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Useful language vs. language you like | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6662 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 1 of 69 29 April 2013 at 1:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you were given the choice between learning a language that is useful in terms of
speaking opportunities, native materials etc. or a language that you find interesting without any particular reason to learn it, which would you choose? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 2 of 69 29 April 2013 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Always the more interesting language!
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 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 3 of 69 29 April 2013 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Finding a language interesting is a reason enough (and thus can't be categorised as "no
particular reason"). But the criterion is different on both counts - I only learn languages I feel a personal connection to or can imagine fostering an emotional connection to. These reasons can be linguistic, but they're rarely economical (because the odds are I won't be in that situation). If, turns out, I will need to learn Japanese or Indonesian for a future job, then I will of course, but my preferences goes to language I feel passionate about, and I don't understand how that is not a particular reason at all. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5533 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 69 29 April 2013 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I were going to seriously attempt another language (beyond the very minimal level I'm aiming for in Egyptian), I would need:
1. People to talk to on a regular basis. 2. Interesting native materials. 3. Either an economic incentive or a lot more free time than I'm likely to have for the next several years. I may feel differently once I get my French to a solid and comfortable C1, as opposed to its current level of "I can almost fake some C1 skills when my French is strongly activated and I'm having a good day." So realistically, if I had a choice between an boring-but-useful language, and an interesting-but-useless language, I wouldn't learn either. I need the interesting bits to maintain my day-to-day motivation, and I need the useful bits to consciously justify the huge amount of time required. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4522 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 5 of 69 29 April 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot imagine that a language I'm interested in would be useless. So for me there is no either or. I'm only interested in a language if it has some use to me.
eg. (Old) Icelandic --> door to old European literature + culture Gothic + Proto-Norse --> close to Proto-Germanic, tell me something about the history of my language These wouldn't seem obviously useful to the outsider, but for me, they are. Nevertheless, the main reason I studied those was personal interest. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 6 of 69 29 April 2013 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4278 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 7 of 69 29 April 2013 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||
The question looks a bit strange to me. If I did not get it wrongly: A "useful" language sounds like: a) a language useful in the sense of improving career prospects or raising your stature b) a language which is the key to a culture or knowledge you would like to know about c) one that people to whom you want to talk speak An "interesting" language seems to be: d) a language that you learn for its own sake, for example, you like the sounds of it One might love a certain language more, but usually it is among the languages s/he already knows. I cannot imagine I would ever start a language that I do not know because I fall in love with the unknown language itself... Edited by Paco on 29 April 2013 at 4:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mikonai Diglot Senior Member United States weirdnamewriting.bloRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4930 days ago 178 posts - 281 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Swahili, German | Message 8 of 69 29 April 2013 at 4:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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Any language could come to be useful someday (well, there's a conlang I'm working on
creating where that's a little bit debatable, but that's probably a different issue), but for the purposes of discussion, I think I'll define useful as something like Spanish where I live: a fair few of the people around speak it, and it would certainly be handy to be able to communicate with them if they don't speak English, and to be able to understand something they say in Spanish to their buddies. I considered Spanish when I first wanted to learn a language, but I didn't choose it. I'm not sure why; maybe there was actually a bit of me that didn't want to learn a language every one else did in high school. This still sticks around with me, I think: I want to work on German (which I see fairly frequently online and in print, but probably won't get much chance to speak in my area) and Swahili (which a lot of people I run into haven't even heard of). At least, that's according to how I think most people (aside from the wonderful language nerds on this forum) define "useful". But it all depends on what you want to do. I do plan to get around to Spanish and French and all of those, eventually, but there are other language that, although they may not be as useful, I really want to learn first. I know from experience that if I learn a language, I can find use for it, no matter what. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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