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What makes you restart a lang? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| freakyaye Senior Member Australia Joined 4838 days ago 107 posts - 152 votes  | Message 1 of 15 04 September 2012 at 2:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hi everyone!
At the moment I'm learning French and its my main focus now but in the past Japanese was my favorite for a long time. I'm at the point now that if I hear someone else speaking Japanese it makes me dead jealous and makes me think I should take it again. And today I had this feeling again with this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9Zx3x8Ao7g . So I was wondering what made others want to restart their old languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Zimena Tetraglot Groupie Norway Joined 4592 days ago 75 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish Studies: Czech, Mandarin | Message 2 of 15 04 September 2012 at 3:12pm | IP Logged |
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This is an interesting question.
For me, I would say there are at least two types of interest in languages. First, there is that general interest in nearly ALL languages - how they are constructed, what they sound like, how they express things and how they differ from my native one. This is the type of interest that made me pick as many language courses as possible while I was still in school, and which makes me collect dictionaries and language guides and learning materials even for languages I don't plan on actually taking the time to study at the current moment. Then, there's also the desire to get GOOD at a language - this is the thing that kicks in if I "restart" an old one, too. In that case, there has to be some kind of motivation related to a country where that language is spoken. For example: Do I have a favorite something from there, like a musician or a band or a sports team? Does the country interest me for some reason, because I have a chance to go there or would otherwise be likely to be in contact with a lot of native speakers? Or do I have friends there, who would motivate me to learn the language better? In any case, the motivation to get better at a language - as opposed to just knowing a bit about it or knowing it to a basic degree - comes from the need to acquire/share information and form friendships - just the language interest in itself is not enough for me to put in a great effort to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4665 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 15 04 September 2012 at 3:29pm | IP Logged |
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I took Spanish for a few years but gave it up because it was only a school requirement and I wasn't interested in languages at the time. I plan to restart it eventually, partly because there are so many chances to use it here in the U.S., and if I can get my French to a comfortable level, it seems silly not to take the chance to learn a related language that it would be easy to find a use for in my daily life. Edited by tastyonions on 04 September 2012 at 3:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4639 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 4 of 15 04 September 2012 at 5:31pm | IP Logged |
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I started learning Russian when I did my military service (back in the bad old days when the USSR was the enemy), but did not get to a very high level. Then my attention turned to Romance languages and Russian was forgotten. However, subconsciously I always had this feeling of insatisfaction, as I had found it really interesting. About 20 years later I went to Russia for the first time, and decided that I had to learn Russian. For various reasons it is only the last year I have made the move and I am now actively studying it. For me it is a mixture of interest in the language itself, a general wish to learn a Slavic language and a more specific interest in Russian literature and culture generally. An added bonus is that it will be useful in my current job.
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| 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 5 of 15 04 September 2012 at 10:36pm | IP Logged |
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Usually that's when I get reminded of what originally caused my interest...
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 6 of 15 05 September 2012 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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For me it's been hearing some song in that language or a positive experience with a native speaker of that language (not necessarily romance; making a new friend who speaks that language or travelling to where it's spoken can also do the trick).
After hearing this song, I felt that I just had to get serious about Hungarian again. :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4527 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 7 of 15 05 September 2012 at 1:07am | IP Logged |
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Well, for Korean, I just realized that I don't have to become fluent in Korean. I can study just enough to be able to understand the lyrics to my favourite songs easily. And so that realization was what made me take up Korean again, because I didn't feel any pressure to become fluent. Korean is really difficult (for me at least), so just focusing on the amount of Korean that is necessary to understand kpop (which isn't much, believe me） makes it lots of fun and much more manageable.
1 person has 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 8 of 15 05 September 2012 at 11:31am | IP Logged |
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Use - I started on refreshing my French after I moved to Brussels temporarily and had to
brush up on using it in my daily life (although I'd been speaking it on and off for years beforehand) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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