|
 |
How did you choose your target language? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Hencke Tetraglot Moderator Spain Joined 6894 days ago 2340 posts - 2444 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, Finnish, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 41 of 141 11 January 2006 at 3:34pm | IP Logged |
|
(Dajiahao - Just found this site and joined a couple of days ago. This looks like a good spot to jump in with my first post and start swimming.)
Well, except for the two languages I had "for free" from the beginning, and the ones we did at school, I can't really be sure whether it was a matter of me picking a language or them picking me. Mainly chance and circumstance anyways, plus a slightly addictive streak in me about languages (read "language-junkie"). I remember flirting around with French a little in my early teens, since my parents happened to have a French audio-course lying around (Linguaphone: olden-day honest-to-God vinyl, no new-fangled internet whiz-bang stuff in those days - talking late 60's, early 70's here). At that sort of age pronunciation and accent come easy of course, and I tended to be rather stubborn with it as well (the addictive streak rearing its head even then). A year or two later we started doing French at school and I still have fond memories of the sensation caused in class by my near-native accent. How were they supposed to know I had "cheated" by studying on my own :o). Still, I ended up moving on to other things and never really went for it in a serious way and my French is still somewhere at a low intermediate level to this day. The pronunciation is still pretty good though. Around the same time a Japanese exchange student happened to move in next door, renting a room from our neighbours. I quickly befriended this unsuspecting subject and started pestering him about teaching me some Japanese. It evolved into interviewing sessions on a fairly regular basis with me asking questions (read 3rd degree) and noting down everything and trying to find a system to it, without the help of any kind of grammar books or other material, just the one living native-speaking specimen. Hmmm, thinking about it afterwards the chic factor may have played a part, but I don't know. Not a major part though. Years later I got my hands on a Japanese for beginners self-study book and did a bit of work on that. It was actually a little weird, and rather satisfying at the same time, to recognise some of the rules and regularities I had discovered on my own before, and to see other quite basic ones explained, that I hadn't had an inkling about. I have a feeling somewhere at the back of my head that I might just get around to taking it up again some time in the future. As it is I at least have the satisfaction of being able to pick up a word here and there whenever I hear Japanese. In the case of Spanish, I first got interested through my radio-listening hobby (DX-listening), sitting up nights tuning in to Spanish and South-American stations. There I really went all out, the addictive streak blossoming up to its full potential. I started going through books and any other material I could lay my hands on like mad, kept it up for years, and here I am quite a number of years later, living and fairly settled in Spain (after detours of a few years living in Sweden and a four-year stint in the UK), Spanish wife, more or less going/gone native, the works. At some point in between I tried my hand at Italian for a short while. Not sure what that was sparked off by, perhaps some Italians we had among our friends at the time. Catalan, same thing. Still, knowing Spanish and some French, you can usually get the drift of things in Italian, Catalan, Portuguese, certainly in writing, and listening to some extent. By the way Romanian could be interesting to look into at some point. A friend from those parts showed me some of the basics once. What caught my eye about it was that the definite articles are not separate words in front of the noun, but tagged on as endings just like we do in Swedish. Except for the other Scandinavian languages and Icelandic I am not really aware of any other language that does that. The latest craze for me now, is Mandarin, triggered by a visit to China last year, that I had a chance to do for work. I have been at it for a little over four months now, studying mainly by the method known scientifically as "random thrashing about", digging up whatever I can find, mainly on the net. Oh, but it is so much easier these days to dig up material and whatever on the internet - for language study, or anything else for that matter. We'll see how long I can keep it up. I'm not worried really. For me the main thing is to have fun with it and enjoy the process and not focus too much on the results which are always bound to fall some considerable distance short of expectations. The actual results will be very welcome too of course, as and when we start seeing any of those. Even a pedestrian-level fluency in Mandarin is still so far off beyond the horizon that I'd go crazy to even try to think about it or measuring progress against it. Let's just have fun and enjoy learning these five new characters today, and maybe another five tomorrow, and after a while who knows where we'll be... Well, this somehow turned into a rather long rant. If you have stayed with me this far, besides deserving a medal, you may be wondering about the two languages I mentioned as having had "for free" in the beginning, and the others we did at school. The two "free" ones were Swedish, my mother tongue, and Finnish, which I had all around me growing up in Finland, and as such also learned the "natural" way, without any real effort, by absorption from the surroungings. And the "school" languages were English, German and French. Cheers, Henrik 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6909 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 42 of 141 11 January 2006 at 4:22pm | IP Logged |
|
There aren't that many "Henriks" outside the Swedish speaking "sphere"...
Hope you like this forum. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7146 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 43 of 141 11 January 2006 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
|
Welcome to the forum, Hencke.
I enjoyed reading your story. I can relate to much of it. One of the best presents I ever got from my parents was a second hand short wave radio when I was about eleven years old. I used to love tuning in to all parts of the world and I wrote off to a number of stations to ask for their free language material. I still listen to some short wave but you get much better reception on the Internet. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Clintaroo Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6871 days ago 189 posts - 201 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Tagalog, Indonesian | Message 44 of 141 06 February 2006 at 7:03am | IP Logged |
|
Italian - I really had no choice as I learnt it at high school. It was compulsory for only one year, but I decided to continue with it for the whole six years of high school. It really is a beautiful language, and as for chic factor... I've found that many Australians are impressed no matter what second language you speak! Hopefully, I can visit Italy within a few years.
Japanese - My interest in Japanese was spawned after a homestay trip to Japan. Since then, I've dabbled about in grammar books and I have a basic level of knowledge. I will study it at university due to my interest in Japan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6959 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2 | Message 45 of 141 05 December 2008 at 6:39am | IP Logged |
|
I just thought I'd revive this old thread (I'm not sure if there's a similar one running currently, sorry if there is) because I think it's nice to find out why we're all here.
I have already posted my reason for learning Spanish (on page 3), but I thought I would post my reason for learning Russian. In 2005 I was living in Spain and, desperate for something to read in English, I was given a book called "The Bronze Horseman" by Paullina Simons. I didn't have any expectations, I was just glad it was in language I could relax with! It is essentially a romance novel, which normally isn't my kind of thing! But it is set in Russia during the Leningrad Blockade of WW2, something I knew nothing about. The way the author combined this great love story with the historical and cultural aspects was fantastic. I knew nothing about this country, it's people or it's history...and I fell in love. From the moment I put down the book I couldn't get Russia out of my head. I have been learning the language ever since (slowly but surely!). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 46 of 141 05 December 2008 at 9:35am | IP Logged |
|
French--I attened a grade school that taught French, and when I was able to take a foreign language in high school, French was a pretty natural choice.
Spanish--It's a rather practical language in this part of the world, and it has a reputation for being easy. If you speak both English and French, it's really easy. German--When I was in graduate school, I was told that students who went on for a doctorate would need to be able to read both French and German. I never went on for the doctorate, but I did travel through Europe and found German to be very helpful. Italian--Many Italian-Americans live in my area, and a local Italian-American group offered very reasonably priced classes every year. After two other Romance languages, Italian is a breeze. I've studied some Portuguese and Norwegian, and if I weren't so busy teaching English, I'd be even more serious in my language study. Wonderful friends from Brazil inspired me to learn some Portuguese, and posts on this forum about Norwegian got me curious about that language. I'm also curious about other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| learninghelp Newbie United States Joined 5833 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 47 of 141 05 December 2008 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
|
I chose French because it was the only language offered by my high school, and because taking a language was required. I hated it so much!!! The only thing that helped me learn was free online videos. I mostly wasted time on youtube and studio4learning.tv. I passed the course, thank God, and not je suis parler vous francais!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kenney90 Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5872 days ago 24 posts - 39 votes | Message 48 of 141 05 December 2008 at 6:32pm | IP Logged |
|
Well, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and due to the high Mexican population, I started learning Spanish in school since preschool. However, I was totally turned off of languages by the way my high school taught it, so I quit taking Spanish. Then I remember watching a documentary on the History Channel about the Islam, and I was fascinated by the whole culture. Almost everything about Muslim culture fascinated me, from the architecture, to the calligraphy, especially the calligraphy. After I saw that program, I immediately went on the computer and looked for the Arabic alphabet, and that's how it all started.
So far I'm learning: Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hindi/Urdu, and Pashto. Planning on learning: Uyghur, Somali, Swahili, Malay, Indonesian, Bengali, Hausa, Serbo-Croatian, Albanian, Chechen, and maybe even Tamazight. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
