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Moving Language Mountains | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5233 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 1 of 11 23 May 2014 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have been reading a number of threads in this forum about finishing and language, or how long to be fluent, etc.
"Finishing" a language How much time to learn a language? When will you be satisfied? How long until listening fluency? I've also been looking at the rankings on the Super Challenge, etc, and I've come to the conclusion that I'm stupid. I'm learning French & Italian and I've been doing that for 5-10 years with varying degrees of diligence. People always say learning a language is like climbing a mountain, but I have a different analogy. I believe that learning a language is like bringing a mountain back to your house. You start at the top of the mountain with a shovel and a wheelbarrow and you dig up a chunk of the mountain and bring it back and dump the soil in your garden. You lose a bunch of soil on the way, but you carry on. Little by little a tiny bit of the top of this huge mountain is moved into your back garden, and people get really impressed by the amount of dirt in your garden. But you keep looking at the little pile of dirt in your garden and you compare it to this huge freaking mountain. Now I've been looking at all these people who know all these languages and I'm thinking that I'm moving my two mountains with a teaspoon and everyone else has a shovel, but Serpent and Iversen and lots of other people seem to have a high-powered mining machine. So I'm wondering how long is it going to take me to move these bloody mountains! Or is there some point at which I say, "I've got enough French and Italian mountain in my backyard now so I'm going to go over to Mandarin mountain with my teaspoon and get started on that." So I suppose the question I would put to you for discussion is: How do I get a shovel or mining machine like the rest of you, and when should I get a shovel and head over to Mandarin mountain? :) 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3985 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 2 of 11 23 May 2014 at 8:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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I love your metaphor. What I have noticed is that with the years passing I am losing more and more dust on the way and have to go back and shovel it up again. :-(
It is entirely up to you when to feel satisfied with the hump in your garden. Although it is quite possible to build another sand castle in your backyard while you maintain and keep building the old one. In my opinion there are 3 factors that determine your success: 1. Interest: This is the most important, and keeps you going. 2. Time: It does matter whether you dedicate 1 hour a day to the language or 10 hours. 3. Talent and brain power: This is a somewhat controversal topic, but my experience shows that some - otherwise very intelligent and in their field very successful - people are less talented than others. Also my personal experience shows that I was much better at retaining vocabulary when I was a bit younger, so age also might play a role, although I know that many people might disagree with this. I agree with Luca Lampariello, who said that you should move on to a new language when you have already acquired a core in your first language. I would say if you have a strong B2 but preferably C1 then you can start a new language while keep maintaining and polishing the first one. Edited by Hungringo on 23 May 2014 at 8:07pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gustavo Russi Tetraglot Newbie Brazil Joined 3840 days ago 9 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, French, Italian | Message 3 of 11 23 May 2014 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Funny metaphor indeed. I was thinking about it too these days - I speak fluent English
and my mother language is Portuguese, while my French and my Italian are "floating". I feel like I'm never taking them to the same level as my English, but that's a lie. I've been speaking English for around 10 years and everyday I learn something new. Everyday I make a different mistake. And this also happens in Portuguese (even though I've always been an exemple for my friends in that matter). I've reached the conclusion that if I'm not satisfied even with my mother language, I'll never be with other languages. I can say, of course, that after one whole year intensively studying french, I'm in a level where I can read any book or listen to any song and comprehend it all. This is great for me - even though my conversation skills are not at it's best (if there is such thing), french is being useful for me. And that's where my satisfaction lies. I'm about to start learning German next month, which means I'm gonna be having classes of both French and Italian, with the addition of another language. While I still refine my English and, of course, my Portuguese. Languages are not a thing you can "start" and then just "finish". They are constant. It all depends on you, if you can have it all - and how much of it all you can have. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5186 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 4 of 11 23 May 2014 at 10:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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Don't worry, your teaspoon should in time get upgraded to a tablespoon, ladle, bucket, snow shovel and motorised mining machine. Mind you, after 5-10 years I would expect you to be on the tablespoon already.
If you find it so slow and hard, perhaps your methods of study are not helping you. Is there anything new you could try that you have never tried before - a textbook, an audio course, a TV series, a class, a personal tutor, a website, or an immersive language school abroad? It's also generally believed that learning languages from different families helps your brain to learn any language faster. Starting something new could unlock a new dimension in your understanding of languages which makes everything easier from here on. At the very least it might provide a temporary boost of confidence and enthusiasm for studying. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5163 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 11 23 May 2014 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Some methods work better than others, but it is important to do a bit of each thing.
If you feel you learn more by reading with translation, focus on that, but don't neglect writing practice, video, text chatting. Just keep balancing those tasks as you feel one is surpassing others. When you are learning close languages, it's evident that you'll soon be able to read stuff, but this is rather a rule than an exception, which people take for granted. I could read French after a few months, but only after starting to study it seriously did I improve my listening and speaking skills (And there's a lot of room to improve at writing). In the case of a language with few cognates, such as Georgian, every word is learned as new, so I actually improve all skills gradually. In fact, sometimes I feel I can speak it better than I can read, because I can make my limited vocabulary work for me, while it is hard to read when only 30% of the words on an average text are familiar. It's also wise to get rid of any perfectionist feelings. You'll never get full comprehension. Even the natives can't understand several dialects of their own language. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| rdearman Senior Member United Kingdom rdearman.orgRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5233 days ago 881 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 23 May 2014 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I suppose I do have a soup spoon for Italian now, and my problem has been consistency. I've often left the wheelbarrow and went off wandering around in the fields.
Actually the "new thing" which has helped me the most lately is Solfrid Cristin's Super Challenge because it is forcing me to use these languages every single day in some way, shape or form. The thing that has struck me the most lately is the fact I'm never really going to be done. There isn't really any point in language learning where you can say, "OK I'm done with that now and I can move on to the next thing." because you never really know enough. Now a lot of people find this wonderful, but I'm one of those people who like things to come in nice complete, finite sections. I like to finish things before moving on to the next. I do like the idea of getting to a C1 "core" and then using that to tell me when to move over to Mandarin Mountain and start hacking away at that one. Of course this means I have to get an independent surveyor in to measure my French & Italian to see how much dirt I've accumulated. :) Everyone who has replied so far has 4+ languages under their belt. So what made you decide that it was time to put one language behind you and actively begin another? Is it better to be B2 in 10 languages or C2 in 1 or 2? I am planning to complete the Super Challenge in French & Italian before starting another language. But the other languages are always there... teasing me... and I'm not getting any younger. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4704 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 7 of 11 23 May 2014 at 11:27pm | IP Logged | ||
That depends on you, not on an absolute truth. Whether you want to be perfect in one or two is not only dependent on what people generally think but also what your personal circumstances are. Long-term I have certain languages I would like to be C2 in (Russian comes to mind) but for my part, B2-C1 in tons of languages is PRETTY useful. I don't speak perfect Romanian but I speak it well enough that it led Romanian orphans to open up to me way more than they did with any other volunteer. You don't need perfect Romanian for that, but you do need to be able to communicate well. What you need depends on you. As for my decisions, it's based on my environment and doing whatever the hell I feel like. I will study what I like, not what someone else thinks I should do. Or else Romanian, Breton and Icelandic surely would not really have made any list :) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6906 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 11 24 May 2014 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | ||
What Tarvos said. OK, I'd like to be C2 in a language - but how long does that take? Is it even possible within the foreseeable future? Do I need the level or do I just want it? Unless there's an important reason to "finish" a language, there's no way I'll postpone any of the others just because some wiseguy says I should. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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