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How did you choose your target language? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rafaelrbp Pentaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 7013 days ago 181 posts - 201 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Spanish, English, French, Italian Studies: German | Message 25 of 141 21 November 2005 at 6:57am | IP Logged | ||
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I've learned English mainly because its global importance and Internet predominance.
I'm learning Spanish because it's easy, close to Portuguese (mother tongue) and useful in Latin America. The next languages I'll choose will be based on usefulness and difficulty, because I don't have too much spare time to dedicate with language learning (2-3 hours a day). Probably French. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kveldulv Senior Member Italy Joined 6953 days ago 222 posts - 244 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Italian* | Message 26 of 141 25 November 2005 at 9:00am | IP Logged | ||
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Well.. I'm italian so I had to learn english at school and I've no particular problems with it... But schools can't teach a language, so I had to learn english by myself, listening to english songs (I love music!) and reading websites.
Now I'm learning Norwegian, I love nordic mithology (and Norwegian music); I know there is few material, but I think I can do it. Then I think I'll learn a useful language, maybe Spanish or German Edited by Kveldulv on 06 January 2006 at 4:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 27 of 141 13 December 2005 at 12:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Languages in the order that they came to me...or I to them...
English...I live in America, my parents are from America, my grandparents, great grandparents, etc. all native speakers so... ;) French...In high school I chose French instead of Spanish b/c I thought that Spanish sounded "dirty". Unfortunately my school only had 4 levels and I could only take 1 semester a year. So by the time I had French class again, 6 months later, I'd forgotten some. I didn't really study outside of class though. My friends and I would always speak it so most people wouldn't understand us. Italian...I think I fell in love with Italy the moment I got off the plane in Milan. I started self studying during my senior year. Later when I started college I was finally able to take an Italian course. Che bella lingua! If I'd stayed in college I would've probably transferred to major in Italian. Mandarin...After dropping out of college I decided to teach English in China. I immediately started learning Chinese. I went to China and stayed for about 20 months. I studied voraciously for the first 4 months there and spoke enough to get a non-english speaking girlfriend. Then we broke up, and I met a Russian girl. Russian...I always wanted to learn Russian and had tried it in the past but I just couldn't figure it out, it seemed to difficult. Then, while I was in China, I met a Russian girl, fell head over heels, and started learning Russian. One thing lead to another, and now she's my fiancee. As for learning Russian, it's been stop and go off an on, and it took me finding a real good Russian textbook written in English (instead of Chinese) to finally get my head around things. Now I'm off to the Ukraine on Jan. 5th to be with her...So, I'll probably learn some Ukrainian, but will try to stick with Russian. Languages that I've flirted with... Spanish...My school had this language class when I was in elementary school. I enjoyed it, but after 2 or 2 years they cut the funding to the classes. I was only 6 years old, and didn't continue on my own, because no one helped me basically. I listened to about half of the pimsleur Spanish lessons though. Japanese...Anime, anime, anime...and my dad works for a Japanese company...I listened to some of the Pimsleur lessons on a whim when I found them. I still remember some of the stuff I learned from those tapes. Watashi no tokoro de. haha... I will take it back up again, I'm sure. German...Met a German girl, thought I'd learn a little German...she had to leave, so I stopped and fully concentrated on Chinese... So in addition to wanting to improve in all of these languages. I also wanna learn Cantonese, Korean, Arabic, Greek, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese (which I can apparently read and get the jist of without having studied it) and Indoneseian (cos it's supposed to be the easiest and after all of these others I don't know if my brain can handle anything difficult) I would love to learn Finnish, or Hungarian but they seem too difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Andy E Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7103 days ago 1651 posts - 1939 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 28 of 141 13 December 2005 at 3:27am | IP Logged | ||
I think I'm detecting a theme here.... :¬) Andy. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Susanka Newbie Finland Joined 6925 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes | Message 29 of 141 13 December 2005 at 5:22am | IP Logged | ||
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The reasons I chose the languages I study are quite various: in school I studied French, Spanish, German (and a very little bit of Latin) because they were the only foreign languages that were offered. I want to learn Hungarian because I have been in the country and I'm madly in love with it, and as for the rest (Russian, Polish, Czech and Serbian), the main reason is that I'm very interested in that part of Europe, and I find the languages very beautiful and fascinating!
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| sapedro Triglot Senior Member Portugal descredito.blogspot. Joined 7118 days ago 216 posts - 219 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, French Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Greek | Message 30 of 141 13 December 2005 at 6:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Well....
English was the obvious choice for first language learned in school, and at that time French the second one. In the 10th grade I preferred German 1 to French 4, so I started it. As a Portuguese, I can speak some Spanish and Galician, because both languages are very close and understandable. I learned some Hungarian before I went there. I started Croatian some months before travelling to Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia, and I became ADDICTED to it :D Now I started Greek classes because, as an Eurovision Song Contest fan, I'm going there next year and my fan club mates decided to start a class, so I joined :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Zorndyke Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6958 days ago 374 posts - 382 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Czech | Message 31 of 141 13 December 2005 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
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I learn English and French at school, but then I first started Spanish one year ago and now I just started Swedish with "Assimil - Schwedisch ohne Mühe". My Spanish progress is very slow at present, due to a lack of motivation, but I´m intrinsically motivated in Swedish and I hope I will be able to "finish" this lang relatively fast so that I could complete at least one language by courtesy of self-study so that I can move on to the next one (or concentrate on Spanish)...
The reason for the two languages is mostly the accessibility of material. Moreover the usability of Spanish and a certain "chic" factor for Swedish. Edited by Zorndyke on 13 December 2005 at 10:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TDC Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6921 days ago 261 posts - 291 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, French Studies: Esperanto, Ukrainian, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Persian | Message 32 of 141 14 December 2005 at 1:09am | IP Logged | ||
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hehe...well...I didn't learn chinese specifically for getting a girl. As for German, that girl was just a friend, but then she had to leave unexpectantly. And I have always wanted to learn Russian I just had this idea that it was really really hard so I would start a little, then say, nope too hard. That happened maybe 3 times. But then I met my wonderful Lana. And well...I couldn't be happier :)
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