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When would you bother? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7154 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 25 14 October 2013 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
This depends for me more on the languages involved than the length of the stay where they're used natively. If I were going to Bulgaria and China, my predilection for Slavonic languages would lead me to do more than just dabble in Bulgarian (e.g. probably get TY Bulgarian or similar and probably start working on it as soon as I feel that there's a greater than 50% chance that I'm going to Bulgaria in the next 4 months) even if I were planning to be in Bulgaria for just a couple of nights. On the other hand, it'd probably take a stay of at least a couple of weeks for me to bother learning Mandarin properly and beyond a handful of survival phrases and recognition of a some signs that don't come with English translations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| PeteP Newbie United States Joined 5035 days ago 27 posts - 48 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Romanian | Message 10 of 25 14 October 2013 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would look at Book 2 (It means TWO languages, NOT the follow up to Book 1 :-))
http://www.goethe- verlag.com/book2/index.htm Book 2 has lots of languages with free download of audio and VERY cheap books (around $10). A neat feature is that you can pair L1 and L2 however you like. For example you could learn Macedonian through Norwegian. Book 2 would only give you a "touristy A1", but hey, that would be perfect for a few days in country. And hey, it is free. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6907 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 25 14 October 2013 at 11:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
As little as a weekend, but that depends on my reason for going to the country. I've only been in countries where I speak the language: the UK, Ireland, Germany, Norway and Spain. Wait a second - Norway? No, I didn't speak Norwegian. I didn't have to. Imaginary scenario: If I were to stay there for more than a weekend (A month? A year?), I'd probably listen to (and shadow) audiobooks. Since I love the Bergen accent, I'd hunt down an audiobook narrated in that accent.
French - I know some already, and would brush it up. Catalan - Spanish worked fine when I was there, I'll maybe learn some Catalan if I go there again. Finnish - who knows!? Basic greetings, if nothing else. Nynorsk - see above. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 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 12 of 25 15 October 2013 at 1:50am | IP Logged | |||||
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My logic is similar to tarvos'. If the language is related to something I already speak, I'd do LR to work on my passive understanding and shadowing to have a nice pronunciation even if I can't say much.
In fact, in spring 2012 this was my plan for Polish (I wanted to *seem* serious about the language), but I just never bothered to stop ;) I would do this for Estonian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Dutch, Czech... also Turkish although the approach would have to be different. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4288 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 13 of 25 15 October 2013 at 3:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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The last time I visited Norway was to Bergen in June 2010, and I spent only five days
for a holiday with my family, yet spent couple hours per day for approximately 2 months on Norwegian. I am not sure if that was necessary, but I think the need to learn enough to communicate on a basic level switched into interest after the first month. This also during the last two months of a year of university. I personally would try to learn A1 at least even for two days of a holiday, but that is just my feeling. Quite a few switched to English for me in Bergen, probably because I made serious mispronunciations, and I had a Newcastle jersey on for half of the trip. The most complicated thing I had to say was at an off licence near the Fisketorget, when they would have more stock of 500 mL bottled water without gas (because apparently many stores close on Sunday, and I kept running out of water, and there seemed to be quite a lot of fizzed bottled water), but I felt good that at least they did not switch to English for me there. Thus basically any place for holiday for any amount of time I would learn as much as I could, time permitting. I do not like going anywhere and trying to make everyone speak English, though it may be easier for me. Edited by 1e4e6 on 15 October 2013 at 3:30am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lorren Senior Member United States brookelorren.com/blo Joined 4249 days ago 286 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Danish, Irish Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 25 15 October 2013 at 4:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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If a country was the main focus of my trip, then I probably would spend time learning the language, even if I was only going for a day. My trip to Mexico for the day earlier this year prompted me to start learning Spanish. When I went to Germany several years ago, I spent a couple of months reviewing the language (I was there for a week).
If I'm going to go through several countries on a trip, I probably would only bother to learn the language for the main focus of my trip. When I went to Germany, I also ended up going to France and Luxembourg, but I didn't take any time to learn those languages, other than the dabbling in French I had done at one point in time. How much time I spent learning the language would depend on how interested I am in knowing the language. I am still working on Spanish even though I went there in the spring, mainly because it's a useful language to know. If I was going to spend a couple of days in a country, but didn't at the time want to put in the effort to focus on becoming fluent in the language, then I'd probably learn enough to shop, eat at a restaurant, stay at a hotel, and some basic conversational stuff. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6580 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 15 of 25 15 October 2013 at 6:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm the other way around. If I don't know the language or plan to learn it, I'm unlikely to want to go to the country. :)
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mike245 Triglot Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 6970 days ago 303 posts - 408 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Cantonese Studies: French, German, Mandarin, Khmer | Message 16 of 25 15 October 2013 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it would have to be a stay of about a week (with at least some prospect of future trips) before it feels worth it to make a full-fledged effort to learn the language. The two main languages that I’m studying at the moment are because of country stays: (1) Cantonese because I’ve been living here for the past six months and plan to be here for a few years, and (2) Japanese because I will be making a two-week trip to Japan in November.
I usually like to learn a little bit of a language before going to a country, unless the language has little interest or personal use to me (e.g., learning Czech to visit Prague), it is simply too hard to learn within the limited time I have (e.g., Thai, Korean), or I feel I can get by with completely English or some other language I already know (e.g., Dutch, Catalan, continental Portuguese). I travel a lot, so this results in a lot of language wanderlust, but language study really allows me to make the most of my trips. I have no real desire to reach high levels of fluency or literacy in a bunch of different languages, but I love the idea of going to different countries and being able converse with the locals in their respective native languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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