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My Language Crisis (Relatively Speaking) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6414 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 9 of 31 09 August 2012 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Not really, that's what happens afterwards (for some). I started learning Esperanto just for linguistic curiosity and to have a better basis for learning other languages, I wasn't even aware that anybody still spoke it! Then I used it to talk to people online (interesting insights from Iranians, Brazilians, Japanese, Kazaks...), read stuff and the like, for 5 years without going to any meeting. When I did go to a meeting, a congress of ca. 300 people from 25 countries for one week over New Year's, it was amazing. So many language geeks and world travelers in one spot! During the day I might attend a lecture on ethnic minorities or a 60-minute introduction to some language or other, practise languages at the aligatorejo, listen to a concert in the evening, watch a Finnish movie with Esperanto subtitles and discuss the best way to learn Chinese characters until late. The Esperanto community is not all language geeks - other main streams are math geeks, physics geeks and programmers, or people who are just interested in foreign cultures, or idealists who are actively changing the world - but if you like languages, you can find many like-minded people, more than anywhere else.
Definitely. I study Swahili. It's a lot of fun! Edited by Sprachprofi on 09 August 2012 at 11:01am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 10 of 31 09 August 2012 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
Tyr, thanks for your comment. There is something that I HAVE TO study, which is Japanese. I need Japanese because I live in Japan, but I don't find it fun to learn, which is what Esperanto is. But Esperanto doesn't affect my Japanese studies. My fear is that if I study a major language like French or Spanish, which is more difficult than Esperanto, it WOULD affect my Japanese studies. 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 11 of 31 09 August 2012 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Iversen - That is something I will consider. I definitely want to learn the major world
languages like French, Spanish, etc. But I need to master Japanese first. When I'm learning kanji, taking on French verb conjugations is too much. But taking on -as, -is, -os, -i, -us, and -u is a lot easier. :) 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 12 of 31 09 August 2012 at 12:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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@Sprachprofi - Thanks for sharing your experience. If I continue my Esperanto studies, I
do hope one day to go to a big Esperanto meeting. They sound like fun. I'm just not in a position to go to any at the moment or in the near future. Of course, anything can happen in the future. And of course, I could just enjoy Esperanto for what it is. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6847 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 13 of 31 09 August 2012 at 12:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you have fun with Esperanto, and it even seems to keep you motivated to study
Japanese, than just keep learning. No need to worry. Some people do crosswords or sudoku, play instruments, paint, and take part in other activities in their free time - I learn languages and I'm happy with that. You don't need a reasonable goal for everything. I chose Iversen's approach, though. First "big" languages that seem useful for traveling and at work, and than starting languages that won't probably be that much of use for me but are simply fun. Esperanto is actually on my hit list, too. I've read about it just out of linguistic interest and I am going to learn it someday. I wouldn't start learning it though if I wasn't interested in the Esperanto community Sprachprofi is writing about. That's what makes Esperanto attractive for me... but everyone has their own reasons :) I think you shouldn't be so afraid to start another natural language. If you feel like French - just start it, you're gonna see how this works out. Romance languages aren't that difficult (well, I actually did struggle with French whereas Spanish was a walk in the park up to B2 level, though - but that's due to my lack of motivation I guess, and some bad experience I made with French in the very beginning). All in all, you'll be surprised how easy languages may be when you compare them with Japanese (as it's really not just about Esperanto). Concluding, don't overanalyze and enjoy :) //All corrections of my English are welcome and helpful - send me a PM, please.// 4 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 14 of 31 09 August 2012 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
Remember I mentioned the situation where a girl/boyfriend or your present location change your priorities? Your are in that situation now because you live in Japan. The language there may be difficult and you may not fancy studying it (or its arcane writing system in particular), but it would be idiotic not to learn as much as possible while you are in the country. And in that situation Esperanto can function as an easy diversion when you just can't stand more Japanese. Edited by Iversen on 09 August 2012 at 12:38pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kujichagulia Senior Member Japan Joined 4791 days ago 1031 posts - 1571 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Portuguese | Message 15 of 31 09 August 2012 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Julie and Iversen, thank you for your comments!
@Julie - You might have just swayed me to try French as my diversion. You are right; it may not be as easy as Esperanto, but it certainly is not as difficult as Japanese! Besides, if my priority is Japanese, most of my time will go to that language. Therefore, it doesn't matter what language I do on the side, because I will learn it slowly and leisurely. :) Thank you very much! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5476 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 31 09 August 2012 at 1:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
Like you, I have a practical, necessary language. In my case, it's French. And a solid B2 isn't good enough for my needs: I can say pretty much anything I want to say, with a few seconds thought, but I really want to be able to say it fluently and well. So I have a ways to go yet. Along the way, I've learned that taking a language to C1 is a huge investment of time and effort, and there's no way I could personally justify that for a language that I'd only use now and then. Sure, if I lived in the southwestern US, I could justify conversational Spanish (maybe B1), and if I lived in another country, I'd definitely learn the language. I also have a wildly impractical language, as you can see from my profile. :-) I wanted to try out something that was ideographic and non-Indo European. And I wanted enough signs to get the "flavor" of ideographic writing without the disgusting necessity of memorizing 2,000 of them. So Egyptian represented a nice, safe compromise, with a couple hundred important signs. I don't need to work on listening comprehension, or writing, or fluent speech, or multiple registers—I just want to be able read relatively formal texts using a dictionary. Call it one skill, reading, at A1 or A2. That's no threat to my French, and thanks to how I'm using Anki, I should be able to put Egyptian down at any time without forgetting it. I think you could safely learn conversational "tourist" French—enough to talk to people about concrete stuff and to travel almost entirely in French—without threatening your Japanese studies. That's about B1. You could get there with Assimil and a modest amount of whatever study techniques you like best. There's not much danger of real, life- eating obsession if your goals are less than B2. The hard part of French is the spelling and pronunciation. Once you get past that, it's fundamentally an easy language. The grammar is familiar enough to an English speaker, and the "big" words can often be guessed. Sure, there are lots of irregular verbs, but you can pick those up as you need them, and there are patterns. So yes, I think you could learn French to a useful level without interfering with your Japanese. It's a fun language, and it gives you access to several interesting cultures and a wide variety of media. EDIT: Really, don't worry about French verbs. If you use input-oriented methods, they're not that bad at all. I won't try to explain why they're not that bad, but basically, the whole system is simpler than it looks, and seriously irregular verbs are either very common (and hence no problem) or mostly avoidable (and hence no problem). Edited by emk on 09 August 2012 at 1:30pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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