Discussing Languages As I Plod Along

I'm currently about 70% through reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  In it the protagonist, a young man named Theo, has as a dubious friend someone named "Boris", with whom he went to high school for a spell.  Boris speaks several languages fluently, including Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian..all of which he picked up from early childhood and from living in countries that spoke them. Theo, who speaks only English, tries to learn more Russian by taking classes...his progress is naturally slow.  When he meets back up with his old friend after a few years' absence, Boris quickly dismisses the worth of all of Theo's linguistic endeavors, claiming that all he needed to speak Russian was to spend a month in Moscow.  Or, I might add, to either have been born there or to have had parents who spoke it to him from early childhood.  I think that's how a lot of people see learning languages as well...that it's a waste of time to study it on your own away from where the targeted language is spoken seems to be the consensus opinion. I never run across others like me who enjoy gradually getting to know different languages by self-study.  No, either they speak whatever language it is as a first language or they picked it up by living abroad.  I know a couple of people who underwent intense language training in the military and used their abilities in intelligence work.  But none can relate to me about language in the way that I see it. Even if I go somewhere, even to Moscow as fictional Boris suggests to fictional Theo, and learn to speak Russian...and there's nothing wrong with that, maybe it's a good idea...I'm still left with the other languages I like to study as well.  What am I supposed to do, become a travel junkie?

Once I was taking a class in Polish at the University of Florida.  At the time, in the late 1970s, UF had a student exchange arrangement with a college in Poznan, Poland...hence the existence of this class, largely to train students planning to go there.  I took the class because I wanted to know more about Polish.  One of my classmates, who wasn't going on the study abroad trip to Poland but had learned Russian by dint of having been in military intelligence, was also taking the class. One day before class we were speaking casually and I happened to bring up to this individual something specific to how some nouns in Polish were declined (Polish is linguistically, like Latin, a very synthetic language in which declensions and conjugations abound). This dude suddenly broke in on me and curtly told me in no uncertain terms that he did not go for discussing grammar like that: that wasn't how "he" looked at languages.  End of conversation...that put a serious damper on my ability to communicate with this talented but self-centered and rude individual. His irrational abruptness at my having brought up an aspect of Polish grammar, in a Polish language class no less, may seem to be an extreme case, but it is an example of the irony of people who refuse to discuss aspects of the languages they speak.  It reminds me of those scenes in the The Matrix when Trinity suddenly finds herself in need of knowing how to fly a helicopter, or when Neo wants to learn martial arts.  They both simply have the knowledge and ability downloaded by computer straight into their brains in a matter of minutes. There's no way they could discuss with anyone how they learned what they learned; such conversations would be meaningless to them.  I think that people in general nowadays see language learning that way: if it doesn't come quickly and effortlessly, then you're a fool for trying it. And don't dare ever to try discussing Polish grammar with a linguistic diva...