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How did you get involved with languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| GLF Groupie United States Joined 6436 days ago 73 posts - 71 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian | Message 9 of 35 05 May 2007 at 12:14pm | IP Logged |
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My mom got me into languages. She homeschools me and my siblings, and she had gotten The Learnables French and Spanish courses when I was quite young. Then, later on she got some stuff for Latin, Greek and Hebrew. I started off with Latin, and then later on I started the French course.
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| Nordlicht Triglot Groupie Germany Joined 6413 days ago 47 posts - 50 votes Speaks: German*, English, Latin Studies: Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto | Message 10 of 35 05 May 2007 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
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Discovering my liking for foreign languages was actually quite easy for me.
I wanted to learn English for as long as I can remember. My older brothers would sometimes say something in English to show off what they were learning at school and whenever they did that I got jealous. That was when I was around 4 I think. When I started school with 6 and found out that I wouldn't be learning English for another 4 years I thought I could never wait for that long. If I remember correctly I started buying myself Disney's Magic English in 2nd grade :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| winters Trilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Italy Joined 7044 days ago 199 posts - 218 votes Speaks: Croatian*, Serbian*, Russian*, English, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek Studies: Greek, French, Hungarian | Message 11 of 35 05 May 2007 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
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For as long as I can remember I have been growing up surrounded by a plethora of languages - some of which I spoke, some of which I understood but could not speak, some which I could not even understand - and they all fascinated me. There was not one point in my life which brought about that fascination - I grew up with it.
The languages I was exposed to quite regularly throughout my childhood were Croatian and/or Serbian, Slovenian, Russian, Hungarian, Italian, English, German - those were the languages I heard spoken around me, the languages of the countries I travelled to often (esp. Hungarian), the languages distant relatives spoke when they came to visit us, the languages taught at school, the languages in-between of native and foreign ones. Some of them bore a veil of mystery, such as Russian which I was forbidden to speak for 7 years, or Hungarian which provoked in me utterly strange feelings of understanding the *sense* behind the words, though not the words themselves, and which was somehow always strangely familiar despite the fact I could not speak it. Some of them were just plain 'boring' and nothing overly exotic - English for example. Some of them annoyed me, as Slovenian my father efforlessly tried to speak to me (until the present day I refuse to speak it or to consider it one of my native languages). Some of them I have grown to adore, such as Italian. Another important factor, except for the pure exposure and being obliged to study some of them, was the fact that I was (still am, indeed) a bookworm - I read obsessively, and very soon I discovered endless fields of resources in languages other than my primary ones; even today my main motives to learn the language are literary ones. That is basically why I got involved with languages so seriously. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| WFU03 Groupie Norway Joined 6675 days ago 62 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, French | Message 12 of 35 05 May 2007 at 10:06pm | IP Logged |
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I must be in the minority on this forum. I actually don't like learning languages. I think it is tedious, tiring, and somewhat boring.
That being said, it's also incredibly useful. As a law student, I've found out that getting a job at any international organization or internationally oriented group is infinitely easier if you speak more than one language. When I sat in my high school French classes, I always thought that I would NEVER use French. As you can see, I'm now actively studying it again. This time, however, my primary motivation is its usefulness in international law. Another motivation for me is that I love to travel. After studying abroad in undergrad, I realized that you can get a lot more out of any vacation if you speak the language of and understand the culture of the place you're visiting. So, I don't like it, but I'm here anyway. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Silvestris Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6564 days ago 131 posts - 136 votes Speaks: English*, Polish*, German | Message 13 of 35 06 May 2007 at 3:49am | IP Logged |
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Well I grew up bilingual with Polish immigrant parents in Illinois, so I spoke both languages pretty well. However, they still sent me to those Saturday schools, where they teach X language for three hours a week mostly to immigrant's kids. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Anyways, I hated the school, mostly because I was a lazy kid and all my other friends got to sleep in on Saturday and watch cartoons. Funnily enough, I have two friends who had the option to go to Polish school but they said no and now they always tell me how much they regret it :) I got out of the school when I was in 8th grade. At this time I was taking a little Spanish in high school but as we all know, not really learning too much by the way of fluency. Then I got it into my head to go on an exchange in Spain and I started to get a little more into Spanish. Long story short, I didn't get into Spain so I got into my second choice, Austria! That's where I am now and I have no plans to stop learning when I get home and a long wish list of languages after German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| skeeterses Senior Member United States angelfire.com/games5Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6618 days ago 302 posts - 356 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Korean, Spanish | Message 14 of 35 06 May 2007 at 6:49am | IP Logged |
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Like a few other people here, I myself am fascinated by the scripts of the languages more than the other features or uses of the languages. However, I have to admit I probably won't have enough motivation to pursue fluency in another language after I finish up with Korean.
One thing that keeps me going is to prove the naysayers wrong and show them that I can speak Korean. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6703 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 15 of 35 06 May 2007 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
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I was very interested in zoological nomenclature as a child (strange kid!), so I wanted to know the meaning of all the scientific Latin names. At one point I ordered home all the catalogues of mammals and birds from the Natural history department of the British Museum, something like 1½m shelf. At 10-11 years I couldn't get the Childrens library to do it, so I had to borrow my mother's library card to order them through the grown up people's library, and I had to study at the library, - they wouldn't let me take them home. As a result I had to learn not only some advanced English words, but also some Latin words. I didn't care about the grammar until later when I had Latin in school. At one point I discovered to my dismay that some of the names didn't make sense in Latin (for instance leucogaster), but by looking at the birds I could guess some of the meanings. My doctor could confirm that gaster had something to do with the stomach because he knew that gastritis was a malady of the stomach, and he confirmed my suspicion that it was Greek.
I also had liked instrumental classical music and even composed some of the stuff myself, so I had to learn the relevant Italian words. However in this case I got interested in the language itself (I was a little older by now), so I went through all the Italian text books at the library. The one I liked most was written (in Danish) by somebody called Kirchheiner, and the same person had written a text book for Spanish, so I started to learn that language too. At this time I had already had had English and German for several years in school, and Latin and French were introduced around the time that I started my own studies of Italian and Spanish. And then it just continued until I ended up at the university, where I got ambitious ... but only until I left it with my exam. Then I stopped all language studies for 25 years, until I by chance found this forum, and now I'm addicted again. Edited by Iversen on 06 May 2007 at 8:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6659 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 16 of 35 07 May 2007 at 9:28am | IP Logged |
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I can remember being fascinated by languages at least as far back as when I was six years old.
I would hear something on television and think that I had forgotten how to understand words, and someone would explain to me that I was hearing something in Spanish or German or whatever. I had the opportunity to learn some French in grade school, and from then on I was hooked. I had the experience of getting to know some Taiwanese students when I was in graduate school and tried to learn Mandarin Chinese with rather mixed results. The tones were my undoing. I've tried learning languages on my own, and it's not always easy. I find that I have an easier time of it with someone else around who speaks that target language and is willing and patient to handle my questions and mistakes. Taking linguistics courses as a graduate student was also very helpful. If you want to get in touch with Czech people, you may want to try Google or some other search engines on the Internet. There may be some Czech search engines or Web sites, and maybe some Czech participant would be able to help you more than I would. Good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful |
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