Materials for learning

We notice that some things have gotten much easier with advances in technology.

One of our consultants was going through his recipe files (cooking seems to have gained renewed interest in these locked-down times), and found one from long ago in a foreign-language class.  While musing on the possibility of actually making the dish, he thought of the task of teaching a foreign language in those times.  The recipe was typed (this was before word processors), which of course required a typewriter.  For Spanish and French one could make do with a regular English-language machine, putting in the accents and other marks by hand later, though it was far more classy (and legible) to have an imported model.  The one Russian typewriter at that school, though, was jealously guarded by that teacher.  They were hard to find, expensive, and (this was during the Cold War) possibly meant Dealing with the Enemy.

So the introduction of the typewriter probably made learning a foreign language slightly harder.  The mechanical linkage between the key and the type bar made them rather inflexible as to font.  In some models there was a key you could change out for a special symbol, but it was only late in the period when you could shift from one font to another completely by changing the type ball of something like the IBM Selectric.

With the advent of the computer as word processor all that changed.  Now you can download dozens of different language keyboards to your machine, and shift from one to another word by word if you want.  We know a Medieval Studies professor who even types in runes.  You can write legibly in whatever language you like; and with spell-check and grammar-check, you get a good start on writing properly.

What else do you need to learn a language?  Written and oral samples, of course.  Written materials generally presented no problems, though if you were learning Russian during the Cold War you had to endure a great deal of ponderous propaganda.  Spoken-word examples were harder.  There were occasional special programs on the educational TV channel, but the selection was limited and the times inflexible (machines to record video were few and expensive).  Vinyl records were sometimes available, but they were easily scratched and rarely sent home with students.  Later on, tape cassettes opened up larger possibilities.  Mostly you were dependent on listening to your teacher.

Now, not only can you listen to audio files in almost every known language at the click of a mouse, there are whole learn-to-speak-whatever programs, so taking a class is not necessary.  The news as broadcast from Paris or wherever is right there.  We find that switching among language options on Wikipedia helps a lot when combining words from a dictionary (also there at the click of a mouse), to get the right phrasing.

The materials and aids to learning a language are much richer and easier to use now than in the last century.  So there should be a much higher proportion of polyglots, right?