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How much time do you spend worrying... | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | Loss of confidence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| dbag Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5022 days ago 605 posts - 1046 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 15 14 August 2012 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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… about which languages you may or may not learn one day?
I spend an insane amount of time thinking about this,even though I have decided to commit to my TL until at least C1. I imagine many who come here have the same problem. I waste so much mental energy thinking things like "shall I try and learn 4 romance languages or one hard Asian language?" "How cool would it be to learn Hindi?" blah blah blah... How many others have this problem, and what form does it take? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| KayJane Newbie United States Joined 4518 days ago 21 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Persian | Message 2 of 15 14 August 2012 at 2:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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...Too much.
I flipflop between Persian and Chinese. Devoting time for Chinese can be time consuming and because I like both, I sometimes want to switch to give Persian attention as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vermillon Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4678 days ago 602 posts - 1042 votes Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, German | Message 3 of 15 14 August 2012 at 3:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Not much. My secret: I don't try to resist temptation! (as my language list suggests...)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5262 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 4 of 15 14 August 2012 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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None. It is impossible to learn all the world's languages. Having recently added Portuguese to my English and Spanish, I can say that, for me, the time it takes me to maintain two languages at a high level and advance them higher is considerable. I don't think I would want to learn more languages if it meant that I would spend all my time doing just that. To me, life is about more than language learning (htlal heresy!).
At some point, I think I might dabble in a next language or two but not to as high a level as my Spanish and Portuguese. I find that there is enough within the Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking world to keep me busy for quite some time. I congratulate you on resisting "wanderlust", @dbag, until you are satisfied with your level of Spanish. Keep at it, be persistent, and you will get there. Edited by iguanamon on 14 August 2012 at 3:21pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| druckfehler Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4868 days ago 1181 posts - 1912 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean Studies: Persian | Message 5 of 15 14 August 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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I sometimes think about which languages I'd like to know, but I more or less stopped obsessing about it. I only have definite plans for Korean, because I think I should stay focused on it until at least April next year. It's hard to make language plans in advance, considering that I don't actually know what else I'll be doing.
For now I only know that I want to - no, need to - learn Mandarin (I've been looking forward to it for a long time). I also like the idea of continuing Portuguese and Persian, but by now I know that is not enough motivation. I have to be crazy about a language to put in the hours and hours of study that are needed to progress and then to maintain the knowledge. For that reason, I have no idea which languages I'll eventually end up speaking - or if I'll just stop focusing on languages at some point. In the end, making lists is fun, but the actual studying is much more satisfying. Keeping an open mind to all languages is good for inspiration, but the actual thought process of "which languages should I study?" only really sets in when I get serious about one of them. 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 6 of 15 14 August 2012 at 8:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think about what I'd like to know but I don't ever think I can't do it.
1 person has 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 14 August 2012 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't think about this at all. I used to... But now I take a much more relaxed approach to language learning. I tell myself that I just have to keep going, slowly but surely, and I will definitely achieve my goals.
If you worry about whether you'll ever learn your TL or how long it'll take you to get there, you run the risk of burning out because you study more than you can and end up resenting the work it takes to get there. Imagine telling yourself you have to learn Japanese in a year, but you quickly realize that one year is just not possible to get to the level you want, and so you feel discouraged and give up... Then two years later you meet a Japanese exchange student (or something to that effect) and you realize that if you had just studied the minimum of 1 hour a day, everyday for the past two years, you'd already be reading Harry Potter in Japanese and watching anime without subtitles. :S
When you take up Mandarin hopefully my German (and Mandarin too) will be better and we can be study companions :D Edited by ZombieKing on 14 August 2012 at 8:31pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4959 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 8 of 15 15 August 2012 at 5:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Just when I hear them, but then I reassure myself I already have enough on my plate, so it wears off pretty fast.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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