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How to choose what to learn? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Matthew12 Newbie United States Joined 4316 days ago 13 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, German | Message 1 of 15 05 March 2014 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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There are so many cultures that I'm interested in, and I wish I could learn every
language in the world. However, I'm obviously going to start with one and I can't decide; I would love to live in Egypt, Norway, Japan, Brazil, France, Germany, etc.; but I simply cannot learn all of them. So I wanted to know what methods I should use when deciding what language to learn? What did you guys do? 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5253 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 15 06 March 2014 at 1:43am | IP Logged | ||
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This comes up so often, Matthew12. Most of the time I bypass these posts because it is so individual and we're all different, but you asked us, not to choose a language for you, but, how we chose our languages.
First of all, welcome to the forum! Spanish chose me. I first heard it as a boy on my transistor radio in the upper US South. There was something magical about listening to what was obviously a baseball game broadcast in January with snow outside my window. After the game, Salsa music was playing and it moved my soul. The broadcast was from Cuba, a country with "issues" with the US. All I knew about it was what I'd heard and read from a US perspective. I was determined to find out as much as I could about the country and people. I wanted to understand the lyrics to those amazing songs, the newscasts and Fidel's speeches. That meant I had to learn Spanish. I did and now I understand all that and more. Portuguese came about because I'd been listening to Brazilian music for years and, thanks to Spanish, I could understand some of it. Then, while traveling, I met some Brazilians and was blown away by their friendliness and relaxed attitudes. I decided to learn Portuguese after I had learned Spanish to an advanced level. Learning more, from outside "course-world", introduced me to literature, poetry, history, philosophy and ways of looking at the world that snowballed into more desire to better my Spanish. One day, it all came together for me. I found myself happily reading Pablo Neruda and García Lorca in their native language. I was enjoying telenovelas, books and films in Spanish. Later, I found myself hanging out in an independista bar in Puerto Rico and discussing politics and culture with native-speakers. I traveled in Spain, Mexico and Central America, loving every minute of it and lording it over the other gringos whose Spanish was more Tarzan-like. I remember once that I was sitting in a taxi in Puerto Rico after having done the Bacardi tour and talking to the driver in Spanish for quite some time while we waited for the van to fill up. A couple came in and we left for the Cataño ferry back to San Juan. When we got to the dock and were about to get out the wife asked the driver how to get somewhere and he asked me if I knew. I answered her in my Upper South accented English and she was shocked. I love doing that to US northerners because, as Jeff Foxworthy said, they automatically deduct a hundred IQ points from you whenever you open your mouth and hear your southern accent. The same thing happened with Portuguese. The more I learned, the more the cultures and the people encouraged me to dig deeper. I have a real passion for the language. Haitian Creole came about because of opportunity and a desire to know more about a nearby people and their culture. I stopped after intermediate level because of a lack of media that interests me and my Haitian friend moving away. I'm conversational but I hesitate to move it to speaks right now. I plan to pick it up again after my Ladino studies. Ladino is "Judeo-Spanish". The language of the Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal over 500 years ago. I was fascinated by a people who were able to maintain their language and culture for so long so far away from their homeland living as a minority amongst others who spoke other languages. I'm not even Jewish! Something about that tenacity in hanging on to their identity through this language attracts me. I want to learn more about the language, the people who speak (spoke) it and their culture. I will never be able to speak Ladino in the same way I can speak Spanish and Portuguese because, well, there's not really anyone to talk to and I won't be able to watch a TV series in Ladino, read modern Ladino literature, comic books or even translations of English language books. Still, I am enjoying learning the language and about the people who speak/spoke it. So, you see, Matthew12, it's about passion for me, not about the language per se. There must be some culture's language you find yourself leaning to maybe just a little bit more than all the others. Maybe that's Spanish. Your profile says that you're at an intermediate level in Spanish. If so. I'd advise you to take it to an advanced level and ditch German for now. If not, well...hopefully you'll decide on another one to learn. The benefits of having learned one foreign language to a high level are enormous. Having that one second language under your belt makes learning the next one or two, or three, that much easier- because you will have the experience of knowing how to, and how you, learn. You will also know, from personal experience, more about how languages work. You can read about language learning til the cows come home but you won't get that advantage without that experience. That's why I advise adult beginners to learn one language to a high level first in order to gain those advantages that you don't have and won't have as a novice. If you don't have a passion and can't find one, I don't know. Perhaps picking one at random and thoroughly devoting yourself to learning (not just with courses) it, that may develop and grow the passion within you. Passion is what pushes you through the hard times in language-learning, in my experience, because you want to "keep your eyes on the prize". Without that passion, it will be awfully difficult to speak and understand any second language well. The good news about passion is that it can develop and grow as you learn, but that doesn't always happen. Good luck and let us know what you decide. It's your choice to make! Edited by iguanamon on 06 March 2014 at 4:25pm 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 15 06 March 2014 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi @Matthew12!
Like says in his beautiful post @iguanamon it's all about passion. If you ask to all the user of this forum you will notice it in everyone's answers! Even more, with people who succeeds learning a language you'll see answers like - It is amazing to my ears! - I'm in love with the culture! - I'm in love with a speaker and I want to learn the language he/she uses when he/she speaks! - I feel a great pleasure while speaking in that language! - I indeed wasn't enthusiast about the language but the more I studied it the more I started to appreciate it and now I cannot live without! Right now I desire to read Persian and Tamil poetry, speak Mandarin, Japanese, Turkish and Arabic with natives, master English and French, watch movies in every Romance languages, as well as most of Asiatic ones... after, to decide which one to choose, my advice is don't think that you should / it would be useful / it is fairly easy otherwise you only hurt yourself getting bored to death and losing confidence about your skills... the parameters are different and don't have the same importance for everyone.... for example - which language do you find more enjoyable to ear? - which culture attracts you the most? - what are your passions? do you like poetry? do you like movies? there is an author that you like so much that you want to read him in his original language? are you falled in love with a native speaker of a foreign language? there are immigrants that want to learn their heritage language, there people with a faith in a religion and want to learn how to read the classical writings... - do you like big challenges and you want to learn languages that are so legendary difficult to be almost impossible? - which is the country you'll like to live the most? You can have even the most trivial reason of the world but if it's yours and you believe on it than it's the best reason to choose that language! Just avoid thinking exclusively in practical terms, they can be useful if you have the same passion for two or more languages but in general if you want to learn korean you don't have to study german only because it's more useful for work (just an example). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7147 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 15 06 March 2014 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's my decision-making process in a nutshell.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Matthew12 Newbie United States Joined 4316 days ago 13 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, German | Message 5 of 15 06 March 2014 at 9:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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@tristano
But what if you have the same level of interest, the same passion, the same love of the countries' respective cultures? How would you make a decision on what to learn first? I think I should rephrase my original question, how do you decide with which language you should begin? Of course I wouldn't choose a language to learn based on its level of practicality; but say I (like you mentioned in your post) want to eventually speak Mandarin, Turkish, Japanese, and Arabic later in life. How would you decide which one to immediately begin learning? You can't learn all of them simultaneously, but eventually you will learn all of them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Matthew12 Newbie United States Joined 4316 days ago 13 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, German | Message 6 of 15 06 March 2014 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks @Chung! I think that's exactly what I needed.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5900 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 15 06 March 2014 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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You've listed Spanish and German as languages you're studying. How did you pick those?
I've dabbled in a lot of languages and it's usually either because I love the language itself for reasons I don't understand (Hebrew, Hungarian) or because there's music in the language that I love (Italian, Japanese) and that triggers it and gets me interested in other aspects of the culture, including the language. Sometimes it works out in such a way that the personality traits associated with the culture are exactly what I need right now. But I don't really have a decision-making process, things just kinda develop on their own and before I know it I'm doing intermediate lessons... Are you considering moving to any of these countries in the next not-too-many years? If yes, pick that one. If no, but you resist the idea of picking that language for that reason, cross that one off your list and go with one of the others. Try all your rational arguments and if you still feel like you should be doing something else, that probably means you have your answer :-) Go with what feels right - you'll have plenty of time for the others later. Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 8 of 15 07 March 2014 at 2:41pm | IP Logged | ||
You can study them all of course, and I tell you that for personal experience is better to study one new language per year (I'm doing exactly the opposite and I see the problems on it). If your interest is exactly the same then you can use practicality to decide. For example, the list you put on first post was your complete one? Which goals you have with these languages? Fluency written and spoken with all of them? A lot of things are simply personal. For example I don't have the same goals with all the languages, but I have priorities. The first goal with all the languages are in my radar is - being able to watch cinema and tv series in all of them. Verbal comprehension is my goal with every language. After there are languages that I want to be able most of all to read because of amazing value written resources, others because are exceptional for verbal communication, other I simply don't know yet. I can make you my short list of my goals with my most desired language to learn, just as example of what I'm telling you. - English: native like fluency - French: native like fluency - German: native like fluency - Spanish: native like fluency - Mandarin: professional proficiency in verbal communication, being able to read simple texts - Persian: good enough command of friendly communication, being able to read the poetry - Turkish: I don't have any clue yet :) - Arabic: good enough command of friendly communication, in Lebanese and Egyptian Arabic, being able to understand the media communication in MSA - Japanese: good command of verbal communication, not so interested in readings Even I nor {insert your favourite divinity's name here} knows how many language I want to learn. I choose Mandarin because takes years and I want to learn it at a professional level. Then I choose Persian because it's fairly easy but has a good return for the future in which I'll start studying Arabic. So even if I consider strange that the interest is exactly the same one, it is ok, if it is the same for all of them go to the reasons and make considerations on which are more convenient to learn first. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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