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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 6666 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes  Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 9 of 69 29 April 2013 at 5:02pm | IP Logged | ||
Its kind of hard to explain what I'm getting at, so feel free to interpret the question however you want. Maybe another way to put it would be to choose between the language that would more useful for you and the language that you would love to learn even if it isn't very practical in your circumstances. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7161 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 69 29 April 2013 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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My first filter is interest. My second is the quantity and quality of resources and opportunities to use the language outside isolated studying.
If a language doesn't pass both filters, I ultimately pass it up or go no further than dabbling. The filters aren't mutually exclusive as potentially suggested in the original post. On applying these principles on a few of my languages*, I get: Hungarian: strong interest, moderate amount of resources for foreigners and fairly easy to travel and interact with communities of native speakers. Result: still studying Hungarian. Northern Saami: strong interest, fewer resources for foreigners (and basic reading knowledge of Danish, Finnish, Norwegian or Swedish is needed to make learning feasible), fairly easy (but expensive) to travel to Sápmi. Result: still studying Northern Saami albeit haphazardly. Meadow Mari: moderate interest, very few resources for foreigners (only one textbook for English-speakers, whatever's left is published for Russian-speakers), not quite as easy for outsiders to travel to the western slopes of the Ural Mountains compared to Sápmi let alone the Carpathian Basin, opportunities to use the language with native speakers aren't as numerous as the nominally high number of self-identified Mari suggest (see here). Result: dabbled in Meadow Mari for a couple of months with no plans to return to it despite level of interest being constant. BCMS/SC: moderate interest, moderate amount of resources available for foreigners (I'd say that it's a little higher than what I can get for Hungarian), and fairly easy to travel to the Balkans or just get in touch with the diaspora for opportunities to interact in the language. Result: still (re)studying the language. (although this is also explainable in part by the high likelihood of a trip to the Balkans in the next few months) *Russian / Spanish / Mandarin / Arabic: minimal interest, embarrassingly high amount of resources available for foreigners and child's play to travel to native territories of the speech community or to meet the diaspora. Result: Some structural knowledge of Russian as it relates to comparative Slavonic linguistics and no knowledge apart from a few fact(oids) about the other languages). No desire to change these results if ever * Even though they've never been in my profile I've included these languages here to emphasize that I need a given language to pass both of my filters for it to receive attention beyond dabbling. Meadow Mari represents best the case of what happens when the quality and quantity of learning material and opportunities to use the language (~ "usefulness" to some people) fall noticeably short of my level of interest. P.S. Děkuju, Terézo. :-) Edited by Chung on 29 April 2013 at 6:07pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5014 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 11 of 69 29 April 2013 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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Usefulness mentioned in these questions usually means "economically useful in the eyes
of most people around" I'm afraid. And many of those people are those who failed at learning the language and still do not realize it might have had something to do with their attitude and motivation. The only language I was forced to start learning despite my complete lack of interest and hate towards the horrible teacher was English. I was useless at it until I found my own uses and interests for it. All the others were my choice, based on personal interest and passion. And, no matter how it had looked when I started, I have found more than enough uses for each one of them. Even the ones I know just a few words in are already revealing possible future uses. So, I'd suggest learning a language you are interested in. Usefulness will show up later, even though it may be much more complicated if you are interested in a really small language. Chung's post is a very good one, as usual. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tsopivo Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4476 days ago 258 posts - 411 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Esperanto | Message 12 of 69 29 April 2013 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
I think I would chose the useful one. For instance, I find that Japanese and Portuguese sound beautiful but I dream of travelling for a significant period of time in South America and in Central America (ideally one year in each, more if I could but it already seems unlikely I will be able to do one year each) so I plan on learning Spanish but I do not think I will learn Japanese one day. Then again, I am learning Esperanto which is not the most useful language in the world for me :D
But all the things in your list fall into the useful category, as described by the OP. Edited by Tsopivo on 29 April 2013 at 9:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5244 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 69 29 April 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I learned French because it was interesting to me ... not particularly useful at the time, but after about 10 years, I
changed my love into a job teaching. Spanish was a necessity ... seems more schools want Spanish teachers than French. As I'm planning a summer vacation, I've toyed with the idea of learning a little Italian, which shouldn't be too bad with a Romance background. Interest and utility combined. My other destination is Croatia, but knowing how much time goes into learning language to a good level from scratch, it doesn't seem "worth it" to spend a lot of time for a language I'd use only 1 week. Still, I'll go knowing how to exchange basic courtesies. Guess I'd come down on the interest side ... usefulness has always come along later! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lemberg1963 Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States zamishka.blogspot.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4244 days ago 41 posts - 82 votes Speaks: English*, Ukrainian* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Polish | Message 14 of 69 29 April 2013 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Useful language for your first foreign language, and languages you like beyond that. Most
people become bilingual out of necessity, life circumstances, rather than choice. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vogue Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4259 days ago 109 posts - 181 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian | Message 15 of 69 29 April 2013 at 9:21pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would choose the useful languages at this point, but that's because I've never had much interest
in learning a "non-useful" language. Some people love learning languages like Esperanto, etc, but at this point I'm not willing to commit the time for something like that. I already have my eyes set on the following: -Finishing Italian: mostly useful in the sense that as an Italian citizen, I should PROBABLY know how to speak this one. And I hope to one day work in international government. Speaking Italian would mean I could work for either state that I'm a citizen of. -French & German: Admittedly, I'm not hugely interested in either of these, but they're two of the most important languages in the EU so see above. -Hebrew: Started studying it awhile ago, took a class, loved it. Would like to continue, but I don't much consider it "useful." Though more useful than some really rare languages. - Arabic: I was at one point an "intermediate speaker" (allegedly). It took me all of about a week after leaving Jordan to forget the majority of my Arabic. It'd be great to eventually learn this one for real and keep it solidified. ...yay for dreaming big? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5061 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 16 of 69 29 April 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Chung, if you didn't know English, would you learn it?
1 person has voted this message useful |
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