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We, who manage to focus on ONE language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4471 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes  Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 129 of 142 25 August 2013 at 6:07am | IP Logged | ||
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My intention was not to make you leave this thread.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 130 of 142 25 August 2013 at 9:58am | IP Logged | ||
The thing is, it's as if you want us to admit: "yes, I'm studying slower than I could because I'm learning more than one language." But it's not necessarily true even in absolute terms - and then the issue of motivation and actually getting stuff done comes into play. (kuji is becoming a canonical example here) 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 131 of 142 25 August 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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The problem is that the "one language at a time" people seem to be pushing the "truth" that their approach is best when that simply isn't true, and that's pretty off-putting as there are pages of evidence against it and all of it seems to get ignored.
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| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4909 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 132 of 142 25 August 2013 at 2:21pm | IP Logged | ||
Sorry, but I feel I have to get a bit philosophical here. Since you keep mentioning the law of identity, let's actually explain what it means. Most of what you describe here is accurate, but the problem you keep running into is the concept that "two opposing ideas cannot both be right". Now that is absolutely correct if you are talking about whether 1 + 1 = 2, or whether Atlantis existed. These are things which are absolutely correct or wrong, so the law of identity would say that if Atlantis existed, then it is not possible that it did not exist at the same time and place as it existed. The real problem you have is not with the definition, but the application. You seem to think that it means if there are two different opinions, only one can be right. Or two methods of learning, only one can be best. But experience shows that different methods work differently for different people. Even more so, different methods combined work better in any individual than sticking to one method. What works well one week might not work well another week. To put it succinctly, you seem to think that 1 + 1 = 2 precludes 1 / 1 = 1. These are not contradictions, they are different. Or, as Plato asked Aristotle, "Is it farther to Sparta or by bus?" 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| blackbrich Newbie United States Joined 5229 days ago 13 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 133 of 142 25 August 2013 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
This assumes that everyone has the same reality. We all have different viewpoints based on who we are and what we've seen and who's to say which is the realest reality. Let's say one person is color blind, one person sees "normally", and one person sees even more colors than a "normal" person. Who sees the world in reality? The "normal" person because he sees the world as most do? Or the person that sees more colors because he sees more? What if someone else came along and saw even more colors? Like someone else mentioned. One person is short and one is tall and there's a shelf. Is the shelf far away? To the tall person maybe not, to the short person probably so. Nobody is wrong. We all have different talents, our brains work mostly the same but there are differences.What is synergy for one person is confusion for another. Which is the best way? Who knows because we can't do experiments one two identical people coming from one point. The best we can do is assume what the best course of action that we should take on limited data. I'm sure there is a natural world, but we can't tell if we see it or not because all we have to go on is these feeble senses we have. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 134 of 142 25 August 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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JC has left this thread, so it's probably about time to wrap
up any further responses to him, specifically, and return to the discussion of the larger language-learning issues. Thank you! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4622 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 135 of 142 25 August 2013 at 10:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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Everyone has their own targets and needs. If your economic and social prospects can be boosted by knowing
two or three foreign languages in the B2-C1 range, why focus on trying to reach the all-conquering C2 in one? I didn't always have a strong interest in languages. My circumstances dictated that it would be a rather good idea to attain a good standard in German and I found I enjoyed the process of learning and using the language. I have since looked at other languages and I'm fully aware that this amounts to no more than dabbling but I derive pleasure from even a superficial investigation. Sure, I could be toiling away trying to approach C2 in my main foreign language but I don't actually need to reach that stage and I'd rather bumble along the way I do at present. Edited by beano on 26 August 2013 at 8:24am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 136 of 142 26 August 2013 at 7:47am | IP Logged | ||
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Here's a direct response to the original post that I think wraps things up quite nicely;
Everyone should know the extents of their learning, what they are and are not capable of. The reason to why most people here aren't advising on studying any particular number of languages at the same time is simple; no one can tell you with how many simultaneous languages do you achieve highest efffectivity in. Some people need more time for the information to sink in than others; their figurative stomach is full of information and they need to digest before they can do any more. This threshold varies from person to person, and I find mine to be around two hours per language per day. After that point I feel like I need to let it sink in so that I can internalize what I have learned. Luca mentioned in one of his videos that the reason he was studying one language at a time is because he felt enchanted or fascinated by the language at hand, and he had a systematic approach to it. If you have one language you really want to learn and you can do this, by all means go for it. Then there are us, who are fascinated by multitudes of languages. If for example my threshold is at two hours a day, I can have as many languages simultaneously as I have periods of two hours in a day to devote to the study of those. "I know from own experience that it is much more efficient" is a fallacious argument; you only have a sampling of one instance to back up your generalization, whereas the "water" that an argument like this holds needs a huge amount of samplings. The reason people got so upset is because you're not only telling people that their approaches are wrong if they differ from yours, but also backing it up with fallacious arguments. Now I don't think this was intentional but it was certainly interpretable this way. I'll rephrase the original argument so that it doesn't offend people and how I interpreted what it meant to say; Find out how many languages you should study simultaneously to reach maximum effectiveness; this depends on a variety of things, ranging from free time to passion. However, you should not be lead to believe that learning multiple languages is the only or the best way to go by; you should find your own way of learning and acknowledge that some people achieve best results when focusing on one language at a time. 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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