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How did you choose your target language? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lagwagon555 Diglot Groupie New Zealand Joined 6119 days ago 38 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: Japanese | Message 49 of 141 05 December 2008 at 10:27pm | IP Logged |
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English - Native
Esperanto - I saw it on a Wikipedia article a few years ago, and was interested. A few clicks later, I had learned by first words, and then it all started from there! French - I want to work for the European Space Agency, where French is a working language, so learning it will give me an advantage. I'm also soon going to learn Russian, as it is also used alot in the environment. Might have to learn Dutch as well, since I will probably be working in the Netherlands... oh dear. I'll take it one at a time! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Kuunhalme Pentaglot Newbie FinlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6167 days ago 25 posts - 34 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Hungarian, Latvian Studies: Polish, Spanish, Dutch, Georgian, Lithuanian | Message 50 of 141 06 December 2008 at 5:15am | IP Logged |
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German, my first foreign language, was not chosen by myself but rather by my parents who chose to send me to another school with more language learning options than in usual schools. A few years later we started learning English and a few years after that (the compulsory) Swedish. The first foreign language I did choose myself was Spanish, which I chose in the college over French and Russian, since it had always fascinated me.
However, it was not until I met my future wife that I discovered my ability to learn languages effectively on my own, which, in my opinion, many people inherently possess without knowing it. The language in question was her native language, Hungarian. This experience encouraged me to change my field of studies and to embark on a career in languages. Following on the footsteps of Hungarian, I decided to concentrate on lesser-known European languages. The first one I chose was Polish, a language with many speakers, yet unpopular in my country. Dutch had always fascinated me and, with fluency in German, it wasn't too difficult, so I took up that as well. Latvian was a language I just couldn't resist after having heard it spoken somewhere. I picked up a good, comprehensive grammar book and couldn't stop, so I decided to continue studying it at the university. Logically, the missing link between Polish and Latvian has to be Lithuanian, which is the reason why I have taken up that as well. And being able to speak this many Eastern European languages, it would be shame if I couldn't say anything in Russian. These are the next languages on my list. But frankly, the most important thing I should do is to improve my intermediate languages to the level of at least basic fluency, because not until then will they become really useful from a professional point of view. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Aquedita Triglot Senior Member Poland myspace.com/aqueda_v Joined 6014 days ago 154 posts - 164 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese Studies: Mandarin | Message 51 of 141 06 December 2008 at 11:44am | IP Logged |
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I've been studying English since I was 8 years old. I had to convince my parents for a YEAR to send me on a course. It was the only course available at my school back then. I think I wanted to go since other kids did so, but at the same time I've always had the feeling that knowing languages is something important. I wanted to be an interpretor/translator since then.
I took some classes for about 2 years but after that me and my brother went for private tutoring and had compulsory classes in school. And of course I choose a bilingual high-school with English as my major. When I was in junior high I felt like studying another language and when I said that to my friend she said: "Why won't we study German together?" She had a good reason and motivation, since her sister lives in Germany and she would spend every summer over at her place. I just said ok. We took private tutoring for 3 years and then continued learning in high-school. She choose German as her major in high-school. In high school I've somehow fell in love with Spanish and tried to learn it on my own. Well, I had some help from another friend. I think that was the first language I choose totally aware of what am I about to embark on. In college I chose Japanese as my major and I'm studying it ever since. We also have to take classes in another oriental language, so I took Chinese (it was this or Mongolian, so you can get the picture...). I'm quite happy with my choices but probably had I known how the whole thing looks now I would choose Arabic or something else. I was also forced to take Russian for a year but it wasn't a fun adventure. Edited by Aquedita on 06 December 2008 at 3:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| neonqwerty Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6163 days ago 229 posts - 239 votes Speaks: French*, English* Studies: Spanish | Message 52 of 141 06 December 2008 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
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Because of Quebec language laws, I was forced to do all of my primary and secondary education in French. I consider this to be one of the greatest strokes of luck in my life.
I chose Italian as my first self-study language because I wanted my first self-taught language to be relatively easy, both in terms of structure as well as in terms of availability of learning materials. I figured that knowing French would be a tremendous asset, and my assumption has been vindicated. Of course, Spanish would also have fit the bill, but Italian won out because I saw it as more exotic. It seemed that everyone's first new language Spanish (or so I thought), and I wanted to be different. Basically, chic won out over usefulness. In retrospect, I'm not so sure how I feel about the choice... It would be so wonderful to converse with the many Spanish-speakers in my neighborhood! No regrets, just some ambivalence. Had I learned Spanish instead of Italian, I probably would have felt the same way. I started German because I wanted to learn a non-Romance language, and the Russian course being taught at my school conflicted with my teaching schedule. I was actually disappointed initially, but I now see German as a very beautiful language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ChristianVlcek Bilingual Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5851 days ago 131 posts - 141 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Slovak*, Ukrainian, Irish, German, Russian | Message 53 of 141 06 December 2008 at 5:53pm | IP Logged |
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Slovak for me was a no-brainer because it is my mother's language.
Because of the language laws here in Ontario I was forced to take six years of french, but I hated it and quit as soon as I could For me, it doesn't matter if I have any connection to a language, but it matters on whether it or the country/culture associated with it intrigues me. I decided to learn Norwegian for a few reasons. It is kind of a "bridge" for me between English and German which I will be learning soon. It also is the "central" language among the big 3 Scandinavian languages, which opens up more languages for study. The other languages I'm interested in and study on and off are up there for various reasons; usefulness in the future (German, Russian, Arabic); friends (Korean, mandarin) and my own culture/heritage/places I've lived (Czech, French, Irish, Hungarian, Finnish). And even just for the romanticism of Italian =) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6454 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 54 of 141 06 December 2008 at 6:25pm | IP Logged |
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My first foreign language was English, which I started to learn when I was still a toddler. Later on, of course, I had to study it at school, and eventually I went to an English-speaking school.
The second foreign language was a tough choice - my school offered only two languages (French and German) when I was in 4th grade, and I initially wanted to study French. Then, however, there weren't enough potential French students, so I decided to take German, which I think was one of the best choices I've made in my life this far. At first learning the language was a pain in the rear end, and in fact I didn't really learn it until I was 15-16 years old. In the middle of puberty I just had no motivation, and my interest was directed towards Russian, the most fascinating language of all. Thanks to my mum, I continued to study German until I graduated from high school, and by that time I had reached basic fluency, since I had grown to love the language; I spent hours reading in German, watching German films and listening to Rammstein (well, actually their music at that time wasn't anything new to me, I already knew them in th 90s when I still went to elementary school). You can call me a pervert, but I nearly got excited when I studied German grammar.. It is so easy, yet at the same time so difficult to master. Third foreign language = Swedish. I hated the idea of studying it (it's obligatory in Finland), so I had zero motivation. I even refused to study it during the lessons for one year, because I wanted to take Russian instead (which I considered and still consider much more useful). But I eventually learnt it by force and reached even a reasonable level of fluency (!). Nowadays I'm quite OK with the idea of speaking Swedish, although I by no means like the language. I think it sounds very ugly and that all Swedes are gay (just kidding...). So, I didn't choose to study Swedish, but at times it's nice to know it. My fourth foreign language - and possibly my favourite one - was Russian. I think my interest arouse from the fact that I had a Russian schoolmate in secondary school, when I was about 13-15 years old. He taught me some swearwords (...), and I basically devoured a Russian grammar book. Now I continue to study it independently. 5: Portuguese, my first Romance language. My dance school organized a Portuguese course before our trip to Brazil in 2003, and I was the only one who actually learnt something, thanks to studying at home, too. Number 6: Italian. Well, apart from pizza and pasta, I wasn't that interested in Italy or Italian culture before I went to high school. Then, however, something struck me. I took three Italian courses (of which one self-taught, I only showed up at the exam session) and discovered that I loved this language. Probably it was due to the beautiful sound of it and the nice grammar, but the cultural context was very important, too. Even after I had finished studying it at school, I continued at home. When it was time start thinking about university, I looked up all the possibilities, and found only a few courses that interested me. I chose Italian. :) I crammed every day and night for about 3 months before the entrance exam, and passed! They took in only 13 new students out of more than 60 people, so I was very lucky (and obviously had worked my arse off) to get in. It was at university where I reached my basic fluency, and my Italian just kept on getting better all the time. By the time I met my girlfriend (she's Italian, we met by chance in the school where I was doing my teacher training), I already spoke Italian fluently. Now I live here in Italy and work as a translator. :D So, anything can happen in life! I'd say that I didn't choose Italian... Italian chose me! :) Number 7 was Latin, which was an obligatory part of my Italian studies at university. The course lasted long enough for me to learn the basic structures and some vocabulary, but after that I've had little practise in Latin. I think it is a very interesting language, and I've promised to myself that some day I will speak it more or less fluently. I'm also very interested in the history of the Roman Empire, which I actually studied at uni, too. Latin is also very useful in Italy, it's nice to notice that I can understand some inscriptions in ancient ruins. Language number 8 for me was Icelandic, which I studied shortly at university. Fascinating, but very complicated! Well, I learnt to read simple texts, but my oral skills are close to zero. Iceland is one of my favourite countries in the world, it's so beautiful... 9: I took one course of Spanish at university, just because I was curious to see if I could learn it easily (because I already spoke Italian). To my delight, I noticed that after having learnt the basic similarities and differences between the two languages, I was able to hold a conversation with relatively little difficulty. I spent maybe 2-3 months on acquiring more and more vocabulary, and one day it just dawned on me that I could actually speak it quite well. :) Basic fluency, I'd say. I basically understand almost everything, but at times I find it difficult to express myself properly, due to Italian interference. 10: I took a Slovenian course at university, because it interested me (Slovenia is near Italy, so..), and because of my basic Russian, I started to learn it quite fast. I am by no means able to hold a conversation in Slovenian, but I understand written text to some extent. I'm planning to continue studying it in the future. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| frenkeld Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6943 days ago 2042 posts - 2719 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German | Message 56 of 141 06 December 2008 at 8:07pm | IP Logged |
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Russian - native, or at least used to be.
English - studied in school, then on my own, then immigrated to the US. Spanish - wanted to learn some foreign language for fun, Spanish didn't seem as difficult as some other languages and easily accessible in the US, so that's how the choice was made. I liked Spanish a lot (and still do), and as this was taking place before we had our first child, I had made decent progress in it in about a year and a half. I haven't made much progress in it in the 12 years since, but I have maintained what I did learn back then and will eventually give Spanish another big push. German - a number of my father's family members didn't survive World War II, and I grew up with enough awareness of the events of those days that I instinctively avoided the German language and Germany itself for many years, while being curious about "what it is like" at the same time. Having a degree in physics provided an independent source of curiosity about the country and culture that had, in its day, made truly enormous contributions to that field. Almost exactly two years ago I finally made up my mind and starting learning German. I found the language really fascinating and have by now made a commitment to bring it eventually at least to the level of my Spanish (intermediate to high intermediate). My rough estimate is that at my current level of effort this will take at least another one to two years. French, Italian - dabbled in them, without getting very far, but still committed to learning them eventually. Hindi - my wife is a native Punjabi and Hindi speaker, so I would like to know Hindi. I have been somewhat demotivated because of the relatively small size of the book publishing industry in that language, which is probably the reason I've been putting it off. Whether it will be my next language after German is still undecided. Edited by frenkeld on 07 December 2008 at 5:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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