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Parents think I’m weird... | ||
Tags: Polyglot bashing | Teenagers | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Rina Newbie United States Joined 5549 days ago 35 posts - 64 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Korean | Message 57 of 161 14 December 2009 at 11:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hmm, I feel your pain.
My parents are pretty supportive of me learning languages (my dad even wants me to teach him some German), but my peers aren't so understanding... I brought my new Turkish book to school one day, hoping I'd get a chance to look over it some, and everyone kept asking "Why do you have that?" "Why do you want to learn Turkish?" and look at me like I was some freak who everyone should keep an eye on in case I broke loose and tried to unravel the very foundations of their monolingual environment. -_- I'm regarded as somewhat of a...uhmm, weird person. But who would blame them? What normal 15 year old would rather study languages than spend all their time doing drugs or defacing public property or butchering the entire French language in the course of just one test? But on the bright side, there are people who think language learning is a respectable hobby. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6147 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 58 of 161 14 December 2009 at 11:52pm | IP Logged | |||||
Same situation here. I have, however, convinced some of my friends to study other languages outside of school. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5590 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 59 of 161 15 December 2009 at 12:14am | IP Logged | |||||
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Rina, if you went to my school, you would be my best friend. :D
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 magister Pro Member United States Joined 6608 days ago 346 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Turkish, Irish Personal Language Map | Message 60 of 161 15 December 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
Funny...yesterday afternoon I combined these two worlds by watching the Packers vs. Bears game (American football) while enjoying an adult beverage ("Mike's Hard Lemonade" instead of beer) and camping out on the couch surrounded by language materials (German and Spanish). What a great day! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5590 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 61 of 161 15 December 2009 at 2:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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magister that sounds like a win for me (minus the alcohol, as I can't drink, I'm 18) :D
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rina Newbie United States Joined 5549 days ago 35 posts - 64 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Korean | Message 62 of 161 15 December 2009 at 4:50am | IP Logged | |||||
Then I may have to move schools pretty soon...I could use a friend who actually understands me in this matter :) Speaking of cake, a kid in my French class (one who likes to scorn everyone who makes above an 80 on any test) actually said "Why doesn't everyone just speak English?!" followed by "Why don't we still speak Latin like Jesus?" -_- I think the point I'm getting at is why should we care if people like this think we're weird? Please, for the sake of the world, no one give in! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| pookiebear79 Groupie United States Joined 6035 days ago 76 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Swedish, Italian | Message 63 of 161 15 December 2009 at 5:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Wow...it just warms my heart to see how well educated and historically informed that brainiac classmate of yours is. :P I was going to make a sarcastic comment about how well the educational system is working out for your classmate, but I suspect that level of ignorance is parental in origin. Anyway, it's a perfect example of why you and the OP should ignore other people's ignorant attitudes toward your fondness for languages. I realize it's a little different when it's your parents dishing out the insults, as you can't exactly just tell them to get stuffed. Also, with some parents, if it's not a love of languages, they'll find some other thing to harp on because they can't seem to help the compulsion to tear their kids down rather than build them up. My mother did think my teenage interest in languages, history and other countries strange, but she was too busy belittling me for everything else in existence to get stuck on that topic. Instead, she treated it more like a circus show, parlor trick type of thing that she could pull out in front of other people. I remember in my very first semester of studying French (I was 17, and juggling my last year of high school plus a full load of classes at the local University plus French at the community college, so 3 schools in total, it was just crazy!) she was dating a guy whose landlady was born in France. We were at their house for dinner, and I was put totally on the spot when she claimed I could speak French and I ended up being expected to be able to converse with the landlady's quite elderly French mother like a trained parrot, while everyone watched, as if to show that I was learning French like it was some sort of rare curiosity. By that time I had already been self studying Dutch off and on for a couple of years and had taken 3 semesters of Spanish in high school and one semester of university Italian, so it's not like taking a French course was really such a strange thing for me to be doing. Anyway, this incident was after only having studied French for about 3 months (3 academic months, not self study, so my conversational abilities were basically nonexistent.) And she couldn't claim ignorance over how far one semester of French would take you, because she took the class with me but dropped it after a few weeks, saying French was "too hard." So I rather think her motives of putting me on the spot weren't a showing of motherly pride, but a little bitterness on her part that I stuck with the class and loved it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| John Smith Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6047 days ago 396 posts - 542 votes Speaks: English*, Czech*, Spanish Studies: German | Message 64 of 161 15 December 2009 at 8:06am | IP Logged | |||||
You have to convince your parents that languages are importnat. You could try and get a pen pal. When your parents find letters addressed to you in foreign languages in the mail box they might feel a little better. not sure. Or. I'm not sure how old you are. You could try and teach some of the languages you know. I taught Spanish for a year while i was in high school. You don't have to be a native speaker. You just have to speak better than your student. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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