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Josquin’s Language Symphony (RU, IR, 東亜) | ||
Tags: Gaelic (Scottish) | Gaelic (Irish) | Icelandic | Portuguese | Multilingual | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | Japanese | Russian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4700 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 601 of 646 07 March 2015 at 3:15am | IP Logged |
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mazal tov*
I love Hebrew, but you already know that :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 602 of 646 11 March 2015 at 4:35pm | IP Logged |
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WEDNESDAY, 11 MARCH 2015
Thanks, tarvos! Yes, I know that. :) I'm still not doing a lot with my languages, but I sneak in some minutes of study now and then. My focus is on Russian, Portuguese, and Hebrew at the moment. My Irish is on hold, just as my Japanese. Русский I have watched another episode of Кухня and I've been reading some Russian texts here and there, mainly from Colloquial Russian 2, my bilingual reader Ну что, поехали?, and some Dostoyevsky. The nice thing about language studies is that you get insights into a culture you normally wouldn't get. At first, studying Russian was all about the language, but now I have a genuine interest in the country, its society, politics, and history. The events in Ukraine have been all over the news for a year now and they triggered an interest in Russian and post-Soviet politics in me. So, now I can use my knowledge of Russian to inform myself about what's happening in the states of the former USSR. Because of the forum's "No politics" policy, I can't go into details here, but suffice it to say that you get interesting insights into a country, its society and government when you scratch a little on the surface of what's on the news. Português I completed Portugiesisch mit System a few days ago, but I'm not very happy about the level of my Portuguese right now. I'll have to keep working on it, probably with Lehrbuch der portugiesischen Sprache. עברית I'm making slow but steady progress in Hebrew. I'm on lesson 3 of the Routledge course right now. Hebrew has an interesting system of using suffixes for marking possession and it distinguishes between masculine and feminine in the 2nd person. That's rather interesting! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 603 of 646 29 March 2015 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
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SUNDAY, 29 MARCH 2015
Okay, it’s confession time. I haven’t done anything with my languages since I last posted here. In fact, I guess the time when I actively studied languages is over. I’m very much concentrating on my music right now and there simply isn’t any time left for languages. Also, I’m literally bored out by simply looking at textbooks and I don’t see any point any more in studying languages I have no use for. That doesn’t mean I’ll study languages never again, but I simply have to admit I’m not that kind of polyglot who can’t get enough of languages. I want to keep up my Russian and my Portuguese through listening and reading and if I found the motivation to do some Irish, Japanese, or Hebrew some time, that would be great. However, at the moment, the motivation simply isn’t there and I need to focus on other things. In fact, I have probably reached all the goals I had when I started studying languages systematically. I was very curious about a bunch of languages, but now my curiosity has been satisfied. I never aimed for fluency in any of my languages and I came to realize that many methods a lot of people on HTLAL seem to enjoy (e.g. Anki) just aren’t my cup of tea. I have reached a decent level in Russian and I achieved a solid foundation in Japanese, Portuguese, and Irish. That’s all I ever really wanted, so now that I have reached my goals I don’t see any point in going on. First and foremost, my interest is in music and not in languages. That’s something I had to remind myself of. Languages are nice, but not my true passion. I just can’t pursue language studies with the same zeal as most of the people on HTLAL, because my true passion is for music. So, yes, I decided to quit language studying for an indefinite time. I simply don’t enjoy it any more and I don’t want to force myself to do something I don’t enjoy. In fact, it rather distracts me from what I really want. If I resume any of my languages, I’ll inform you here. Until then, thanks for following this log! Goodbye! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5255 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 604 of 646 29 March 2015 at 6:27pm | IP Logged |
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A question that's always on my mind is: "At what point does language-learning become an end to itself?"- i.e., learning a language not because of a passion or a need but simply "because you can"? We all have a different answer. For me, I have yet to reach that point.
We'll miss you around here, Josquin, but I am happy for you that you have reached your goals with what you wanted in learning languages and will be able to devote more time to your music. Best of luck to you! Edited by iguanamon on 29 March 2015 at 11:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 605 of 646 11 April 2015 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
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SATURDAY, 11 APRIL 2015
Thanks for your kind words, iguanamon! Yes, language learning – like anything else – isn't supposed to be an end in itself. It has to provide some kind of satisfaction in order to remain interesting, so I guess I just reached a dead point in my studies. Classical case of language burn-out. Well, the last two weeks I had some time to think my goals and motivations over and I came to the conclusion that I simply want too many things at the same time. I want to write my thesis, I want to make music, I want to read books, I want to spend time with family and friends, and I also want to learn foreign languages. If I was to dedicate all my energy to every single of these activities every day, I would go crazy! I need some kind of alternation between my interests in order to remain flexible and prevent burn-out. As I said, I've noticed that my goals and motivs are probably quite different from most polyglots on this forum. Unfortunately, I haven't been conscious of this fact for a long time, so I tried to aim for goals that weren't mine. I do love languages, but I'm not crazy about them. I'm not passionate enough about them in order to study as intensively as a lot of people on this site do. Doing six-week challenges, working with Anki decks, and spending hours over textbooks is not what I want. It simply doesn't suit my goals. Unfortunately, I'm easily impressed, so I tried to "fit in" the polyglot community on HTLAL and adapt other people's goals and methods. I tend to do what I think other people might expect from me instead of what I really want. That has always been my problem. So, I studied more and more without asking myself what for. All this is now crystal-clear to me, so I have come to a conclusion. I will continue with my languages in a very loose fashion and only do what and how much I want. I simply asked too much of myself studying this many languages at the same time, so I will reduce the number. I haven't quite figured out yet which languages I'll keep, but, presumably, I'll go on with Russian and Portuguese, maybe also Japanese. I might also brush up my Italian some time, but we'll have to see about that. However, I don't have any use for Korean, Welsh, and Hebrew and all my other dabbling languages. I'm undecided about Irish and I have always wanted to do some Greek, but this might simply be too much. I think three languages is a good number. Anyway, I'll repeat once more that I'm not going to study systematically and regularly like I used to do. I'll study just for fun when I have the time and motivation. Confining myself to three languages isn't easy for me, because there are so many interesting and beautiful languages and I have always been prone to wanderlust. But I have recognized that I simply don't have enough time and energy in order to study every language that interests me. As I said, I tend to want too many things at the same time, so reducing unimportant things in order to make room for more important ones seems to be the only way to handle things at the moment. I hope that reducing my workload will bring back the joy and fun that I used to have with languages. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4137 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 606 of 646 11 April 2015 at 7:25pm | IP Logged |
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While there are definitely some polyglots here, I don't really think of HTLAL as a polyglot community. I know that I
have zero interest in learning enough languages to call myself a polyglot, and many of the logs that I follow aren't by polyglots or aspiring polyglots. It doesn't have to be all or nothing! I've recently (as in the past month) started learning to play the guitar, and I can definitely understand the pull of music. Make something beautiful! Whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck! Edited by Stelle on 11 April 2015 at 7:27pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5327 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 607 of 646 11 April 2015 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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Your life and well being will always be more important than language studies. Doing what suits you best is
the only sensible way. I am happy that you still operate as our captain, though. We'd be lost without you :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4837 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 608 of 646 12 April 2015 at 1:20pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you, Stelle and Cristina!
It's always good to pour out your heart in this log and get some positive feedback in return! :) It's not like my health or well-being was earnestly in danger, the real problem is rather that I want so many things that I don't find enough time for everything. Working on my thesis should be my main occupation (although often it isn't), followed by practising my music, and then everything else. Studying so many languages simply doesn't fit into my daily schedule any more. So, I need to reduce my language studies although it's really hard. Seeing so many diligent language lovers on HTLAL, I get a guilty conscience because I think I should be working much harder, but, of course, you're right. My life comes first, then everything else. Sometimes, I tend to think working and studying comes first and only after that I'm allowed to live... Damn German Protestant work ethic! ;) On the bright side, I combined the pleasant and the useful yesterday by listening to Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Евгений Онегин while following the Russian text in the libretto (which is based on the novel by our team patron Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin!). Definitely a pleasant experience! It reminded me of why I started learning Russian in the first place: in order to get access to the riches of Russian culture. Working with native materials will probably be the main part of my studies in the future. I even bought some Portuguese readers, which are surprisingly easy to understand. I have been working with textbooks for so long, I simply need something different and more entertaining now. Edited by Josquin on 12 April 2015 at 1:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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