Language Learning and Narcissism

Narcissists cannot learn foreign languages. If you put a narcissist in a situation where foreign language learning is inevitable, you will exacerbate the narcissism and provoke some serious narcissistic rage.

Learning a language involves constantly choosing to place yourself in situations where you will be at an obvious disadvantage. The moment you open your mouth, you resign yourself to making mistakes, being imperfect, and having your ego wounded. If there is an underlying narcissistic wound, it will not react well to being poked.

The slogan of language teachers everywhere, “it’s OK to make mistakes!”, is deathly to a narcissist. In no other area of learning are the mistakes one makes as public and inevitable. Language learning comes easily only to people who are not fearing the inescapable damage to their ego.

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39 responses to “Language Learning and Narcissism”

Jonathan Mayhew

November 16, 2014

Yay. Maybe I’m not as narcissistic as I thought.

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Anonymous

November 16, 2014

I like the ad for GE with Jeff Goldblum showing off his naked torso.

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Hattie

November 16, 2014

Don’t know why I came up as anonymous! Anyway, talk about a narcissist!

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Shakti

November 16, 2014

Possibly.

In that case, the United States must have tons of narcissists. The amount of people who freak upon hearing “Press 2 for Spanish” is ridiculous. I’ve had friends who refused to watch movies with subtitles. I watch them regularly and match the parts of speech in my head to the translations. As a kid I watched many movies without subtitles and wouldn’t blink.

Are people who live in areas where knowing several languages is a routine part of life are less narcissistic on average than monolingual areas? I’m not sure that follows, because that’s a common situation where learning a foreign language is inevitable.

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Clarissa

November 16, 2014

“Are people who live in areas where knowing several languages is a routine part of life are less narcissistic on average than monolingual areas?”

– Of course, I was only talking about language learning in adulthood. Children in general find it much easier to learn foreign languages because the narcissistic woulds are still not there.

“In that case, the United States must have tons of narcissists. The amount of people who freak upon hearing “Press 2 for Spanish” is ridiculous. I’ve had friends who refused to watch movies with subtitles.”

– Did you see my post on the German language program closing down in a neighborhood school? Many people simply don’t get a chance to learn, not because they have any psychological issues but because the languages aren’t taught.

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1. Anonymous
  
  November 20, 2023
  
  Exactly, I know a few narcissists who are genuinely multilingual because they had hordes of private tutors as they were growing up.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 20, 2023
    
    How many languages do you speak? Because you seem to have a strange understanding of how language acquisition works.
    
    Also, how do you know these people are narcissists? Usually, nobody who isn’t extremely close to them knows.
    
    Another question is the high incidence of narcissists among your acquaintance. Who’d want to hang around several of these dysfunctional people?
    
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cliff arroyo

November 16, 2014

I disagree.

The “Press 1 for English” is another political issue* and there’s nothing inevitable about watching things with subtitles.

My test is living (by choice) in a different language environment. And in my experience in Poland Americans don’t do badly at all. Even though Polish is a crazy, Slavic (but I repeat myself) language Americans, even without previouis exposure do far better on the whole than not only known slackers like the British and French but supposed Euro-language prodigies like the Scandinavians and the Dutch. I’m talking about long term residents (not people who arrive with an exit date already pencilled onto their calendar).

*language is one of the few things that can hold the propositional nation of America together so when someone is perceived as messing with it people will be upset, I think those who get too upset about it are being silly, but it is a legitimate (if small) concern

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2014
  
  Narcissism is an individual personality disorder. I haven’t encountered any specific issues with teaching Americans as opposed to anybody else.
  
  The most difficult group to teach are heritage speakers, especially when they are integrated into a larger group of non-native learners. But that has nothing to do with narcissism. It’s simply that they have very different problematic areas in their use of the language. For instance, it took me a while to figure out what “hallabés” means when written by a heritage speaker. Now I know that it means “a la vez.”
  
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November 16, 2014

This is an interesting theory and would explain a lot.

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aglaonika

November 16, 2014

Language learning is a horrible thing, it always makes me shiver. I hate it with a passion, but as my native language is a small language, I don’t have too many choices. I always feel revolted that I have to waste my time with stupid things like that, not to talk about the injustice that native speakers of big languages don’t have to suffer for years just to develop a tolerable knowledge of a language that has any value on the global job market. There’s nothing interesting in language learning, no beauty (like many people claim), nothing, just a lot of sweat, and a huge pain and frustration and anxiety. It requires no imagination, no creativity, no thought, just parroting back the brainlessly memorized words. What an idiotic waste of time. I always have to distort my thoughts just to express myself in a way that other people can understand. I always feel myself like a stupid monkey. Everybody should just speak the same language, and the problem would be solved at once.

On the other hand, as I was raised by an extreme narcissist in a highly abusive family, I do have a narcissistic wound, so the claims of your post may be right. I don’t know exactly how this narcissistic wound manifests itself in my case, as it can be resulted in many kinds of mental health problems. I don’t think I’m a hardcore narcissist, but it’s very likely that I have some narcissistic tendencies like almost everyone who comes from a similar background.

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cliff arroyo

November 16, 2014

“Language learning is a horrible thing, it always makes me shiver”

I think of it as one of the most interesting voyages of discovery possible.

“the injustice that native speakers of big languages don’t have to suffer for years just to develop a tolerable knowledge of a language that has any value on the global job market”

That is an issue worth discussing, hough in the European context, British people are mostly not helped by being monolingual – in my experience they are the most communicatively incompetent people imagineable.

“just parroting back the brainlessly memorized words”

Sounds like you’re doing it wrong.

“Everybody should just speak the same language”

What a horrible drab world that would be. In languages 1 equals 0 (see what I wrote about Brits).

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2014
  
  ““Language learning is a horrible thing, it always makes me shiver”
  
  – I agree with aglaonika on this. I admire my students for willingly subjecting themselves to the horror. I learned because I had to but I still get headaches even when I just remember the process. Brr. Today, I would not be able to repeat this feat (I’m talking specifically about my learning Spanish in adulthood). My psyche is less malleable and can’t withstand such a heavy blow today.
  
  “I think of it as one of the most interesting voyages of discovery possible.”
  
  – There is no contradiction here. Trauma can lead to very positive developmental achievements.
  
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2. aglaonika
  
  November 16, 2014
  
  “I think of it as one of the most interesting voyages of discovery possible.”
  It’s different when it’s a real choice not a constraint. The interesting part and discovery (maybe) only comes after years of sweat and frustration.
  
  “Sounds like you’re doing it wrong.”
  Yes, that can be true, but how else do you memorize words? To speak a language fluently you have to memorize about 20,000 words.
  
  “What a horrible drab world that would be.”
  There would be more time for other things, and people would understand each other better.
  
  ” In languages 1 equals 0 (see what I wrote about Brits).”
  So do you think someone who only speaks 1 language is the same as someone who can’t speak at all?
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 16, 2014
    
    In order actually to absorb a word, you need to use it actively at least 15 times. Only then does it become part of your active vocabulary. So yes, it’s blood, sweat, and tears.
    
    I spent the summer away from any actual native speakers. I was reading, writing, watching TV in Spanish for hours every day. But still, it took some time and effort to get the fluency back after the summer holidays.
    
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    1. methylethyl
      
      November 20, 2023
      
      That’s always been my problem: I’m lazy, and rather asocial. Learning to use new words, phrases, and grammar, with other people requires me to get out and talk to other people. It’s exhausting! I tried really hard anyway, and the bits I did learn were utterly fascinating, but I’m afraid I will never live up to my polyglot dad’s dreams for me. He had the completely unfair advantage of spending years of his early childhood in Istanbul (Navy brat)(and yeah, learned Turkish osmotically at seven, from the workmen and neighborhood kids), going to a school that taught in French for half the day, and then being sent to translator school when he joined the military himself.
      
      I tried mightily with self-study programs, and then spent a lot of time in-country where almost nobody spoke English. It was a marvelous learning experience, I felt like a ridiculous clown all the time and it was great for getting over my gigantic ego… but I’m still really bad at those languages. Met a lot of wonderful people and learned a load of practical things I might never have picked up stateside. So as a language-learning project: total failure. But completely worth the effort!
      
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  2. Anonymous
    
    November 19, 2023
    
    People speaking the same language don’t necessarily understand each other. Assumptions are easily made about what is being said because there is a shared language. I was with an abusive narcissist for 4 years and often said that if we slowed down to think about what was being communicated, there might be fewer fights (I didn’t know she was a narcissist – I gave her the benefit of the doubt when she was twisting words and claiming miscommunication when she got caught in lies). I suggested we tried slowing down and writing things before just blurting out twisted garbage… allowing the other to fully speak before responding – something you do when trying to communicate in a non native language.
    
    I think the effort made to communicate and understand in a foreign language can help people to get along better and that taking for granted that we share perspectives and meaning can at times add to misunderstandings.
    
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Clarissa

November 16, 2014

“not to talk about the injustice that native speakers of big languages don’t have to suffer for years just to develop a tolerable knowledge of a language that has any value on the global job market”

– Let’s at least be grateful that the global language is the “no-grammar-to-speak-of” English and not, for instance the “I-will-slaughter-you-with-endless-declensions-and-conjugations” Russian. Or the “five-letters-pronounced-as-one-weird-sound” French. Or the “let’s-create-endless-words-by-jamming-a-hundred-words-together-just-to-bug-everybody” German. Or the “I-will-stick-the-most-important-word-at-the-end-of-the-sentence-to-bug-you” Latin.

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1. aglaonika
  
  November 16, 2014
  
  ” Let’s at least be grateful that the global language is the “no-grammar-to-speak-of” English”
  
  Haha, that’s true. And I can’t even learn this. Kids who were just 2 years older than me had to learn Russian back in school, so I was lucky, as Russian is a much harder language to learn than English. However the English teachers who tried to teach us… omg… they were retrained Russian teachers, and learned from the same book as the kids. I also learned German, but after a while I changed it to French. I spoke French relatively well in my early to mid twenties, but as I didn’t practice it, I forgot a lot. And that’s another thing I hate about language learning. You just forget it. Fuck that.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 16, 2014
    
    Your written English is sensational. Only a tiny minority of native speakers writes this well.
    
    I also forgot all of my French. Curiously, it happened in the French- speaking Quebec. The people there were so mean about my accent and vocabulary that I stopped trying and eventually just forgot it.
    
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ladyleahjane

November 16, 2014

I actually know two narcissists who tried to take a foreign language at the university level here. Both of them never got any further than a D, but rather than give up on the language, they now feign fluency, even though a native speaker could easily detect that they never made it past “How are you”, “I like fish”, and “This is a pen”.

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musteryou

November 16, 2014

Golly

http://www.lionsroar.com/how-we-get-hooked-shenpa-and-how-we-get-unhooked/

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Clarissa

November 16, 2014

Shenpa-schmenpa. This is simply a negative mother complex + oral stage traumas. Addressing the resulting behavior but not the cause leads to nothing but endless masochism.

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1. musteryou
  
  November 16, 2014
  
  Really? I’m actually reading this article at the moment to find out how Westerners think, although it is seemingly related to Eastern thinking. My own view is something apart again. I think it takes tremendous nourishment within one’s veins to engage in the kind of openness or epistemic nihilism that this article is advocating. So. The need for nourishment could perhaps, at a push, be related to oral trauma. I would just call it nourishment. And it is not possible to enter this open field of nothingness unless one is full.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    November 16, 2014
    
    Here: “Those of us with strong addictions know that working with habitual patterns begins with the willingness to fully acknowledge our urge, and then the willingness not to act on it. This business of not acting out is called refraining. Traditionally it’s called renunciation. . . There’s the possibility of catching the urge to do the habitual thing, and not doing it.”
    
    – Repressing the urge, blah-blah, exercising willpower, blah blah. I call this masochism. It will work 100 times and then you will be too tired. sad, overwhelmed, whatever, and you won’t be able to self-control. As we say, “never struggle with yourself because the forces are too unequal.”
    
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    1. musteryou
      
      November 16, 2014
      
      Yeah, I know. I didn’t post that article because I was impressed by it, but because it seemed to relate to the narcissism issue via the notion of being hooked on some kind of reaction which would temporarily inflate you and block your fear responses.
      
      I agree the solution either isn’t very good or isn’t very clear.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        November 16, 2014
        
        The article is useful in that it will get people to think about this on a more profound level than what is usually offered, so that’s good.
        
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        musteryou
        
        November 16, 2014
        
        I can’t really read that sort of stuff usually and don’t read it generally, but I am starting out on a new sequence in my life, so I am being more open than normal.
        
        What I did discover in my own explorations was that you do need a sense of a lot of internal nourishment if you are going to embark effectively on any useful activities. There is a key to all of this, which is also found even in the most noxious and otherwise superficial showing like “eat, pray, love”. Her primary drive is to “eat”. Well, I am by no means a Freudian, but perhaps this speaks to oral trauma. It addresses, at any rate, the issue of nourishment. I have nothing to say about praying and loving, at the moment, or why they should follow that sequence.
        
        I have tended to view nourishment more in terms of logistics or even your oxygen supply, if you are climbing a tall mountain. It’s a real need. It probably can be symbolically relegated to the motherly side of things, even in terms of the idea of an umbilical cord.
        
        The ideal of “shamanism” (as per Nietzsche, Bataille) is to have the capacity to adventure freely, independently of the internal constraints of social control. But I think most people cannot do it — cannot reach that point of active nihilism — because they are not first well-fed enough internally.
        
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meansomething

November 16, 2014

Your post made me remember, with great fondness, my college German teacher, who remains one of the best of the many teachers I have had. She told us on the first day that we had to be able to laugh at ourselves and our mistakes. What a delightful woman she was, and how much we did laugh! I also still remember walking back into her class with a new haircut the first day of junior year and how she cried out, “Du hast die Haare geschnitten!” It’s these weird little things that students do remember.

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NancyP

November 17, 2014

Americans generally are bad at languages because there are not a huge number of opportunities to use a non-English language every day or even every week in a face to face conversation in the course of daily life. This is changing some, and is highly location dependent, but at least in the Midwest, one has to try hard to get regular exposure to live conversation. (Radio and TV are traditional resources, but are one-way.).

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NancyP

November 17, 2014

I have the additional issue that most of my knowledge of Italian, German, French is from opera, so the situations and language are all pazzo (crazy) , relative to real life. No useful dialogue like “where’s the ladies’ loo?” – just “Gods, have pity!”, “I’ll kill him!”, “Farewell, dear Swan (bird)”, or “I am dying for love”. 😉

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Clarissa

November 17, 2014

“No useful dialogue like “where’s the ladies’ loo?” – just “Gods, have pity!”, “I’ll kill him!”, “Farewell, dear Swan (bird)”, or “I am dying for love”. ”

– So you stand in the middle of the street, yelling “Gods, have pity!” until somebody does take pity on you and shows you the way to the ladies’. 🙂 🙂

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cliff arroyo

November 17, 2014

That reminds me reading of an opera fan visting Italy and realizing that he could theoretically say lots of things to the waitress but they were all along the lines of

“the gods will crush the unholy Roman empire”
“you are no longer my daughter, but an Egyptian slave”
“God will forgive me, he sees I’m suffering”
“the riddles are three, and one is life!”

but he had no idea how to order a cup of coffee.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 17, 2014
  
  I have a Mexican friend who speaks like that, and only like that, in his native language. 🙂 His emails that, in my rendering, would sound like “Hey, wanna get a cup of coffee?” go on for several very convoluted and exquisite paragraphs.
  
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2. Stille (@aperfectbalance)
  
  November 17, 2014
  
  This was precisely the situation with me and German in my teenage years, only rather than opera mine was cribbed from German goth band lyrics. It was quite funny since my sister had started German at school and she quickly understood which words in her homework I could help translate.
  
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Laura Tamm

June 25, 2018

Hi Clarissa, I found this through a google search because this is a
Theory I’ve been developing independently just through my experience of meeting (a fair share of) pathological narcissists thanks to my background in translation and conference interpreting. I find that they can be covert, high-functioning and extremely successful and on top of their game professionally but even after living for a few years abroad they still can master basic idiomatic expressions and end up sounding like they’re constantly translating literally from their own native language. This could be the subject of super interesting academic research. I was wondering if you have any other info to share on this topic.

https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js

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Laura Tamm

June 25, 2018

*they still can’t

https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.js

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Clarissa

June 25, 2018

I think your observations make a lot of sense , Laura. I haven’t done any research into the subject but it’s ripe for the picking.

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Kevin

December 21, 2019

I’d just like to point out that this observation is specific to Americans. Narcissists from other countries or who speak other languages than English as a first language will gladly learn English to fit their ideal image.

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