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Do you have a good reason? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| soclydeza85 Senior Member United States Joined 3909 days ago 357 posts - 502 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, French | Message 17 of 45 16 September 2014 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tell people it's because I got tired of speaking English all the time.
Actual reasons... There are many, but they all stem from the simple fact that it's because I want to. I hope to use German for a job someday, I hope to live in Switzerland or Germany one day, I hope to make plently of German speaking friends; but my main reason is just that I've always wanted to be bilingual (and also that German is awesome), and being so would allow for all of the previously mentioned to happen. It's also an intellectual challenge. I've always been impressed by people that could speak a language that they didn't get for free. I actually used to think I was crazy (being so infatuated with foreign languages and wanting to learn multiple just for the sake of interest) until I found this site. Edited by soclydeza85 on 16 September 2014 at 10:46pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 18 of 45 16 September 2014 at 11:25pm | IP Logged | ||
Of course it comes up! Or do you think we've got that many interesting things to be told about the language and literature? :-D Nope, not really. Well, we've got some interesting sci-fi/fantasy authors nowadays (but I'd recommend learning Polish or Russian to get more of such), today's "high" literature is horrible, there is the awesome Čapek (my favourite), there are the fools who revived the language in the 19th century not imagining the consequences and so on. So, let's be grateful for Čapek's robot. Yeah, Kafka wasn't a czech writer. Well, he could have been considered such, had we kept to the patriotism based on geography that had been growing during the 1st republic. But now, Kafka is an important austrian/germanic/whatever author (whom I really don't like) abused as a Prague touristy icon. Sorry about the alphabet, I think we could have kept to the old slavonic one, it is prettier then cyrillics and much more fascinating than latin :-D Or we could have invented something original, given that our genetic roots are a mix like one third Germanic, one quarter celtic, one third slavic and a few % of others (most importantly scandinavian). (info from a presentation on genetic roots of european nations I saw years ago at school and which was based on some serious research I cannot quote now). Strč prst skrz krk. Drž. Vrč. Vrz. And I could think about a few not publicly presentable ones right now ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4236 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 19 of 45 17 September 2014 at 12:04am | IP Logged | ||
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I had no reasons for studying English apart from school needs for quite a while. At some point I began to listen to English (well, American) music and quite soon it was clear that I'm a lyrics addict, always want to know what's going on in songs and so on. I remember a night spent awake cause I finally found Breaking Benjamin's lyrics (I had rather crappy "3G" mobile internet back then and was not experienced about that, so it was quite an achievement). Further on my preferences in music moved on to more complex ones. I am still not comfortable reading Opeth's texts (speaks for the level of English in Sweden, haha) though...
I also added reading and watching movies in English along the way, and my aim for speaking was, frankly, the latest one. For German the list would be shorter. I like some Rammstein (surprise, surprise), but nothing frantic. There's plenty of Russians who likes them a great deal better, therefore it's easy to find translations. And even when I got into some German musicales, I stood still: "I need no scary German in my life!". And then one day due to pure coincidence I picked up an Austrian band named Angizia. Almost no translations available. Oh, I was hopelessly searching, I was damning that it's easier to find French translations and so on. Eventually I gave up and decided to study something. My progress is rather sloppy, but I am surely able to enjoy German lyrics even without complete understanding. However, to reach the original reason of reading in German I have a lot of work to do. Only some time after it occurred to me that it'd be great to speak such a beautiful language (and, of coure, to understand those who already speaks it). The rest is short: Swedish: funny, intriguing and fascinating (and these are bad reasons actually). Greek: the alphabet and the script, "cause it's Greek" (also bad ones). Italian: "why not?" (very bad reason, but at least I haven't started yet...). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5238 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 20 of 45 17 September 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged | ||
I have always wanted to pay a load of Chinese people to pass by a person with Hanzi tattoos and laugh. After the 10th or 12th person they'd get a bit worried I figure. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 21 of 45 17 September 2014 at 12:52pm | IP Logged | ||
I think that's the best reason we've had in the thread so far. But really, it is annoying how most people question our hobby. I am not walking around, asking people wild questions "why would anyone want to play table tennis?" or "isn't it a waste of time to paint when you know you'll never sell a single work?". 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 22 of 45 17 September 2014 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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My reason for learning French is partly for practical reason and partly because nobody in my family
managed to master it to a high level. In my part of the world it is common to see job ads that require someone to be bilingual in English & French. At this point I don't see myself at the level where I can communicate effectively in the workplace. When it comes to Croatian, my high school math teacher (Mr. Y) started picking it up in the early 1980s and got to a high enough fluency to interact with the locals. I don't think he ever attended classes. His reason sounded a bit odd but nonetheless a legitimate reason. In 1981 specifically, apparitions of the Virgin Mary appeared in Medjugorje, a town in Croatia. Mr. Y would show his class a video of Medjugorje in the beginning of the school year and started travelling to Croatia during his summer breaks as a devout Catholic. To this day the Catholic Church has not certified Medjugorje as a holy site but Mr. Y would go back every year well into his retirement and picking up more Croatian along the way. I know a lady who got into Spanish as an extracurricular activity. She probably started over 6 years ago. I don't think she cares whether she made any real progress communicating with people. She simply built her classes into a weekly routine to keep her time occupied. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| horshod Pentaglot Groupie India Joined 5772 days ago 74 posts - 107 votes Speaks: Hindi, Marathi*, Bengali, Gujarati, English Studies: German, Spanish, Turkish | Message 23 of 45 17 September 2014 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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I always tell people I am learning language X because I enjoy learning languages in general. That seems to be pretty
convincing to most people and is often followed by something like, "Oh that's interesting. So what other languages do you speak?", which is straightforward to answer (EDIT: As vonPeterHof says below, not quite that straightforward. I just tell them which languages I have spent time studying seriously.). Edited by horshod on 17 September 2014 at 8:44pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4774 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 24 of 45 17 September 2014 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think the second question is all that straightforward though. Responding with something along the lines of "Well, it all depends on how one defines "to speak"..." makes me feel like a huge phoney, so I usually start by talking about how many languages I've attempted to study seriously, and if that doesn't suffice I talk about which ones of them I feel more or less comfortable in. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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