|
 |
Extreme passion and a fear of loss | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5766 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 1 of 11 04 December 2012 at 5:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I've had a bit of difficulty coming up with an appropriate name for this thread. I know
exactly what I want to talk about, but as I see it, it's made up of two things which I see as being equally important and which ultimately intertwine with each other. Please bear with me on what follows as I ramble a bit, but it should become clear why by the end. I've been in China for nearly two months now, teaching English. Every day I have lots of contact with Chinese and a lot of contact with English because of work. Chinese is coming along very slowly and I don't resent having to use a lot of English, but that's not the focus of this thread. Primarily while walking to and from work, or running around the park, I think about German. German has been a significant part of my life since I was about eight or so for various reasons - I had friends who helped me to learn the language from a pretty young age, I listened to German music from about the same young age, learnt to read it through reading fairy tales and watching the odd kiddie programme, I took it all the way through school at every possible opportunity. Almost every day I'd practically inhale my lunch so as to get back to my desk so I could study German more. I also took it at uni as a minor subject. I also came into contact with many aspects of German history while reading books about it when I was young. I don't remember exactly when but I know it was before ten years old. I distinctly remember going to uni adamant that I was just going to do Russian, but my passion for German ultimately won - German always wins in the end, however hard the fight and however persistent she needs to be to win me back. And she will always win, too. My passion, love, obsession, whatever you want to call it, for German has, for as long as I can remember, been in a completely different league from my passion for the other languages I study - I use the same words to describe my massively varying degrees of passion for those languages, but that's because there are no words for what German is to me. My friends all know me as a language nerd, which we all take for granted here, but they all also recognise that if I had to pick one language for the rest of my life, German would be definitely my one companion and they recognise I'd not need to think about that. This got me thinking - even after contemplating this for weeks now, I cannot pin down any individual words, phrases or even write a paragraph that accurately describes my feeling towards German - and I have tried numerous times. I even failed again above. But like some obsessive letter writer who must get his point across exactly as he wants to, I stop writing and scribble it out because it doesn't capture it. I get a buzz or distinct feeling of what I can only describe as pride (although that's not even right) when I listen to it, speak it, read it, write it, learn a new word or have any contact with it at all. If someone even mentions the language or any of the countries where German is spoken or anything to do with it whatsoever, I jump at the chance to talk about it like a hungry wolf wandering in the wilderness. In terms of studying it, I could have stopped actively years ago but I love it, and I haven't had any problems with motivation for probably as long as I've known German exists. So finally, my question here is two-fold, which is why I had difficulty with the thread's title: a] Do you study or speak a language that invokes that level of an emotional response in you? If so, which one? Can you describe it? I'm assuming there can be only one because no other language I've ever studied hasn't even begun to come close to my feelings for German, and it'd probably begin to screw with my head if a second one ever did. b] What do you think about the fear of loss as a motivator? When I was at uni, I wanted to expand my horizons and try something different so I tried to water my German obsession down. It didn't work as I distinctly remember an actual fear of losing it, losing what I consider a fundamental part of myself. I would not be "me" without German, and that's the only language I speak that has actually become part of my personality long-term. That fear of loss surfaced when I was 17 (I'm now 22) and has only grown as I've got older. I'll be very interested to read your replies. I wouldn't ordinarily put these thoughts down for others to read, but I'm sure there will be at least a few here with this degree of unending fixation (again inadequate) on one language. Jack 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5334 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 11 04 December 2012 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I am not sure it equals what you are describing, but if I had to take only one language in addition to English it
would be Spanish. Spanish is part of all my fabric and soul. I could not live without it, and I would not be the same person without it. I was 7 years old when I first encountered Spanish, and I was 11 when it became a large chunk of my life. I have lived a total of 3 years in Spanish families, I have had 8 Spanish boy friends, I did at one point want to marry and settle down in Spain and I have studied it at the University of Oslo for 4 years and a half. I have passed the love for Spanish on to the next generation by sending my oldest daughter to visit one of my two Spanish families for the last 4 summers, and my youngest was in my other Spanish family for three months. My Spanish best friend and I are joking about seeing our grandchildren grow up together, and my eldest daughter says she and her Spanish best friend want to share their time between Norway and Spain. The fact that I am the legal guardian of two children who are Spanish speaking also ties me to the language. As for fear of loss - I have lost my Spanish - twice. First when I learned French - then when I learned Italian. The first time it did not really surprise me, the second time I almost went into shock. Do I want to learn Portuguese? Sure. Do I dear to? Nope. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4689 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 3 of 11 04 December 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I'm going through something similar with, oddly enough, German. I started learning German almost a year ago as a kind of personal challenge.
I had previously taken 12 years of French and can speak it at a c1/c2 level. I had also picked up a good amount of Spanish from my job (around a B1 level or so). I had always been intrigued by languages, but I never really liked French or Spanish all that much. They were useful but I would never say I had any passion for them. German changed all that. Since day 1, I've been in love with German. I can't explain why, I just have. I don't think I've spoken more than a few sentences in french in the last year and I have tried to renew my study of Spanish several times with varying degrees of failure. I obsess over German. My friends have nicknamed me "U.G.L.G." which stands for "Unsolicited German Lesson Guy" because I talk about it so much. Truthfully, I have no real use for German. I have a real use for Spanish as it is spoken by a lot of people at my work and around the area I live. I could really use a good level of Spanish... Yet my heart belongs to German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 4 of 11 04 December 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I think I don't have half of your passion but I do get very emotional about one of my
languages, and it is also German. My love for German wasn't love at the first sight: I remember going to the university adamant that I was NOT going to learn German any more (I had a REALLY bad German teacher in high school). I planned originally to take Spanish or French as my major/minor but then I had an encounter with 'real' German, and this time I fell in love :). I'm happy everytime I get to speak German, and it's not like with my other foreign languages, in the case of which I simply think 'speaking in a foreign language is fun' or 'nice, I need some speaking practice'. It's hard to describe but when I'm speaking German, I feel like at home. As you've written, it is a fundamental part of myself and when I start to speak it it's like some little hidden aspects of myself come to the surface. I also feel really happy when I'm getting out of the train or bus in Germany, and I'm seeing and hearing German all around me. I can't imagine I would ever lose German (like Solfrid Cristin has written, "I would not be the same person without it") but I don't 'actively' fear of losing it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 5 of 11 04 December 2012 at 7:07pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I have never feared losing a language, mostly because that has never occurred to me - my
Latin is rusty, but I never spoke that anyway. I guess the language I could not live without (besides English) is probably French. I have particular memories concerning that language. Romanian also holds a place in my heart, despite me not being able to speak it. Edited by tarvos on 04 December 2012 at 7:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 11 04 December 2012 at 7:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I feel this way about Finnish and for a few years I was reluctant to start anything new. I sort of had this fear about the possible NEW languages, really. Like, I could've started Portuguese or Italian much earlier but it was easier to dabble in Esperanto and Yiddish (e.g. for the first 6 week challenges), and to attempt some Belarusian as it's a heritage language and I've had exposure. I basically didn't want to start anything new if I couldn't guarantee that in a few days the charm would wear off and I would be prioritizing my precious Finnish over it.
Or in my preferred terms, I waited before I couldn't live without Italian. I might have had more or less specific plans to start it after reaching basic fluency in Portuguese or whatever, and well, it took a new interest (football) to start it earlier. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 7 of 11 04 December 2012 at 7:46pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hungarian still evokes the strongest positive feelings in me and of all the languages that I'm familiar with, it also means the most to me as I've mentioned in this thread. I should add that Finnish, Polish, Northern Saami and Slovak evoke nearly as much emotion in me but Hungarian is still above them. However I doubt that I feel as strongly about Hungarian as LanguageSponge feels about German, and I never really felt that working on Hungarian should prevent me from exploring other languages. In addition fear of my losing Hungarian is not a motivator for me (even though I've started to sense that it is fading in the face of having focused a lot on other languages) but using, learning or improving it even sporadically keeps me wanting to do more with it.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5766 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 11 04 December 2012 at 10:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I can't weigh my emotions against anyone else's, but picking up Japanese happened at a time when I felt like I could not influence anything happening to me. So it's a symbol of my progress towards a more healthy locus of control as well as a part of what helped me progress, and still does.
And one of the results is that if I knew "tomorrow I'm going lose everything I've learnt so far", my reaction would be: I will learn it again. Edited by Bao on 05 December 2012 at 5:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
