#115 Promising to Learn a New Language
Writing a novel, going vegan, or sending their future kid to public school are just a few of these great breakable promises. But by far the most common self improvement promise is to learn a new language.
This plan is first formulated when white people realize that two years of college Italian does not confer fluency. For the most part, these classes will only teach a white person how to order food in a restaurant, ask for a train schedule, and over pronounce words when they are mixed into English. Amazingly this small amount of proficiency is more than enough to warrant inclusion on a resume under “spoken languages.”
For many white people the lack of a second language is their greatest secret shame. It fills them with so much shame that they will literally spend the rest of their lives promising to learn a new language, but not so much shame that they will actually do it.
Whole entry here
Maybe I should finally sell my Liddell & Scott Greek Lexicon from college and my Anglo-Saxon primers.