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The Attraction to Your Languages | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 1 of 29 30 November 2011 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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What attracts you the most to your languages?
I will also include languages I plan to learn in the future.
Edited by lichtrausch on 30 November 2011 at 9:11pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 2 of 29 30 November 2011 at 9:13pm | IP Logged |
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English--native, I just like it, and every new one I learn helps me appreciate it more
Spanish--heritage language, phonetic writing system Russian--different and unexpected, also a phonetic writing system even if not in Latin script Hungarian--use in great folk songs Finnish--the sense of motion with locative cases and verbs which is so different from English German--very poetic language and word variety and able to deduce new words from existing parts Japanese--the charming grammar with blocks of information ordered in the sentence differently than all the other ones I know French--the language I flirt with... somehow I understand it without any actual study of it. I may remedy this soon. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 29 30 November 2011 at 9:49pm | IP Logged |
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German - native, so I got this language "for free"
Dutch - my whole identification with the culture and mentality of the Netherlands English - the favourite foreign language of my family French - my penfriends in France and I like the French culture Italian - the pronounciation of the language and Italian pop music Spanish - access to Spain in Europe as well as Latin America Esperanto - the most useful language to make private international contacts Turkish - the strictly logical structure of the language and its complexity Danish - country has a border with the region where I was born and opens the door to Scandinavia Latin - the logical structure and the relevance for other Romance languages Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 30 November 2011 at 11:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 29 30 November 2011 at 9:50pm | IP Logged |
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BCMS/Serbo-Croatian - reminds me of good times with friends from ex-Yugoslavia
Czech - reminds me of good times with Czech friends English - default bridge language for today Estonian - reminds me of good times with Estonian friends Finnish - reminds me of good times with Finnish friends French - some good literature in the language German - the language of the "bad guys" in movies about the world wars Hungarian - sounds great when sung Inari Saami - reminds me of good times in Finnish Sápmi Northern Saami - sounds great when sung Polish - reminds me of good times with Polish friends Romanian - reminds me of good times in Romania Slovak - reminds me of good times with Czech and Slovak friends Slovenian - reminds me of good times in Slovenia Ukrainian - sounds like a southern Russian's attempt to speak Polish - oddly fascinating :-P See this post for some detail on most of the languages above. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Mauritz Octoglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 5070 days ago 223 posts - 325 votes Speaks: Swedish*, EnglishC2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, Esperanto, French Studies: Old English, Yiddish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean, Portuguese, Welsh, Icelandic, Afrikaans | Message 6 of 29 30 November 2011 at 10:39pm | IP Logged |
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Afrikaans - comparatively easy to learn; sounds fantastic
Akkadian - a link to a long lost world; interestingly similar to Arabic Arabic - illogically logical, opens up a world of possibilities Danish - nostalgic memories from my childhood English - great for international communication as well as education Esperanto - an affordable ticket to an interesting culture; I use it daily French - easy to pronounce (no evil alveolar trills!) Icelandic - a bridge between old and new Italian - sounds and flows nice Korean - complex and logical; interesting culture Mandarin - grammatically fairly straightforward, orthographically amazingly complex Old English - interesting literature and characters; a door to a lost time Russian - great literature; great people; great vodka Spanish - opens up almost a whole continent Swahili - nice sound; interesting grammar; African; lingua franca Swedish - I didn't choose it, but I really like that it's so close to Danish and Norwegian (especially Danish due to my dialect) Turkish - enables me to speak with a Turkish friend Yiddish - fantastic culture; some interesting literature; fun to speak with Germans; minority language in Swedesn 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6599 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 7 of 29 30 November 2011 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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The reasons in my profile are filled in detail (and I've noticed I do more in languages I have 10 or more reasons for), but...
English - my first foreign language, so just being foreign was enough for it to be fascinating. German - it was fascinating to see that languages can be quite similar (it's only now that I realize that English is also more or less similar to Russian ;)) I also love disagreeing with popular opinions, and here French is commonly considered the most beautiful language :P Finnish - first it was its beauty and my love for the country&culture, then also its fascinating grammar and all my other reasons (32 listed) Latin - ancient; my classmates often described it as English words+Russian grammar:))))) Belarusian - I grew up hearing a lot of trasyanka and the words seemed cute/funny to me:) Portuguese - the band Moonspell; their lead singer's poetry (still haven't found his books); being the unpopular Romance language, as it's already been pointed out Italian - beautiful. also like German, it teased and fascinated me by being relatively similar to another language I study. same applies to Dutch now - I also think it looks really fascinating in writing and while i'm at it, Spanish teases me too, but in a somewhat annoying way sometimes Romanian - the Slavic bits (on otherwise familiar "soil") and lack of popularity - same applies to Karelian. for Romanian, the relaxed attitude to copyrights was also an important reason - especially with football streams (before I discovered that Sopcast is often more behind than other ways of streaming, more commonly in other languages) Indonesian - three equally important reasons: a friend from there, the language being interesting from the linguistic point of view, but considered easy. take away one of these three reasons and I'd not be studying it Catalan - sounding and looking unusual Croatian - my love for Croatian football. also, obviously, being Slavic (and I really love seeing h's where other languages put ch's or those stupid kh's - so a lovely writing system, too! more similar to transliterated Russian than other Slavic languages - though I love them for being so different, too!) ...for the above (and two conlangs below), these were my reasons to actually START studying the languages. Polish, Czech - just wanting to study another Slavic language (and the cool diacritics!) Welsh - looks so cool, especially the dd's :) different and unusual too I can't pinpoint what's so fascinating to me about the Scandinavian languages... the å's look cool, the music is good, the countries are prosperous and relatively safe. (um........) And especially Danish sounds like German used to sound to me when I didn't understand it - idk what exactly it is! and of course Icelandic is like a cherry on top, hehe. what fascinates me most about it is that it sounds so beautiful, has even more cool letters and has preserved the oooold spelling<3 conlangs: Esperanto - being "easy" (and obviously I approve of the Russian words;)) toki pona - its philosophy and the use of fascinating languages (Finnish, Welsh) for the vocabulary (i actually have the source language indicated for all my toki pona cards where it's not obvious) Edited by Serpent on 30 November 2011 at 11:47pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Humdereel Octoglot Groupie United States Joined 4980 days ago 90 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written), Turkish, Persian, Urdu Studies: Russian | Message 8 of 29 01 December 2011 at 1:18am | IP Logged |
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Spanish -- My native language that I love to death
English -- Secondary native language, it's global importance Arabic -- elegant script, distinct style, fascinating literature and cultures, and Arabic-speaking friends Turkish -- another interesting Middle Eastern language; love its logical complexity, as someone mentioned earlier; fascinating country and cultures, and Turkish-speaking friends Persian -- fascinating literature, cultures, historical power; countries interest me, and Persian-speaking friends Urdu -- I was interested in Urdu literature and have a few Urdu-speaking friends For hit-list languages: Russian -- I've always associated with mystery; would like to dig into its literature, sounds interesting; one Russian-speaking friend Swahili -- important language in East Africa, sounds exotic to me, fascinating cultures Pashto -- fascinates me in general German -- rich literature, captivating countries and cultures Hausa -- another African language that caught my eye; exotic Yoruba -- exotic, fascinated by culture Igbo -- sounds exotic, and an Igbo-speaking friend Edited by Humdereel on 01 December 2011 at 1:20am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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