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When is it worth the time? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 17 of 30 23 September 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
Seriously, chick points (AKA "impressing people") often gets a bad rap, but it's one of the most fundamental motivations we have. Chick points got us to the moon. Compared to the purely intellectual "it's useful" motivation (which repeatedly fails to get us to do the dishes), it's freakin' dynamite. Don't pooh-pooh the chick points. Or hunk points, as your preference may be. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4872 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 18 of 30 23 September 2014 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I enjoy doing it, hence it's worth it. That's it.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 19 of 30 24 September 2014 at 12:36am | IP Logged | ||
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People sees you differently if you can speak their language, and you see them differently too.
With a level as low as A2 you can already do many things, like having meaningful conversations, reading books and watching movies. Even if you cannot understand everything, just use the language and you will improve your level without even having to pass one single minute on a book. Provided is not chinese or japanese, of course. The high level is something that usually you don't need need it. And since you don't need it it's totally not worthy to do it if it's not what you want to do. As obvious as it is, in 10 years you can learn one language up to c2 and write essays about the classical literature or you can learn 25 languages to make new friends and talk about the weather and one does what likes most. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 20 of 30 24 September 2014 at 1:19am | IP Logged | ||
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It's not as obvious as it seems. If you don't start several languages at the same time, why would all your languages be at the same level? It's more important to keep working on the language than to limit your study of other languages.
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| bjornbrekkukot Newbie United States Joined 4721 days ago 25 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English* | Message 21 of 30 24 September 2014 at 3:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I can identify with the original poster. I used to think I would learn 10 languages well (to be able to read in them).
But after about ten years of work in order to read without the aid of a dictionary in Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Icelandic, French, Italian, and Spanish, I am hesitant to add another. Working 2-3 hours a day for all these years, I can pick up a book in any of those languages and read it, perhaps not knowing a word every few pages. But my thoughts about someday learning, say, Vietnamese, have been shelved. I just have a better perspective of the monumental amount of work it takes to reach a native-level vocabulary. I have lived a very studious life for the last decade. I have over 40,000—no joke—flashcards that I've made over the years. (Which I would recommend. They are very effective, if used correctly). At this point, however, since I've sacrificed my twenties for this endeavor (29 now), I kinda just feel like partying for the next decade. Maybe in my forties I'll have the courage to start another language. Edited by bjornbrekkukot on 24 September 2014 at 3:20am 8 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4252 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 22 of 30 24 September 2014 at 11:58am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not going to even try to get to C2 if I know I'm never going to move to the area the language is spoken. For example I don't think that I'll ever move to Russia but I'm hopefully going to visit Russia many many times. For these purposes my goal is always a C1 and good conversational skills. However I think I'm going to live in Sweden at least for some time in my life so I'm probably going to devote a lot of time to become a perfect Swedish speaker. It's always worth it to start a new project and see where it can take me though. Languages are fascinating and always worth the time to put into. Perhaps at some point in the future I will come to the conclusion of "no more!" but as I try to keep my aims realistic I hope it should not come to that.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 23 of 30 24 September 2014 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have had other time consuming hobbies in the past, and studying languages is just a hobby I choose to spend my time on for my own pleasure. And because of my lifestyle I may have more time for weird hobbies than most people. I would regret the time I had spent if I didn't get anywhere with my languages (or if I somehow lost the skills and knowledge I have gathered), but as long as I can see some steady progress I feel that this hobby isn't too bad after all. I'm glad I didn't spend the time on partying.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| bjornbrekkukot Newbie United States Joined 4721 days ago 25 posts - 58 votes Speaks: English* | Message 24 of 30 26 September 2014 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | ||
I should mention that my idea of partying is reading Laxness or Lermontov in the original :) In other words, after spending ten years working very diligently to acquire solid polyliteracy skills (to use Alexander Arguelles' term), my goal for the next decade will be to explore in depth the literatures and cultures which have now been made accessible to me. After making sure I have done them sufficient justice, and that I am not spreading myself too thin, I will consider adding another language. Edited by bjornbrekkukot on 26 September 2014 at 10:48pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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