20 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3
Liface Triglot Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Lif Joined 5858 days ago 150 posts - 237 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Dutch, French
| Message 17 of 20 22 September 2010 at 8:40am | IP Logged |
Iversen wrote:
Bill_Sage667 wrote:
For example, you and your friends are shopping in a mall, and suddenly you come across this Russian girl that you met at a party, and start in an engaging conversation in Russian, you make the girl laugh with your wittiness, etc......would your friends stare at you in amazement, or would they simply wave it off as something that can be accomplished with working with Teach Yourself Courses for a few weeks? |
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How often does this happen in the real world?
Personally I once in a while meet a tourist who asks for information, and then mostly in English. If I can hear or know from eavesdropping that he/she/they come from a country whose language I can speak then I sometimes answer in their own language just for fun - and mostly it is appreciated, sometimes with some degree of astonishment. Twice this year I have met people in connection with my job who spoke other languages than Danish or English. And that's two times more than last year.
So social contacts at home in person is evidently a thing that happens so rarely to me that it can't motivate the amount of time and effort I put into language learning.
For me the important things are 1) to have an entertaining hobby on which I can spend an unlimited amount of time, and 2) to be able to use my languages during travels (or here in this forum). |
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Happens all the time for me, but I work in the tourist district of a major US city. Tons of opportunities to speak German, I've even been able to speak Dutch a couple times with Dutch tourists. And then of course all the immigrants we get from Latin America.
It may sound conceited, but the reaction I get from being multi-lingual is one of the motivating factors behind my language learning. I love to learn uncommon languages like Dutch because no other Americans do it. The Dutch people I talk with are always so amazed, it's like they can't fathom that their language is actually learnable because they've never met an American who speaks it. It's a really cool feeling.
Edited by Liface on 22 September 2010 at 8:40am
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| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5034 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 18 of 20 03 March 2011 at 7:38pm | IP Logged |
Bill_Sage667 wrote:
After showing to one of my friends a video of the polyglot from Italy, he thought it was just skill that could easily be accomplished by buying Rosetta Stone, (I admit that it was a really big turnoff for me especially when he said that '3 years studying Russian is too long')....by the way that guy only knows how to speak English. On the other hand, I showed the same video to another friend of mine, and was..well.his eyes bulged out. |
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This reminds me very much about music and dance, and any other arts that, like languages, take consistent practice to get results.
***Someone who is VERY good at doing something makes it look easy.
That is why your friend thought it easily accomplishable. But those who know how to do the skill/art, as your 2nd friend, realize the amount of work that went behind the "smooth performance."
For example, I really like this piano part to a Paul McCartney song I recently heard. (Old song, but new to me.) I got the sheet music to learn to play it. While not difficult, it's going to take much time to make it as smooth and easy as Paul already makes it sound.
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| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5381 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian
| Message 19 of 20 03 March 2011 at 8:18pm | IP Logged |
jdmoncada wrote:
For example, I really like this piano part to a Paul McCartney song I recently heard. (Old song, but new to me.) I got the sheet music to learn to play it. While not difficult, it's going to take much time to make it as smooth and easy as Paul already makes it sound. |
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I'd just like to add that Paul writes for himself, in ways that feel natural to him. Replicating someone else's style is harder than if you were playing something of equal difficulty written by yourself.
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Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map
| Message 20 of 20 04 March 2011 at 12:04am | IP Logged |
Learning to play a musical instrument is actually a good comparison to learning to speak a language - it can take for ever if you want to be really good, which in my opinion is achieved when you don't even think about technique when you play. In linguistic terms this would be the moment where you stop thinking about words, expressions and grammar, but just write or speak.
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