Rampant Paranoia: An Educational Experience

I want to learn Welsh.

Really.

I don’t think Welsh is a very popular language, but I’ve heard people speak it and I’ve seen written examples of it and it just sounds so cool. Fortunately one of our friends has a Welsh book and a series of Welsh tapes that she’s going to lend to me, so I’ll be able to start learning it. I’m quite excited.

Part of me is concerned and even slightly afraid, however, and there is a good reason for this. The simple truth is that anything from a “teach yourself” program contains hazards which could jeopardize your experience of both learning and putting into practice the skill which you are trying to acquire.

Take, for instance, a book I once read about teaching yourself foreign accents for use in theater. This book—this typed, written, no-audio-provided stack of bound paper—is supposed to tell you how to sound Scottish, Portuguese, British or African when you’re performing in a play. How can there not be risks involved in such a process? What kind of desperate low-paid actor is going to entrust his performance to the authors of this book who are saying, “To correctly pronounce the accent of southern Kalapangi, the vocal stress of the vowels must come from the back of your mouth, and every diphthong should be acutely shaped with the bottom lip and the tip of the tongue”? I cringe to think of the myriad of ways in which these instructions could be grossly misinterpreted and the poor fellow could mangle his performance on stage to the chagrin of all.

Or a banjo program. My parents both learned how to play banjo from a book and an instructional tape. Now, there’s not much you could do wrong with that, is there? you ask. Just play it exactly as the instructor on the tape tells you to and follow the rolls in the book and you’re fine! WRONG! Have you no sense of the weight of trust which one must put into the hands of these allegedly-bluegrassian instructors? Several things must be assumed: firstly, that every song in the book is actually a real bluegrass song (imagine sitting around jamming with the old mountaineers—“You don’t know Lonesome Ramblin’ Breakdown? I thought everyone knew Lonesome Ramblin’ Breakdown!”). Secondly, it must be assumed that the techniques being taught you are actually true, and not a twisted attempt to spread some “new kind of banjo music”. And thirdly, perhaps most importantly, one must assume that the people behind this instructional series are not maniacs whose primary goal is to make a bunch of money whilst laughing raucously at your pitiful attempts to follow their deliberately false teachings—in other words, that you’re not part of a grand joke of which you could not be suspected to know anything.

Paranoid? Yes, well, but these sorts of things must be considered. Fortune favors the prepared. There are hundreds of “teach yourself” programs out there and none of them are to be taken lightly.

Truth is, there are some things you simply can’t teach yourself. They must be absorbed from your surroundings—like a language—or taught by a sage and trustworthy master—like anything remotely bluegrass. This is the only way you can be completely certain that you’re not subscribing to a scam or botching your only chance of winning a role in “The Mad Irishman II: Return of the Blarney Stone” on Broadway.

And yet, we may not have come to the end of the story. Consider the quote by Mikhail Baryshnikov: “Dancing is my obsession.” Now stop considering it and go back to my original point: There may yet be a purpose for “teach yourself” techniques that transcends both paranoia and…skill. Perhaps the motive behind teaching yourself is not the eventual gain of mastery over an art or a talent, but the satisfaction of knowing you have forged your own path. You have conquered the mountain. You have stuck it to the man. The field is plowed and the chicken is in the microwave and, at the end of a long day, so are you. To be honest, you have no idea what you’re saying right now, because you learned English from a crappy tape that cost you two Kalapangi bucks, but the point is that you learned it yourself! You can succeed—or think you have!

So I may not become fluent in Welsh. I may not ever travel to Wales out of lack of finances and fear of foreign humiliation. I may not even finish going through those language tapes. But I will be able to greet you and ask about the weather in a language you’ve probably never heard of. How’s that for worth it, eh?