. There’s the desire to “pass” as integrated in a community as early as possible – or even earlier. And behind all of it, there’s native speakerism – a topic about which I might be legally forbidden to write another blog post. 😉

Un-learning a language means you’ll leave some people behind. I don’t think there’s a way to deny this. You’ll build links to new communities, and relationships with new people, that’s for sure. You’ll enjoy a lot of these, and hopefully this will bring you all the good feelings which last a long, long time. This is something all linguists and language learners celebrate. Just don’t think there isn’t a price: un-learning means un-linking and un-friending.

My inner introvert shudders at the thought of this. My current friendships and family bonds across 3-4 languages are tricky enough to maintain. Giving up on this, just to have to exert all the energy build new ones up again? Ghastly. But maybe your inner extrovert just can’t wait to get started 🙂

7. Un-learn – or re-purpose and up-skill?

Swords can become ploughshares, and all that – and vice versa.

I started this piece by alluding to Marie Kondo – well, this has never been my philosophy entirely. There’s always room in my life for another cool gadget, another second-hand book, and a new use for an old tool. That’s the punk way, the DIY way, the way of a curious kid growing up in the dying throes of communism: keep it, stash it, might come in handy.

There’s reason to believe you can do that with languages, too. Even the ones you really feel like giving up on.

We already saw how time-consuming it would be to try and un-learn a language. The chances of succeeding are there – but the effort is immense. And by doing so, you’d be giving up on a lot of things.

Languages are, especially in today’s world, a pretty powerful tool. Yes, they infect you with ideas. But they’re also your chance to talk back, write back, re-frame a narrative.

There would be dozens of ways to do this with Russian in my current climate; it’s definitely worth starting to learn this language just to crack the monolithic, monolingual propaganda machine a little. But that’s a topic for another piece.

The point is this: you’ll never get to the point where your brain is too full of languages to cope. There’s usually room for one more alongside everything else that’s there, and they love company – connections are better for your brain, and more fun.

8. Which way?

We’ve seen that the best way to make sure you un-learn a language is to move to another one. If you choose one you already know, then the connections you’ve already made between the two will almost certainly be too strong to completely sever; the un-un-learnable spectre may keep coming back to life through poisoned madeleines.

And if it’s through a new language, then more power to you. You will have a choice, then, to re-shape your existing languages and cultures by enriching them all with your multilingual existence.

You can always choose to un-learn and mute your old languages as you’re doing so. It’s an unimaginably tough call. “Exiles of all times / know what price that is.“

There’s merit in hacking your way through a language that doesn’t agree with you; that’s what William Borroughs would prescribe for your language virus problem. There’s always power in being able to decode, re-code, to publish, and participate. If you can endure this, then you can choose to view each and any language as a tool.

And if you can’t, then that is also a choice to be respected, and I think we both realize now: there will still be a whole lot of language between now, and silence.

(Photo by Külli Kittus on Unsplash)