Learning an alphabet is easy

I studied Russian at school. People often say, “Wow, Russian, that must be so hard, with the different alphabet and all.” I think this reveals that they’re thinking wrongly about learning a language. I think this wrongness is instructive.

Learning a language is a really, really big deal. But you can memorise the Cyrillic alphabet in an hour’s work. You could probably master it in 10. It’s much harder than using chopsticks but it’s much, much easier than speaking Russian¹.

If you’re jumping on the alphabet as a reason to be intimidated by Russian, then you might not have internalised the much more intimidating fact that Russian is a foreign language.

I also sometimes hear people say “I really want to learn German, and I think I’d benefit from classes, but even the cheapest ones cost thousands per year”. I think this is a symptom of the same underestimation. If you want to learn German enough that you’re willing to do what it takes to learn German, but you hesitate to spend a few grand on it, something is miscalibrated (unless you’re particularly cash-poor or time-rich).

Concrete mixers are expensive. If you’re paving a short garden path, you can save a bit of money by mixing the concrete with a shovel in a wheelbarrow. But if you were building a concrete house you wouldn’t consider this. Language lessons are like concrete mixers².

If you’re building a house and someone says “wow, a house? But you’ll have to clear that topsoil before you can dig the foundations!” you’ll give them a funny look. Alphabets are like topsoil.

Houses and languages aren’t the only projects out there. The daunting nature of these huge tasks might be discouraging, but I think it can be liberating too. When I walk long distances, I sometimes find a strange comfort in the first twinges of pain in my feet. “This kinda hurts, but I set out to walk all day. I know it’s gonna hurt way more later, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to tolerate that, so I can easily tolerate this.”

What am I saying here? Are things harder than you think, or easier? Yes, whatever’s more helpful. You can manipulate your perspective to break things down. Dreading the topsoil? Well, zoom out; it’s just one step of a whole house, and didn’t you say you were really excited about building that house? The topsoil is nothing by comparison. Daunted by the house project? Zoom in; it’s just a long series of topsoil-scale problems that you know you can solve.