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Me Specifically for Polyglot in 2011 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5663 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 17 of 18 07 June 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
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Phew. It's been quite a while, but all of my exams are finally over (I'd say they went so-so, we'll see), high school is finished for me and I have once again managed to not land myself a summer job, so here we are. I don't really have anything "to do" per se, and therefore I can't think of a better time to restart this little language learning adventure of mine. We're going to pick up where we left off for the most part, except that I probably won't be learning Spanish all that much anymore and thus won't be reaching that "basic fluency" treshold in it this year. I'd sort of like to, but everyone here probably knows that in order to learn a language (by your own will) you need to really be into it and excited about it and as of right now, and for the last four months or so, Spanish just really hasn't done anything for me. It's a pretty easy language, it's widespread, it's useful and I know languages closely related to it, but meh. Maybe I'll pick it up again later.
This, of course, leaves us with French and Russian, with both of which I'm exactly where I was the last time I posted in this log. More disturbingly, that is exactly where I was a year ago with these languages. Naturally my tendency to laziness and irregular studying routines have lead to this, so in that regard it's not really that horrible, but I still don't like it. Why am I not progressing? I'm still arse at understanding spoken French (if I could understand it reasonably well, I'd pretty much be where I'm at with Swedish, in other words a level I'd be quite content with, since I can read and understand written French quite quickly nowadays), especially radio, and Russian just has so many long words : ( There is only one remedy for this stuff, and it's the one I've been touting I'll put into use for the last two years or so: I'll learn more! Starting today, or maybe tomorrow (hey, it's almost eleven PM here). I'll be back soon with more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5663 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 18 of 18 08 July 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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So I'm going to learn German. Why? Because I'm feeling like it. Because Spanish has lost its intrigue for me and I need something to work on aside from French and Russian, which I have now been studying for what seems like a lifetime (more like two years, but I'd hope you get the gist of it). German is also what I consider a very aesthetically pleasant language. I have on several occasions on this board noted that I adore the parts of English language that are evidently Germanic, that's to say, I've grown to love all English words that have not been borrowed from French or Latin origins in the course of time. It's just that I wish there were more of them in English...
Well, there certainly are a bit more of them in German! And what could be more "Germanic" than German itself, the epotymous (or something like that, I'm afraid I can't be bothered to check the correct spelling right now) member of this great language family? German is filled with cool-looking words, is quite pleasing to my ear, has a very logical ortography and a logical grammatical system, both of which are linguistic features which I greatly appreciate. German is THE language in continental Europe, it is the most widely spoken native language in the European Union and while one probably could survive a long-ish trip in Berlin or Frankfurt using just English (like I did last summer, but that was four days and not a single step was taken outside the borders of Berlin), everybody still likes to converse in their native language and learning German will undoubtedly open many business and job opportunities otherwise unavailable. And besides, Germany is a beautiful country that I intend to visit numerous time in the next few upcoming years, and it's frankly just plain rude to not attempt to learn the language of the country that you'll be staying in for a longer while. I did take other tremendously fascinating languages like Polish and Turkish into consideration aswell, but eventually arrived to the conclusion that German be my best bet for now (hopefully I didn't mess up the English subjunctive there). It should be quite a bit simpler than these two languages, will have a lot more familiar feel to it thanks to already knowing English and Swedish and, of course, it will be a lot more useful too. Well, maybe not that useful outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but those three places (plus Liechenstein :-) ) should be more than a great reason to give it a try. I'll be starting out with the Michel Thomas Foundation course and will hopefully be moving on to the Advanced one reasonably quickly. Und so, mein Kampf (I'm terribly sorry, but you have to admit it kind of fits the bill here) hat begonnen! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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