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Learning Languages through Hobbies | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4486 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes  Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 9 28 July 2013 at 5:22am | IP Logged |
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Recently, I started coaching grappling at an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) club here in Chongqing, China.
Though I can more or less engage in the simplest conversations in Mandarin Chinese, even with a translator to help me out I felt helpless linguistically in trying to explain the technical points in the technique. It guess it's one thing to say "I'm from the Philippines and I'll be staying in China for the next five years" from something like "When you have the Rear Naked Choke, be sure you puff out your chest and hyperextend your back." I don't even know how to call the Rear Naked Choke in Chinese. There so many fine technical points which I wish I could teach but just simply can't effectively get across. I guess it shows that placing yourself in different situations can really push you to refine your language abilities. I remember back home during my college days, our national wrestling team coach was a Mongolian who couldn't speak much English. I understand how he feels now. Can anyone else share their similar experience, where upon engaging in your hobby you find your foreign languages skills absolutely inadequate? P.S. A Rear Naked Choke has nothing to do with being naked. Edited by Duke100782 on 28 July 2013 at 5:24am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Stelle Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Canada tobefluent.com Joined 4142 days ago 949 posts - 1686 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Spanish Studies: Tagalog | Message 2 of 9 28 July 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged |
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Ha! I laughed out loud at your P.S.
I do think that general conversational fluency and fluency in specific areas are two very different things. It's one of the things that I find most fascinating about languages: what you need to learn to get by and what I need to learn to get by are completely different. The good news is that you'll pick up the vocabulary that you need in no time! I wish that I could tell you a story about trying to learn through a hobby. Unfortunately, I live far from anywhere with Spanish-language clubs or groups. I have found that I've had to learn a lot of educational jargon in Spanish. I'm a teacher, and some of my Skype language partners are teachers, so it makes sense that we would talk shop. The first few times it was hard, but now I feel that I can comfortably talk about teaching and learning in three different languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| embici Triglot Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4608 days ago 263 posts - 370 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Greek | Message 3 of 9 28 July 2013 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
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A few years ago I learned to play Petanque at a park in the US. Many of the players were
from France so I got some great French practice. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Fat-tony Nonaglot Senior Member United Kingdom jiahubooks.co.uk Joined 6138 days ago 288 posts - 441 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, Esperanto, Thai, Laotian, Urdu, Swedish, French Studies: Mandarin, Indonesian, Arabic (Written), Armenian, Pali, Burmese | Message 4 of 9 13 August 2013 at 12:08am | IP Logged |
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I think this is a fairly common problem for language learner to worry about not having a complete grasp of the
language. My advice would be to focus on learning vocab you will actually use rather than that which is prescribed in textbooks. You may feel as if you're in at the deep end but practice will help - my wife is Thai and it may have taken many months and years of listening but I can finally engage in authentic Thai conversations about food (which is practically every conversation). The flip side is that I really struggle to read Thai newspapers as I've never really focused on that area.. My Russian on the other hand is the complete opposite but that suits me fine. Just make your own goals and put in the hard work! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5530 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 9 13 August 2013 at 2:57am | IP Logged |
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When I was first learning about whitewater kayaking, I used this fine book. When I started learning French in earnest, I was delighted to find an excellent French translation, written by a river guide who works in Quebec and France.
If you think about, every new hobby comes with a huge amount of vocabulary, even in our native languages. At least in the west, you can often find introductory books which explain everything with a nice glossary in the back. For more esoteric hobbies, or languages without much of a publishing industry, I suppose you just need to ask people. And of course, I imagine it's going to be much harder if you're the teacher, and none of the students actually know the vocabulary. I've been teaching my French tutor how to write put together a website to let people know about her business. My usual strategy is to introduce new terminology in English, then explain it in French using simple, non-specialist language, and frantically scramble between lessons to find the real French words. This involves a lot of things like translating "long-form sales letter" into longue lettre de vente. This often requires a lot of creative Googling to get right if Wikipedia and Linguee don't provide a translation. English speakers have an unfair advantage here: English is considered prestigious in many fields, and you can often get away with giving an English term and explaining it, at least until you have time to go look it up. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Duke100782 Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Philippines https://talktagalog.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4486 days ago 172 posts - 240 votes Speaks: English*, Tagalog* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 9 08 September 2013 at 4:15am | IP Logged |
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Thanks emk for the excellent insights. I think you understand perfectly my predicament.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| schoenewaelder Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5558 days ago 759 posts - 1197 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 7 of 9 09 September 2013 at 12:26pm | IP Logged |
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I think having a hobby you're realy interested in is a great incentive to learn a bit of
language. If you think about it, there are probably really only a couple of dozen technical terms you need to learn, and then you'll be really motivated to read up or talk about it. Even if it's a couple of hundred, it should be possible to learn them reasonably quickly, even if at first it seems a bit intimidating. Happy naked choking! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4860 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 8 of 9 09 September 2013 at 1:14pm | IP Logged |
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I have kind of an issue here with Finnish. Just like emk said, English dominates many
areas and that clashes with my "purist" mentality. I actually understand why English is so important and "chic" in certain fields, but it's just a bothersome feeling I can't get rid of. I've put a lot of hard work in learning Finnish and it feels awkward (to say the least) to be forced to speak a mixed language, because in a certain field people immediately recognize the English word, and the Finnish version of said term sounds weird, old, dated, strange, you name it. It's like sometimes speaking pure Finnish makes you sound more like a foreigner :) Does this happen in many languages? I suppose in German and Swedish can happen a lot, but I guess not so much in Spanish. There seems to be a more natural acceptance of loanwords (and even grammatical loans!) in the north of Europe (leaving Iceland and the Faroes out) compared to the south. Edited by caam_imt on 09 September 2013 at 1:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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