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Being Multilingual: One negative aspect | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| LinguaMan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5076 days ago 20 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 1 of 32 12 March 2011 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hello, to all my fellow foreign language enthusiasts. Something has been nagging me for some time and I'm looking to get insightful opinions on the issue. First, I have to say I am a language lover and enjoy every minute that goes into the learning process. However, even though the positive aspects of learning many languages outweighs the negative aspects, there is one negative aspect that constantly comes to mind when trying to become multilingual. I feel my intellectual development takes a back seat to learning many languages. Yes, I know this is a part of intellectual development, but the problem I have is learning languages takes precedence over learning about subjects. For example, while learning Russian I could be learning about education policy, immigration laws, global health, or global crime in English, preferably, or Spanish. Do you see where I'm going with this? I feel becoming multilingual stifles being well-informed, well-read and well-written because you're constantly working on learning a third or forth language rather than using your native language and/or using and strengthening your second language. I'm craving to learn Italian and Russian but I also enjoy learning new words, writing, and reading in English and Spanish. Maintaining languages and not having a deep knowledge of certain subjects seems to me that being multilingual is rather a waste of time, even though I aspire to be multilingual. I don't want to be a jack of all trades and a master of none. I look forward to reading your thoughts on the matter. Thank you. Edited by LinguaMan on 12 March 2011 at 6:40pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Thatzright Diglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5673 days ago 202 posts - 311 votes  Speaks: Finnish*, English Studies: French, Swedish, German, Russian | Message 2 of 32 12 March 2011 at 6:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, this is something that I've recently been thinking about a lot myself. I am very interested in politics, international relations, history and the state of the world in general and sometimes when I'm in the middle of studying a language, I get the feeling that I could be spending my time on learning about things that will matter first and foremost too. That's because I already know English and I *could* get by in English in almost all of Europe, whereas my knowledge of a whole lot of things could certainly be a lot better. Moreover, knowledge of "important things" is likely to be more beneficial than the knowledge of several languages in the long run; you don't *need* to know even three languages, but you'd do yourself a favour by learning a great deal about economics. That being said, life is not that short, so there will be time to learn about these things too. My basic take on things is that if you feel like you should be studying education policy and global health, and you feel like you'd enjoy yourself more if you did, then that's what you should do instead of trying to learn a language. Focusing on what you find important would probably make you happier sooner rather than later. Then again, maybe you could try coming up with some sort of schedule and try to do both? That could be very tiresome and obviously things like a job will make it hard to find time for both, but it could work too... you'd probably lose nothing by trying.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 3 of 32 12 March 2011 at 7:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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My preferred reading is popular science magazines, and I can do in a fair number of languages. Thanks to travels and the internet it is not difficult to find such stuff, but I have to make a constant effort to search for things in other languages than English, else I end up being gobbled up by Anglophone English. Without the internet this situation would be even worse, though in that case I would probably read more in Danish than now because I then would be more dependent on the local libraries.
Of course you cut some hours out of your schedule when you study languages, but any hobby would have that effect. And at least you can combine language learning with studies of other subjects. How much culture, politics, science and culture can you get while gardening, playing card or watching sitcoms? 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| apparition Octoglot Senior Member United States Joined 6651 days ago 600 posts - 667 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), French, Arabic (Iraqi), Portuguese, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Pashto | Message 4 of 32 12 March 2011 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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One of the advantages of knowing other languages is having a key to the culture behind
that language. So, instead of being one of the many thousands of people who may know a great deal about education policy, immigration laws, global health, or global crime solely in English, you could be one of the few who know about those subjects from both the English speakers point of view AND the Russian speakers point of view. Very unique and valuable insights often come from the mixing of differing points of view and I think learning the languages (and thus accessing the cultures) of different peoples accomplishes this to a greater degree than being one of the many people who have just one side. There might be some truly insightful stuff in the Russian worldview that has not made it to the English worldview that YOU could be the one to have insights about, purely because you made the effort to learn that language where others have not. Just my two cents. :) 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 32 12 March 2011 at 9:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's plenty of things we could be doing when not learning languages, but are these things we would be doing if we weren't learning languages?
In my case, probably not. But I've learned a lot about history and politics through language study, so I think I've gained a hell of a lot from language study. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 8 of 32 12 March 2011 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
It doesn't matter what you do, you will always be making a choice about what you study, and it will always be to the detriment of some other field. Even if you spend your entire life studying everything you could instead of languages, your knowledge would still be infinitely insignificant compared to everything else you could have studied. Sometimes, learning how to be happy is more important than the acquisition of knowledge. And that alone is enough to occupy any human being for a lifetime. 8 persons have voted this message useful |
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