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Foreign vs. Familiar Study Reasons | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5968 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 6 24 October 2010 at 7:23pm | IP Logged |
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Sometimes I think that I like to study foreign languages simply because they are foreign.
I have many other reasons for learning, of course; after all, I study English as well, which is not at all foreign. But there's something very appealing, to me, about learning to communicate in a new way, with different words and different rules, in a way very much removed from my ordinary life. It's kind of a relief to switch to another language that I did not grow up with and which has few personal associations. This isn't entirely accurate, because of course as I learn I also develop a closer relationship with a language and it does become part of my life. So far, I have (happily) not noticed much diminishment of interest in as this happens, but I can imagine that this might be one motive for language wanderlust. I have language wanderlust too, but mostly I try to commit to a language and stay with it. And, it would follow from this "non-native appeal" hypothesis that I'd be more attracted to a language that's more foreign than not, but that's not really the case, for me. Is familiarity just as good? So, however flawed my little theory may be, does anyone else consider the foreignness of a target language to be a primary motivation to learn it? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 6 24 October 2010 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
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I agree that it is important to study and maintain your native language.
I enjoy reading in Spanish because it has a different flow than English although I don't have experience with anything more foreign. Unfortunately, some languages carry certain political climates with them (including English). I suppose that avoiding a language because of divisive political issues is generalizing about groups of people. Edited by fireflies on 24 October 2010 at 7:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6143 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 3 of 6 24 October 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
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Everything that you said makes perfect sense, and I have noticed the same for myself. I tend to slowly lose interest in a language after a while as it slowly becomes more and more known to me. I think it is partly this process of making the unknown become known and something that I can understand and even produce myself that I cherish about language learning, so when this does not occur as much in the upper stages of learning, I naturally begin to lose interest. As I have progressed in my language studies, I've noticed a trend to slowly more towards more foreign and difficult languages because they seem to hold my interest for longer. That's probably why I could never seem to focus on Esperanto for long even though I thought its construction was very fascinating--it was simply not foreign enough. If you look on my hit list now, it is mostly made up of a list of languages which are more distant from ones I know or study now: Arabic, Georgian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hungarian...
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| fireflies Senior Member Joined 5182 days ago 172 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 6 24 October 2010 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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Here is an interesting book on this subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Through-Language-Glass-Different-Langu ages/dp/080508195X/ "Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages" Edited by fireflies on 24 October 2010 at 9:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5528 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 5 of 6 24 October 2010 at 11:58pm | IP Logged |
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That's an interesting thought, I encounter something similar to it.
As for Polish, I started learning it partly because of it being so different from the languages I (and everyone around me) knows. But (here I seem to differ) I stay with Polish because I grew really fond of the language (and the culture) - I familiarized myself with it. In fact, I still toy with the thought of learning another slavic language, but at this very moment those other languages just look to me like some rip-off of Polish (no offense! I know that's not true :-) . 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5174 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 6 25 October 2010 at 8:24pm | IP Logged |
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I find myself being too much a perfectionist in a foreign language, trying for a perfect accent, delivery, etc. and this can lead to great boredom. Better, I think to be fluent as I spik yoor linguage very well than be a beginner with a perfect but very limited knowledge. I sometimes describe myself as a great reader of prefaces as I often get stuck at the very beginnings of something, but have ended up collecting a lot of abstruse and arcane knowledge all the same.
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