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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 |  | |
| DaisyMaisy Senior Member United States Joined 5382 days ago 115 posts - 178 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish Studies: Swedish, Finnish | Message 33 of 45 19 September 2014 at 5:16am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm learning Spanish out of sheer practicality, and because Spanish is so widely spoken here (Western US) no one questions it. Mostly I get, "good for you! I should do that too". Achieving some level of fluency is very useful and a huge plus in the job market. I also like Spanish and Spanish speaking people and I would like to talk to them!
I haven't gotten very far on any other language but I would love to learn Swedish (grandparent was Swedish), Finnish (great grandparents were Swedish speakers from Finland so I feel a connection there. Plus it is really cool); French because it's fun to pronounce, Irish or Welsh because I want to learn a Celtic language, and a classic language, maybe Ancient Greek. (I could read Linear B! sort of) With the non Spanish languages, people generally respond that I'm crazy and have too much free time. When I tell them my grandfather's first language was Swedish, most people get that and think it's a nice idea. But, I am crazy about languages, and I really don't have much free time which is why I just really dabble at this point. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4585 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 34 of 45 19 September 2014 at 10:42am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow, I'm the complete opposite; I think I would struggle to learn a language where I wasn't already interested in the culture and intended to visit the country! For example, I am interested in learning Slavic languages and the most sensible choice for me to learn would objectively be Polish. There is a Polish shop 100m from my house where I could buy Polish magazines to read and every week I go to church and meet Polish people. But - unfortunately - my interest in Polish culture is small and I have no intention of travelling to Poland, so I can't muster any enthusiasm to progress beyond the basics. (For the avoidance of doubt, that's obviously not intended as a criticism of Polish culture; it's just the first example I thought of. My lack of interest is based entirely on some negative personal experiences, including the worst holiday of my life in Bialystok and the Polish mother of an ex-boyfriend who used to complain about me in Polish and tried to force feed me beetroot! But I fully understand that those experiences are highly subjective.) I am really interested in Balkan history and culture, so despite the fact that I can't find a single Croatian or Serbian person in my entire town to speak to, learning Croatian is much more enjoyable for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 35 of 45 19 September 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
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There is no reason to be ashamed about liking or disliking any culture due to personal
experiences. Our experiences are our experiences, and a million good experiences other people have, do not invalidate your experiences. Personally I love Poland and Polish culture, the love of my life was Polish, and as soon as I can manage to speak Russian at an acceptable level, Polish is the next on my list, but everyone's feelings are as valid as the next person's. I never get why people get upset because you dislike a particular language or its culture. I know of heaps of languages and cultures I am less than enthusiastic about, but that does not stop me from cheering for those people who do learn and love those languages. Otherwise, I am like you, I need to like the culture in order to learn the language. On the other hand you can always find traits about it that you like, if you look. One of the languages I have dabbled in, has a culture very alien to me. It is homophobic, misogynist and very strict, and I could not have lived in any of the countries where they speak that language. However, that does not stop me from loving lots of individuals from that culture, and appreciate other traits, like their warmth, their generosity, sense of humor, good food, family values etc. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 19 September 2014 at 11:07am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 36 of 45 19 September 2014 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Don't these two feed off each other? They do for me. When I learn a word or an expression, I wonder about how it came to be used that way and what native speakers think of when using this word, what their cultural experiences connected to it are; and when I learn cultural tidbits I wonder how people talk about it. Edited by Bao on 19 September 2014 at 3:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4255 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 37 of 45 19 September 2014 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If I had to explain it would go something like this:
Each language reflects the current and past societies and conditions (at least to an extent) of its speakers and each language is a wildly different way to look at the world. While I could easily spend the rest of my life studying the languages of modern industrialized countries I'd rather spend my time acquiring a palette of different weltanschauungs by learning languages from all sorts of societies from all around the world. Of course this doesn't conform to the norm of 'useful' languages but in the end the usefulness of any given language is in whether you can make use of it; even French could be totally useless for me if I never did anything with knowing it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Robierre Tetraglot Newbie Croatia Joined 4006 days ago 16 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Italian, French, English Studies: German | Message 38 of 45 19 September 2014 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It happens to me very often that people want to know why I am doing something. For
example, if I travel to some “exotic” country, people want to hear a simple and rational reason: because I was reading a lot about it, because I admire the culture, because I am visiting friends. However, my choices in life are rather intuitive, so the answer is likely to be: because one day I woke up and I decided to go there. The same goes for languages. I feel forced to give a simple answer on a question that is a complex story about my life. “So you speak Italian because you are from historically bilingual region?” Short answer: Yes. Long answer: No, actually I grew up surrounded with Italian, I started to learn it when I was very young, I always felt its presence (radio, tv, old people speaking on the market, tourists), but I was never able to speak it and have never planned to learn in in my life. I even felt guilty because of my ignorance; most of my school friends were speaking it quite well. When I was 30 and living in a region where Italian had the same importance as Chinese or Arabic, I suddenly decided to take a language course. One year later, I was preparing to continue my course on B1 level when I found out that I won a scholarship to study in Italy. To study in French and English. However, this year has changed my relations with Italian. While in the beginning I was hesitating to speak it with natives, as the time was passing I was falling in love. It is difficult for me to explain what was happening in my head: a lot of emotions, excitement, passion, I never imagined that it is possible to feel so closely a foreign language, to feel so natural when you speak it. It is my fourth year of learning, I moved to another country, but the passion is still there. “So, English is your first foreign language?” Short answer: Yes. Long answer: No, I never learned it in school. I took some courses when I was very young. It was the time when it was decided that my school class will learn German. I was 10 and it was a big disappointment for me. I wanted to learn English - the language of movies, tv, pop- music. For me it was a language that actually exists; I felt that my life will suffer because of this decision. So, I decided to learn it by myself. By watching TV, using computer and later internet, by reading. I had to use it during my studies, it was necessary to use it when I started to work, I used it during my internships abroad. However, I never had any emotional connection with this language. While French is for me the language of Proust, Jacques Brel, Radio France Culture, English always remained the language in which I have to write an e-mail, read a scientific article, language of MTV and Hollywood. That is why I can consider it only as my fifth language and I rather call it Globish because I acquired it without any cultural context. “Do you speak German?” Short answer: A little bit. Long answer: It was my first foreign language. Can I still call it as my first language even though I can express myself better in other 2-3 other languages? Well, the reason why I feel it so close is because I dedicated the biggest part of my life to this language. It was gradually becoming from a language that I was “forced” to learn to a language of my intimate world which I was sharing with my classmates: the world of complex grammar, learning by hearth the words with their der-die-das articles, the world of Heine, Schiller, Goethe, writing a diary in German for homework while the other schoolmates were discussing about English kings and queens, stories from another universe. When I passed the lower intermediate level, I started to be interested in German culture and contemporary media – I was reading Bravo, watching talk shows on Pro7 and RTL. Later in my professional life I did a big effort to learn the language of my profession. I wanted to study in Germany. But the destiny wanted that some other languages enter in my life. First of all, French, my biggest love. “So, finally, why are you learning French?” Short answer: Because I need it for work. Long answer: Because this time, it is my choice. Started in school as a second language and finished my secondary education with a poor “bonjour-je m’appelle” level, I finally ended by spending 5 months in French speaking part of Switzerland when I was 26. This short period influenced me so much that back home I decided to spend most of my free time to learn this language. For more than 7 years. This was not just one long linguistic journey; it was my progressive discovery of French intellectual life, literature, music, popular culture. If Italian became for me the language of jokes, politics, friendly conversations and Italian daily life topics, French is the language of my cultural universe. Mostly the topics which I cannot share with anybody else though. So, finally, yes, I just say – I still learn it because I need it for my work. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4049 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 39 of 45 20 September 2014 at 10:19am | IP Logged | |||||
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I like to crack the code.
I studied piano, I had fun playing along a song the first time I was listening to it (it's reasonably easy with most genres). I'm a software engineer, so every day I read opaque constructions and I have goals to reach (fixing bugs, implementing new features, investigating about behaviours). I also like the foreign languages, that is a perfect match for me. I read that learning foreign languages helps improving problem solving. I don't know if that is true or not, but it sounds much more beautiful and useful than doing long sessions of debugging and programming after work. If it doesn't work, I got much more so that it makes this thing irrelevant. I feel an overwhelming joy when I can understand something that I wasn't able to understand before. 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 40 of 45 20 September 2014 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think both paths, from language to culture and vice versa, can work just as fine. On my list, there are exemples of both approaches.
It is very common these days to learn language of one's acestors. I've just read two articles on people from various places learning Czech. It is a huge topic for various media because of the ethnical Czechs in Ukraine, who moved there during the 19th century for cheap land, worked as a breeze of european culture in quite a backwards villages of those days, and they somehow kept parts of their culture and language. They are asking to return in larger numbers and I don't know where is the process stuck right now. Another exemple of such news were the czech charities for victims of a factory accident in a texas town with large population of Czech-Americans last year. So, it is quite an interesting matter nowadays to remember where in the world are people with czech ancestors. The largest communities are in Ukraine, Germany or Austria but there are many as well in France, GB, USA, Canada and Latin America. And many of those people are learning Czech nowadays. When I say many, it's nothing compared to the large languages of course. But it is much more attention to this small language and culture compared with similar groups of people but without the roots. I wonder whether this trend will continue. Today, ancestors are a perfectly good reason to learn a weird language like Czech. Let's hope it will continue and many people find new ties to their past. After all, I believe monolingualism is closely connected to narrow views and closed minds. Thinking of that, I should add some languages to my list ;-) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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