Language institutes are useless for promoting languages

Do you think that language institutes like the Instituto Cervantes, Goethe Institute, Francophonie are useless for promoting the language. That is, while they may have some benefits it would be much better to spend the money elsewhere:

Popular culture is 100 times more effective than 'high' culture.
The people who learn English do not learn it because of Shakespear or Dikens, they learn it because of Hollywood, the SImpsons and Eminem etc.
The people who learn Spanish are unlikely ever to read the original Cervantes, so marketing Spanish as "the language of Cervantes" is a bit stupid. I know someone who started learning SPanish because of movies by Del Toro, but I know noone who learned it because of Cervantes. The number of people who have decided to learn Japanese because of anime is probably much a thousand times greater than who decided for other reasons.

So do you think instead of investing money in INstitutes of CUlture garbage it is necessary to invest in the creation of TV shows, movies, comics, pop music etc? Should the Instituto Cervantes be renamed Instituto Telenovelas?

Don't they already make a huge number of Spanish language soap operas now? Same with Latin music and Mexican food.

What more do they need as far as pop culture goes?

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What would happen if you funded the printing of millions of copies of Cervantes, and started placing them in hotel or motel nightstands, etc. (like they do with bibles).

Is Don Quixote pretty much impossible to read nowadays (like Chaucer, Shakespeare, or the King James Bible)? Could this plan backfire, and end up turning potential Spanish learners away before they even got started?

Slogging through books like that can actually help quite a bit. I tried teaching myself German, by going through the Bible.

The people who learn English do not learn it because of Shakespear or Dikens, they learn it because of Hollywood, the SImpsons and Eminem etc.


These are not the reasons - English is learned in order to communicate with other people world wide.

<<These are not the reasons - English is learned in order to communicate with other people world wide. >>


Yes, but for other languages the 'usefulness' motivation doesn't exist. So if we cut away all the people who learnt English because of usefulness, then of the ones that are left there will be a lot more Simpsons fans than Shakespeare fans.

I don't agree with Tyrone.

People who learn English is because English usually is compulsory in the schools and also because English allows them to communicate with other people around the world. English is the Langua Franca.

I think the culture of a country or countries can be learnt throught languages (Nomatter whether it is the culture from the past or the present). Also we have to say that not everybody likes to study languages. Most people learn a language for need. (Of course most people in this forum like to learn language because of they are linguistics, or like lenguages, etc...

Thank you.

I really think English should be excluded from this discussion. English is a special case. Or maybe it should be about why people learn a language which has little importance in their country of residence. That way Spanish counts for a Russian, but not for a Brazilian. Russian counts for a Mexican, but not for a Ukrainian.

No language should be excluded from this discussion or topic.

<<Do you think that language institutes like the Instituto Cervantes, Goethe Institute, Francophonie are useless for promoting the language. That is, while they may have some benefits it would be much better to spend the money elsewhere: ...>>

Nowadays, the Goethe Institute is only useful in destroying the promotion of the German language, and, more problematic, makes it more difficult for foreign learners to learn real good German.

<<Nowadays, the Goethe Institute makes it more difficult for foreign learners to learn real good German.>>

Could you explain, how you came to this impression?

And: Isn´t it unimportant, why people are learning a language, since any language is useful?

Since everybody has the possibility to examine different learning styles before choosing the ones that match, nowadays, why should it be of importance, to discuss the usefulness of a language institute?

At least Goethe Institute and other Institutes promote "high culture" but Instituto Cervantes and other official Spanish organisations always try to lower the Spanish language to make it easier and try to give Spanish a image of proletariat language or something. As for Don Quixote, it's not that hard to read because Spanish hasn't changed as much as English since the XVI century.

So SS, what did you learn in The Instituto Cervantes is low Spanish? If you can read Don Quisote means Cervantes spoke low Spanish. I am not sure that everybody can understand old Spanish.

Cervantes' Spanish is not old Spanish.

I'm learning german for Goethe and russian for Tolstoï.

I studied German at Goethe Institut for quite a while and think they do a pretty good job at promoting the German language and culture. They also
helped me learn German to a point I couldn't forget it even after more than 11 years without using the language on a daily basis.

As for motivation for learning languages, my case is based on understanding origins, which was the reason why I wanted to learn Japanese (I used to practise judo and wanted to know what the techniques meant).
As for German, I used to hear about the beauty of German literature and had the pleasure to read Goethe in the original.

After watching "Les Misérables" I felt an urge to read Victor Hugo in French so I think that not all people feel like learning a language because of international importance (Japanese has been more "international" for me in Asia than English), movies (I hate Hollywood and initially learned English in order to understand songs) or anime (I DESPISE animes but don't criticize people who started learning Japanese because of it).

Most people I know who studied at Cervantes, Goethe or Alliance Française REALLY learned the language well so I don't see any reason to criticize these institutions.

Cheers,