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Choose a language based on elimination? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4494 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 17 02 October 2012 at 9:25pm | IP Logged | |||||
This is really an example of elimination by our life choices. Moving to another country or linguistic area and/or getting a partner who is a native speaker are the kinds of things that can be done when very young or when retired. But in the middle stages family and career mostly eliminate those options unless one's career involves overseas postings. But maybe taking vacations regularly in Basque country (you do live in France) and cultivating Basque friends could provide enough motivation to begin learning it now if you are still interested in it. Have you ever read Trevanian's novel Shibumi? The protagonist who was multi-lingual already learned Basque in prison by studying a grammar and dictionary, though making wrong guesses as to some pronunciations. He then moved to BC and became an assassin who sometimes did jobs for free for ETA among his other jobs. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4446 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 10 of 17 02 October 2012 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Part of it is in your nationality. If your mother is 1 nationality and your father is
another, there is a good chance you'd choose 1 of the 2 languages or both if these are not the official languages of your country. On the other hand some people tend to pick European languages or those with an alphabet than something like Chinese or Japanese which uses characters. The other concern is relocation. If you are living in 1 place where English is spoken and decided to relocate, it is natural for you to pick up some phrases from your new surroundings whether you become fluent or not... such as teaching English abroad. In a country like Canada English & French are the 2 official languages. In primary school as an English-speaker you don't have much of a choice of taking French unless you went to a private school where other options are available. Personally don't think I even consider the question of learning 1 language over another because the grammar is easier of there are fewer vocabulary to memorize. My grandfather managed to pickup a dozen European languages. Most of these are related like French, Spanish & Portuguese besides English & Dutch being in the same family. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Senchi Newbie United States Joined 4440 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin, Hungarian | Message 11 of 17 03 October 2012 at 3:28am | IP Logged | |||||
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When I attempt to learn a language, I do it for the simple joy of learning it. When I
feel drawn to a particular language, there are a lot of factors working together to make that happen: usually it's because I like the way it sounds, the culture the language belongs to, the history behind it, etc. I love learning a language and seeing how the culture intertwines with it. I love trying to figure out a ridiculously difficult (for me) sentence and suddenly - I understand it and how the sentence structure works and what word means what in which context. I love that feeling of accomplishment. I would like to learn certain languages simply because they're useful (i.e., Spanish and French, but Spanish in particular) but I just don't have the same drive as I do with languages I actually like. Believe me, I want to like Spanish. So much. Not only do I live in America, where speaking Spanish would be useful - but part of my family speaks Spanish so if I learned, I could communicate with them. I really want to like it, but I just can't stand it. I don't like the sound, nor do I like how similar it is to English (English being my native language but certainly not my favorite). My perspective is, I learn languages (or try to) because I have a genuine joy of learning them and simply because I want to. It is a hobby and a lifestyle. The moment it becomes work - as it would if I tried to force myself to learn something - it would become extremely unappealing to me and I would become disheartened and it would eventually drain all the fun out of something I already love so much. Besides, there are different ways to interpret what a "useful" language is. When I am older and more experienced in picking up new languages, I think it would be nice to learn endangered ones. I've heard a lot about how linguists try to help preserve dying languages and it seems like a nice way to help out. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4641 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 12 of 17 03 October 2012 at 9:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Never read that novel, but now I am curious so will look it up. By the way, ETA has declared a permanent ceasefire so that job option is no longer available... Right now I need to focus on my Russian, and then Greek and Serbian is on my wish-list, so I am afraid Basque is not part of my current plans. Maybe when I retire? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| whitelily Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5635 days ago 42 posts - 47 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Arabic (classical), Urdu | Message 13 of 17 03 October 2012 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
+1 This is also how I do it. I let my interested and motivation guide me when choosing a language, and I don´t worry about it´s level of difficulty. I think it´s a lot easier (in the long run) to learn a "more difficult" language that you are motivated to learn, than to just pick one because it´s seemingly the easiest one, but without having much desire to learn it. To me, choosing a language that I actually have the chance to use is very important. This is also something that motivates me along the way, and keeps me going. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6584 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 14 of 17 03 October 2012 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Unfortunately, there are several difficulties with that: 1: There's often pretty much no material availible. Often there's not even a writing system for the language. 2: Unless you live in an area where it's spoken, there's nobody to talk to, since these languages rarely have expat communities (if they did they wouldn't be endangered). 3: Even if you learn to speak it, it does little to help the community of speakers or the language itself since you're not really using it. If there's an internet prescence that might help, but that requires a writing system and a developed community with access to computers, and most languages that can sport that aren't really endangered. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fabriciocarraro Hexaglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Brazil russoparabrasileirosRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4717 days ago 989 posts - 1454 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, EnglishB2, Italian, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Dutch, German, Japanese | Message 15 of 17 03 October 2012 at 2:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, actually noun gender in Russian is 95% of the time really obvious. Much easier than German or even Latin languages, I'd say. But I see your point. And until now, I've never chosen a language like that. Maybe in the future! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 16 of 17 03 October 2012 at 2:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
Use is also created by you forming niches to use it in. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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