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Wanderlust - stop tempting me!!! | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 25 of 43 02 January 2011 at 6:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, they are still important, but at the age of 11 and 14 my daughters are less dependent on me washing, dressing and feeding them.:) At this point they are perfectly happy if I sit next to them with my computer doing my stuff, as long as they can get an instant translation from me for difficult words in whatever language they are browsing the internet on. Oh, and I forgot Greek. I would also like to learn Greek. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5349 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 26 of 43 02 January 2011 at 11:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
German was spoken by Nazis and thus is forever tainted. Hey, it works. More Lebensraum for my other languages now! What a nice Endlösung for my problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Raye Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5159 days ago 37 posts - 51 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: DutchB1 | Message 27 of 43 02 January 2011 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I went through the “temptation” problem a few months ago. I’d been tempted by Norwegian for a couple of years – the whole Scandinavian quasi-mutual-intelligibility thing appealed to me (could I really get two or three languages for the price of one?) I felt a really strong pull toward Norwegian after spending a few weeks with Old English a few months back. But I was already studying Dutch, which is exotic and impractical enough; did I need to spend more of my finite existence on these sterile hobbies? I settled it thusly: I would make sure I kept improving my Spanish, since it is practical and puts food on the table here in California. That way I ‘d be satisfying my “wanderlust “ in a practical way that’s useful for society. With Spanish in the schedule, I then gave myself permission to spend time on Dutch and Norwegian. Or, the shorter answer: I eat my veggies first. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5339 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 28 of 43 02 January 2011 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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The problem if you go down this particular road is that you will be left without ANY language at all to study.
Even peaceful Scandinavia has a lot of skeletons in the closet if you go back in history. The Danes took part in the slave trade, the Swedes were monsters in part of Eastern Europe and the Norwegian Vikings made their proud name butchering and robbing nuns and monks. I learn languages for their use or beauty. If I were to focus on the political side I might as well stop talking altogether. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 06 January 2011 at 3:21pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5440 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 29 of 43 03 January 2011 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suppose you refer to the post of Kounotori. I'm not sure what point he or she is trying to make. It's all about motives. You must necessarily do what your strongest motive commands. If you are motivated towards something but can't put in the time to go for it then you need a counter-motive. This counter-motive must be at least as strong as the original motive, but it doesn't have to be much stronger. If your motive commands you to learn a language then the counter-motive will command you not to do it. If there is no motivation towards learning a particular language or you have the time for it then you don't need a counter-motive for this one. Edited by OlafP on 03 January 2011 at 12:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Li Fei Pro Member United States Joined 5128 days ago 147 posts - 182 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 43 03 January 2011 at 12:39am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I agree with you, Solfrid Cristin: this forum contributes heavily to my wanderlust! To answer your questions:
1) If I had time, I would add French, then Swahili. 2) I resist the temptation by thinking about my early-in-life, half-baked efforts to learn Spanish, French, and Latin. I know all of them to a very limited degree, but never got to true fluency with any. I don't want the same thing to happen to my Mandarin studies. And since it's such a challenging language, I need to devote all of my language- learning time to it this year. But . . . 3) If I can reach my goal of B1 proficiency in Mandarin by the end of the year, I will allow myself to add on a little French in 2012 . . . though Mandarin will have to remain my main focus for several years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5349 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 31 of 43 03 January 2011 at 1:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Or, my post was sarcastic? Of course I agree with Solfrid Cristin and in a way the things she said explicitly in her post were the implied point in my post. Honestly, your approach is terrible (but if it works for you, then more power to you). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| stwel Pentaglot Newbie Belgium Joined 5091 days ago 12 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Dutch*, French, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: Mandarin, German, Italian | Message 32 of 43 03 January 2011 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Portuguese, Italian, German, Japanese and Russian. Maybe Arabic, because it's another important world language, but let's see how far I get with the others first :-). In the meantime I'll still have some time to figure out which dialect to learn :)
Difficult, but I try to look at the big picture. I figure I should first focus my time on getting more fluent in the languages I already know (otherwise what's the point of learning languages?), and this year I'll be focussing especially on Spanish and Mandarin, because next to English and French these seem to be the most useful, from a global perspective, as well as from my own personal viewpoint. My goal is to go all out on Mandarin and Spanish this year, in order to attain a decent fluency, so I guess that won't be leaving me much time to wander off.
In order to indulge myself, I do spend a little of my time on Italian, Portuguese and German, which I consider "easy" languages because they're very close to languages I already know, but I limit that time to listening only. It won't make me fluent immediately, but it will help me improve on these languages with a minimum amount of time and effort, and provide me with some welcome variation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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