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My Language Crisis (Relatively Speaking) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 1 of 31 09 August 2012 at 5:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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HTLALers, I need some advice. I'll put my question at the top, because this post, I'm
afraid, is a bit long. Is it worth it to put in the effort to learn a language just for fun, although the chances are that you will not use the language? Feel free to skip the rest of the post and reply. If you want some background behind my question, read on. * * * * * My priority, when it comes to learning languages, is Japanese. I live in Japan and will do so long-term, so I need to master Japanese. There are other languages I'm dying to learn, such as French, Mandarin, and Portuguese. However, Japanese is my priority, and to this point in time my policy has been this: Don't study other languages while studying Japanese. Wait until after you've reached at least an advanced level of Japanese. Unlike most of you guys, I don't have hours upon hours a day that I can spend with three or four languages. One at a time is enough. But I do need a nice diversion from Japanese, so I have made an exception: Esperanto. I've studied it for two months so far, and I enjoy it. Why Esperanto? (1) It's fun. I think the language is cool, even with all the -j's. (2) The grammar is so simple that, once you've mastered it, you only need to work on building up vocabulary. Which means... (3) It doesn't take as much time away from Japanese as, say, French. (4) It is a strong confidence and motivation builder for my Japanese studies. I often get discouraged while studying Japanese. If I learn something in Esperanto (even though I know it's "just Esperanto"), I think, "Wow, I surely can master that in Japanese." I end up bringing more more motivation to my Japanese studies because of Esperanto. (5) Because it is fun to study, it's a nice diversion from my Japanese studies. It helps prevent language burnout. But this week I started to wonder: What is my goal for Esperanto, once I've reached some sort of fluency? People seem to learn Esperanto to go to things like Esperanto congresses or club meetings. While it would be cool to sit down and chat with other Esperanto speakers, these type of events do not appeal to me, nor do I have the desire to make the effort to go to these events. And while I certainly agree that an international language that is everyone's second language is a great idea, for practical reasons I don't want to put in any effort to promote that idea to the masses. I'm only interested in the language, not the movement. That means I'm studying Esperanto solely for fun, for reading Esperanto books or materials on the Internet, for listening to one bland Esperanto radio station and some dry podcasts, and for the occasional Internet chat. I'm asking myself: Once I'm past my "Esperanto honeymoon", is that going to be any fun? Why study a language that I don't want to make the extra effort to find other speakers of? That's not practical. On the other hand, I wonder if I could just replace Esperanto with, say, French (a language I know I could use while traveling to Europe or other places, without any extra effort), while using the same amount of time as to not take away from my Japanese studies. While French, on the surface, looks cool to me, would the verb conjugations and grammar drive me crazy, or worse, drive me to study French harder, to the detriment of my Japanese studies? Anyway, I've gone on too long. This is about Esperanto, but I could replace "Esperanto" with "Latin, Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian", or many other languages, and there's probably an HTLALer that has some advice or experiences to share. Any advice would be helpful. [By the way, studying only Japanese is not an option. I tried that before, only to burn out and do nothing for months on end. Having a fun language to tinker with besides Japanese helps me to keep up my Japanese studies every day. It's hard to explain, but that's how I'm wired, I guess.] Edited by kujichagulia on 09 August 2012 at 5:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7100 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 2 of 31 09 August 2012 at 5:55am | IP Logged | |||||
Yes. Now start studying! 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 3 of 31 09 August 2012 at 5:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Haha! :) Thank you for the laugh, Chung. I probably worry too much. By the way, I made a typo in my question. Edited in the first post. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6383 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 31 09 August 2012 at 6:42am | IP Logged | |||||
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I second what Chung says.
Also, there are some fascinating books in Esperanto by Japanese authors. I've liked what I've read of "Raportoj el Japanio" by HORI Jasuo. There are also some fascinating books about Esperanto-speaking people who opposed Japanese military aggression in the 20th century. I also found "La Morta Suito" by MIYAMOTO Masao to be a rather interesting read; it's a biography of a murdered friend of his, killed with his wife and very young nephew, apparently for his political views. A number of fairly major Esperanto authors wrote in both Esperanto and Japanese; probably the most famous was the Russian Vasilij EROŜENKO. I've followed the Esperanto convention of writing last names in uppercase to minimize potential confusion, although it looks a bit odd in English. There's no reason your Esperanto and Japanese studies cannot complement and deepen each other, if you want them to. And if you don't, there's a whole world of non-Japanese Esperanto literature as well. 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 5 of 31 09 August 2012 at 7:25am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thank you, Volte! Those are nice links.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 6 of 31 09 August 2012 at 7:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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Yeah, I should probably just not worry and do it, like Chung and Volte have suggested.
Life is too short to worry about those things. If Esperanto becomes boring, or I end up feeling like I wasted my time, I'll just quit. No need to quit when I'm having fun. Besides, if it helps my Japanese, then why not. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5726 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 7 of 31 09 August 2012 at 8:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Depends on where you are in life IMO.
If you're a student and you have to e.g. pass French in order to get a decent grade and so to get a good job and all of that...then I wouldn't go off and start learning Italian or whatever, just because its more fun. You should concentrate your energies on the useful and not try and confuse yourself. If however you're fully settled in your job and have nothing that you HAVE TO study then definitely study for fun. Edited by Tyr on 09 August 2012 at 8:58am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6647 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 31 09 August 2012 at 10:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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The first languages I learnt were big European languages with opportunities for use during travels - like Italian, Spanish, German and (of course) English. Latin was an exception because nobody expects anybody to speak it and at first I just learnt it "because it was there" at my school, later I upgraded it because I needed a higher level for my studies at the university. You can discuss whether Old French really is a practical choice, but for a student of French it was not to far off the mark. The first time I really studied a language which I never expected to use was when I followed a course in Romanian for three years - it was during the Ceaucescu years, and I had found the general atmosphere there appalling during my first visit in the mid 70s. Since then I have more and more filled up my language list with things I don't expect to speak (although both Russian and Indonesian are big languages, Irish and Low German definitely aren't, and Esperanto is something I only speak once every year if there is a congress in an suitable place).
So although I in principle support the idea that you should study the languages you really want to learn, I would find it slightly impractical to learn Toki Pona, Navaho and some kind of Saami as your first 'second' languages. There must be some major language in the world which you don't find positively abhorrent, and learning a language which has enough study materials (including internet resources) before taking on those where you only have a second hand grammar from 1870 plus a microscopic language guide seems to me to be a sound study plan. After the first couple of 'utilitaristic' languages you have learnt how to learn, and you can begin learning languages just for fun. The one thing that can topple this plan is of course that you get abundant exposure to a minor language (a girl/boyfriend and/or a long stay abroad) - then priorities suddenly change and the logical thing would be to learn the language which is surrounding you while you have the chance, and then you can add other languages afterwards. And Esperanto? Well, I waited with that one, but there are research results that indicate that you can learn other languages faster afterwards if you first have had one year of intensive courses in Esperanto. But even if English isn't as streamlined as Esperanto it is the first foreign language Danish children learn, and therefore they would never have the choice of Esperanto as their second language - it will always be number 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever. And Esperanto has neither a land, nor an army or fleet, but the Esperantists are a small, but determined and communicative lot so Esperanto is a good choice .... after your first 'useful' 3,4 languages. Edited by Iversen on 09 August 2012 at 10:33am 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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