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Regret you learned such language??? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| heartnsoul Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5749 days ago 45 posts - 47 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English*, Spanish Studies: Italian, German, Greek | Message 17 of 39 05 June 2009 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't regret a second that I spent learning any of the languages I know.
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| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5700 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 18 of 39 05 June 2009 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
All the "cool guys" hate it and the rest try to study even if no one really cares. I'll admit I'm not too keen on it either; I do sort of thoroughly know the basics but I couldn't imagine myself studying it after I leave high school. More than 70% of my fellow students during the last three courses I took got grades almost as low as possible, and this is in great contrast to my French lessons, obviously voluntary, where everybody is active and gets atleast a C from a test. Still, I'd imagine some kids like Swedish too, but they're an absolute minority. The amount of students who wrote Swedish as a high school matriculation subject dropped many percents again from last year this month. It'd probably be more effective if learning Swedish began at an earlier age... not in the seventh grade... by then, you've had plenty of time to sort of develop a mindstate that you're not even going to try because "it's a boring language" and "useless". Edited by Thatzright on 05 June 2009 at 10:40pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5952 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 19 of 39 06 June 2009 at 12:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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No, I've never regretted learning anything, including languages.
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| phouk Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 6066 days ago 28 posts - 48 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: Russian | Message 20 of 39 06 June 2009 at 2:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
There are a few differences, I just wanted to challenge the absolute statement that if you have to learn a language in school, you are bound to fail. For example, in the school I went to in Germany, English was the compulsory first language, which I learned from class 5 to 13. As a second language we could choose either Latin or French; other schools offer different languages. I took Latin (a choice which I partly regret, so this post is at least somewhat on topic :)); I had Latin from class 7 to 11. I don't think access to native speakers played a big role for me as a pupil, as there wasn't enough of that to make a huge difference. Access to English media was and is of course very easy, and did make a difference. English as a skill is taken very seriously in Germany. In business life, a sufficient command of English is a universal requirement and taken for granted; lacking English skills are a serious handicap. This is understood by pupils, teachers and parents alike, so when a child falls back in English, parents will sometimes take countermeasures like hiring a private tutor. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Keith Diglot Moderator JapanRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6805 days ago 526 posts - 536 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 21 of 39 06 June 2009 at 4:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Perhaps you hadn't noticed my country of residence. Dropping it is not a good option for me. One day I will be ridiculously fluent in Japanese and I will give hope to all you other Japanese learners. I will not pretend that I've always been good at Japanese and that it was easy for me. I will not even say that I am good at learning languages or that I have a talent for languages. I am not a talkative person. I do not let words come flying out of my mouth without giving it considerable aforethought. I do not like reading. I do not care for literature. It is very boring to me. People on this forum seem to think that native speakers don't have a very big vocabulary. I've seen references to 20,000 words. Once I had a coworker who had a dictionary of the most common 20,000 words in English. I thought surely there are some obscure words in there that I could easily and quickly find, but I couldn't. Well, in Japanese a native adult speaker has about a 40,000 to 45,000 word vocabulary. There are specific words for just about everything, but not everything. In English we need to put only 2 or more simple words together. Words which are easily understood. But in Japanese, this method creates a completely new word which is difficult to understand by the pronunciation only. Sometimes the Kanji clears up the meaning, though. But the Kanji creates the problem of not knowing the pronunciation when you encounter a word in reading. How many other languages have a writing system where the native adults can't always tell you how to read a word? Where people can't read the place names on maps of their own country? Where college graduates ask their coworkers if the email they are about to send out makes sense? Where college graduates also need to enter a word on their mobile phone to check how to write it? Despite all of this, and despite being in Japan for 6 years already, I still plan on becoming fluent in Japanese, in all aspects of the language. I never said I was going to give up. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| JasonBourne Groupie United States Joined 5780 days ago 65 posts - 111 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Arabic (Written), Turkish | Message 22 of 39 06 June 2009 at 6:31am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I also regret starting Japanese in college. It's a very unforgiving language for novices, and there are very few materials or classes to take beyond an intermediate level.
Also, being competent in Japanese isn't a very marketable skill anymore because of their terrible economy. Maybe some day it will... Oh yeah, and I HATE anime. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| nissimb Tetraglot Groupie India tenjikuyamato.blogsp Joined 6442 days ago 79 posts - 102 votes Speaks: Marathi*, Hindi, English, Japanese Studies: Korean, Esperanto, Indonesian | Message 23 of 39 06 June 2009 at 8:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes, Japanese for me. But for entirely different reasons as the ones mentioned by other Japanese learners here. I have learnt Japanese to a level where I can use the language professionally, so learning difficulties is no longer an issue for me. But the cultural experience of learning Japanese was probably the most painful experience in my life. Had I known before, I would have never learnt the language of such xenophobic, ethnocentric, and culturally chauvinistic people. And I can't even afford to forget Japanese because my bread and butter depends on it. Edited by nissimb on 13 June 2009 at 11:53am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6475 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 24 of 39 06 June 2009 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I liked this post very much. One observation - I would not recommend using one's native language as an argument in a discussion about "easy" and "hard" languages :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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