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Languages you love but keep putting off? | ||
Tags: Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ZombieKing Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4527 days ago 247 posts - 324 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin* | Message 1 of 29 07 September 2012 at 9:01am | IP Logged | ||
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For me that would be Cantonese. I've loved Cantonese since I made friends with my first Chinese speaking friends in my second year of highschool. They were from Hong Kong and they spoke English, Cantonese and Mandarin. They always tried to include me by speaking in Mandarin when I was around. But of course they were more used to Cantonese so would use that sometimes without noticing too (which I didn't mind). I really fell in love with the sound and the atmosphere that Cantonese brought about in my group of friends. Ever since then I've always wanted to learn Cantonese. Not to mention a lot of the people who've managed to attract me were from Hong Kong. They have pretty cool style :P
I keep telling myself "one day". But I'm not sure when that day'll actually come. I think when I come to grips with the Chinese writing system, I'll try and learn Cantonese from watching Cantonese dramas with Chinese subtitles. That's how my friends learned Mandarin afterall (Beijing dramas with subtitles) ^_^ What about you guys? Are there any languages you desperately want to learn, but just can't seem to find the time for? Or can't learn for whatever reason? 2 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 2 of 29 07 September 2012 at 10:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I keep putting off Hebrew for some reason. Haven't figured out why yet
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| 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 29 07 September 2012 at 11:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegian is the loveliest sounding language I've heard, and the Norwegians I've encountered online seem to be really smart, nice, and laid back people. But there are other languages I really want to learn that have so many more speakers, and more places to use them, and more resources. So I think to myself, "Maybe one day." :-) Edited by tastyonions on 07 September 2012 at 11:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4772 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 29 07 September 2012 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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The list of languages I want to just "flirt" with is very long, and I generally don't put this off. I often listen to the short 10-lesson Pimsleur courses while riding on public transport: already completed seven of those, and doing Swiss German right now. But the three languages that I am really saving up until later for serious study are Korean, Mandarin and French. I also intend to seriously study Spanish and Arabic at some point, but it's the former three that I'm really itching to start, to the point where I can't even decide which of them I should go for first.
I want to study Korean because it's a heritage language of sorts in my family. More than half of my extended family is Koryo saram (though I've never heard any Russophone ethnic Korean actually use that term), but I only know of one relative who grew up speaking Korean, and I'm not even sure she still remembers it. I do sometimes get asked why I chose Japanese over Korean at family gatherings, but my family doesn't really pressure me into it. I am genuinely interested in finding out more about that part of my heritage. Besides, Korean is very similar to Japanese in terms of grammar and (non-native) vocabulary, so I believe starting Korean in a year or two will be much easier than it was for Japanese three years ago. While my interest in Japanese was piqued mostly by popular culture, the Japanese use of Chinese characters and various cultural influences from China made me interested in traditional Chinese culture. Besides, being a language buff and not leaarning Mandarin is already starting to come across as weird to some people. I have also long been interested in the culture of Hong Kong, so I could eventually use Mandarin as a springboard to both Cantonese and Classical Chinese. As for French, while the literature, cinema and existentialist philosophy do interest me somewhat, the main reason why I want to sink my teeth into la langue de Molière is Assimil. A lot of Assimil courses for "non-mainstream" languages are available in French only, and getting my hands on them would help me further satisfy my linguistic wanderlust, the same way Pimsleur does now. Edited by vonPeterhof on 07 September 2012 at 12:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5567 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 29 07 September 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged | ||
Only about 6,000 of them! :) Seriously though, I have only recently started getting serious about Japanese, even though I've had the intention of learning it for many years now. I learned the kana a while back, and I can now recognize most of the kanji thanks to my Mandarin studies, but I've only just begun to actually learn some words and start figuring out how the language works. Mostly it's a time issue. I already had five languages on my plate before I decided I was going to learn Japanese (not counting Esperanto, which really doesn't need attention), and finding the time for all my languages is still a challenge. I'm trying to work out the best way to manage six languages where my levels range from quite advanced to near absolute beginner. Edited by Levi on 07 September 2012 at 12:40pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4559 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 6 of 29 07 September 2012 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Mine is Japanese. I've dabbled with it over the years, and even made some progress with no sustained effort, but I see it as something of a guilty pleasure until I've improved the languages I learned in school (Swedish, German and French) to a point where reading and listening are effortless and pleasurable, allowing for easier maintenance.
If I gave into the temptation and dived into Japanese right now, I'm afraid it might take years before I'd return to the above works-in-progress. And that would be such a waste. It simply makes more sense to refine these languages now, while my skills aren't rusty beyond repair. This is ultimately not a bad situation to be in. I'll just have to persevere for a few more years, and if my longing grows too strong to resist at times, well, a brief digression never killed anyone. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5207 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 29 07 September 2012 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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Of course, I'm realistic: because of not wanting to be studying several at the same
time due to time constraints and all the other classic arguments against doing several at once, particularly for similar languages where learning one makes subsequent ones easier. I had been wanting to learn Italian for ages but I managed to resist it (with difficulty, I'll admit) and kept putting it off until my French was good, which was a great decision. Now it's quite the same for Spanish - I don't love it in the same way as Italian (I'm more attracted to its utility and opportunities than to the language in itself) but in any case I'm pretty keen to learn it but I'm again putting it off until I reach a high level in Italian, at which point it will be easier, I'll get confused less, and I'll be able to allocate more time to it. And there's a couple of others I'd love to be able to speak (German, Russian) but they're very much in the "maybe in the future" category because let's face it, a language is a lot of effort and I have other things to do with my time. 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 8 of 29 07 September 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | ||
Mongolian followed by Azeri and Uzbek are the nearest to what you're describing, but desperation would still be exaggerating my desire. It's largely a problem of time since I have a minimal base of resources for each of these languages but several languages on the go already, and even these latter are treated unevenly. I regret not doing that much with Slovak compared to the other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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