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When is it worth the time? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes  Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 9 of 30 23 September 2014 at 6:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Learning a second language is totally worth the effort, because it changes the way you see languages and
understand the world, makes you a more interesting person, and some evidence suggests it's measurably good for your brain and your health. Learning a third, fourth, fifth language is totally not worth the effort if you aren't going to be expected to use it (moving to the country, married someone from there, use it in your job, etc). So why do some of us do it? 1) For many of us, there's no question of would I rather do something fun like photography or study more languages. Languages are just as good a hobby as amateur photography, and for many of us here it's our absolute favorite hobby. 2) You input a lot of time into learning a language, but it doesn't have to feel like work. We like reading books, listening to podcasts, watching movies, talking to people, and discovering things about other cultures. In a way, it's not 1000 hours of work, but 100 hours of work and 900 hours of leisure. 3) Once you get good at a language, it's at least a little bit useful. Not useful enough to justify the time put in if you treat that time as a cost, but more useful than nothing. This is more than you can say for some other leisure activities. I could get really good at shooting a basketball, which is fun, but also takes time and is even less practically useful than speaking Norwegian. 4) It's satisfying to be good at something. 5) Languages are just really cool, and I can't think of many things that replicate the feeling you get when you figure out how to use Cantonese modal particles to convey a nuance of meaning that you never even knew existed. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5307 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish | Message 10 of 30 23 September 2014 at 6:54am | IP Logged | ||
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As a rough guideline, I don't learn in depth languages with fewer native speakers than my mother tongue, Cantonese, which has 59 million native speakers according to Wikipedia.
And since I normally live in Hong Kong, which is a very international city, every foreign language seems to be potentially useful. In my last job, subsidiaries would send us documents in Portuguese, Thai, Danish and French. However, it may be easier to, instead of weighing whether the effort is worth the result, to seriously look into what the result you REALLY need is, and to look into how you can MINIMISE the effort to achieve that result. What I mean is, do you HAVE to be able to read classical literature? Do you NEED to understand 95% of a telenovela? Do you HAVE to answer each chapter 95% correctly before you proceed to the next chapter? Do you really NEED all that, NOW? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 11 of 30 23 September 2014 at 8:52am | IP Logged | ||
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Lived in Hong Kong in the past and went to a Chinese school. Cantonese was the language of instruction
with English as a required subject (second language). Back in those days Mandarin was optional and few HK people were fluent in Mandarin. Now if you are in Hong Kong you can choose Mandarin as the main language if you wish. In the 1970s relocated to a place where English is the main language of correspondence and French became the second language (a required subject). You learn specific languages because they are required in the curriculum then you don't really have a choice. Learning any language is a time-consuming process. You need to aim for a certain fluency level. If you are going to halfway, then might as well forget it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 12 of 30 23 September 2014 at 9:15am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know, I rather have a half-baked apparatus than no apparatus at all.
It's worth the time when you can realistically make the learning fit your goals. Considering I don't approach languages as a perfectionist but as an engineer, I don't really care if I'm perfect or not - I care that I'm good enough to make my language function, and then after that if it's necessary to patch things up I will patch things up. The question is whether I want to build this apparatus or a different one and that relies on context, my desires to travel and meet new people, and so on and so forth. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 13 of 30 23 September 2014 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I do it for novelty and chick points. Also fun.
Seriously, I couldn't imagine spending hundreds of hours lerning a language if I didn't enjoy it. To me this question is like "When is it worth it to watch a good movie" or "When is it worth it to spend time with your family". So my answer will be "Whenever there isn't something even more amazing to do". 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 14 of 30 23 September 2014 at 10:25am | IP Logged | ||
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I ask myself this question a lot. My problem is that in my experience it is always more fun for me to use or work on perfecting a higher level language than it is to work on a beginner one. I think the more languages I have at a conversational / easy reading / easy listening level, the harder it will be resist the temptation they present often enough to spend enough time to start a new one (which is still fun, just not as fun as using one that is already pretty good). I like to tell myself that this won't be as much of a barrier for any future Romance languages, which I imagine getting easier if I decide to move through Italian + Portuguese. But as far as anything from another family...who knows?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 15 of 30 23 September 2014 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
It's really the chick points that got me into this job, y'know? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5206 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 30 23 September 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | ||
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It's a question I also ask myself sometimes. Especially on a bad day: after an awkward
conversation with mistakes, misunderstandings and dodgy pronunciation that I could have simply done in English, I start to wonder whether it was worth the years of effort. Especially considering opportunity cost: what if I had spent all that time doing something else? I'd probably be a much better musician by now if I hadn't discovered languages, for example. But equally, on a good day when I have a great experience that I wouldn't have been able to have not knowing the language, it does seem worth it again. It's opened a lot of doors for socialising and travel, and making an effort to practise my languages has gotten me out of the house, meeting people and improving my social skills. Not to mention the intellectual stimulation and discovering new cultures. And importantly, I've enjoyed all the study and learning in itself. It's not as if I spent all that time doing boring work when I could have been enjoying myself. All that said however, I agree about the diminishing returns beyond B2 if there isn't a real payoff as Emk says. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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