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Are we all a bunch of wusses? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| nway Senior Member United States youtube.com/user/Vic Joined 5228 days ago 574 posts - 1707 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean | Message 145 of 151 09 July 2011 at 11:40pm | IP Logged |
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I haven't read the past 18 pages, but I hope it was full of people disagreeing with the threadstarter.
5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4772 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 146 of 151 11 July 2011 at 3:16am | IP Logged |
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This is a rather old thread but it sounds interesting, I do see a large amount of people
learning French/German and many of the others, but as I understand the learning materials for these are much more readily available, unlike some of the other less studies ones. Yet I see why some people could be regarded a "wuss" for the language they are learning as they may do it because its easy. But isn't choosing to learn a language by oneself a feat in itself? Surely it requires some guts to start learning any language, as with anything there is always the fear of failing. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5020 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 147 of 151 11 July 2011 at 12:04pm | IP Logged |
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I also haven't read the last 18 pages of this old thread, but from what I did read, it seems that others do share my opinion. The whole "you're not a true polyglot if you only know European languages" etc. attitude that I sometimes see in places like this really gets on my nerves. If I'm able to speak French, Italian, Spanish, and German in a few years time I'll be extremely happy with my achievements because they're languages that interest me and are useful to me, and I won't really care if some guys on the Internet consider me a wuss just because I haven't learned some Asian language that I have no interest in. Edited by garyb on 11 July 2011 at 12:09pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6516 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 148 of 151 11 July 2011 at 2:38pm | IP Logged |
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I have already answered in this thread, but that was eons ago so here goes...
I could see already as a child that it would be easier to learn related languages, and my goal was from the beginning to learn a lot of languages so the obvious solution was of course to stay with the Romance and Germanic languages. To that study program I have later added Greek and a few Slavic languages plus Esperanto, and I have been flirting with at least one Celtic language. This would not have been possible if I had chosen widely spread languages. I know that there are some language aficionados who do this (for instance Laoshu) and I consider them very brave, but their strategy doesn't appeal to me. However since answering the first time I have spent a fair amount of time on one non-Indoeuropean language, namely Bahasa Indonesia, and I have also read books about other non-Indoeuropean languages like Swahili, Basque, Finnish, Tagalog and Georgian. And actually I don't find the grammatical features of those languages more scary than those of Latin, Irish and Russian. When I read Bahasa I constantly think that its grammar reminds me of English - just as fluid and wobbly. The main difference is that its spelling is a blessing to the student compared to that of English. When I looked at Finnish my first thought is that it was like all the prepositions was attached to the end of the words, but apart from that it seemed fairly regular. And the grammar of Basque didn't seem more arcane than that of Latin - just think "the wood splits - I split the wood" and you have got the main idea behind ergative constructions. So what's the big deal? The main problem with those non_Indoeuropean languages is not grammar, but vocabulary and (even more) idiomatics, i.e. the lack of cognates, which forces you to learn a lot of new words and expressions before you can even think of thinking or speaking the language. In spite of that Mayastar had a point, namely that some languages which are spoken by millions of people have very few foreign learners. But in most cases the explanation is easy to find: few learners, few materials. Besides many of these languages are used for informal communication, but higher education in those countries is done in English or other colonial languages. This means that the supply of genuine materials about scientific and cultural subjects on the internet and elsewhere is extremely limited (with Wikipedia as the main exception), and then it doesn't help if there are tons of paperbased books which testify to a rich history. So if being prudent is being a wussy then I am a proud prudent wussy. Edited by Iversen on 11 July 2011 at 2:43pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ohboyscott Newbie United States Joined 4941 days ago 1 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 149 of 151 11 July 2011 at 6:54pm | IP Logged |
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Most people want to be able to practice their languages. Good luck finding people to
speak your african languages with 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| s_allard Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5243 days ago 2704 posts - 5425 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Polish | Message 150 of 151 11 July 2011 at 7:08pm | IP Logged |
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Like many others here, I find the OP use of wuss more provocative than useful. It may have sparked a debate that some people find interesting, but frankly it seems to me quite evident that, aside from people who are into trophy languages for whatever reason, the choice of a language to learn is basically based on perceived usefulness. Is there any surprise that English, Mandarin, Spanish and French make up the the most studied languages on the planet? There are thousands of equally interesting languages out there, but they do not carry the economic, cultural and political weight of those big four. German and Russian have certainly declined in interest for historical reasons. The reasons why relatively fewer people take up Tagalog or Cebuano are exactly the same why fewer people take up Finnish, Icelandic, Bulgarian, Malinka, Xhosa or Cree. These languages are all interesting in their own way, it's just that most people do not perceive any great added value in learning them.
What I find intriguing is the fact that there probably are some people who are actually interested in learning any given language. Why, one may ask, would someone be interested in learning an indigenous language from Mexico? Well. why not? If you have a particular interest in a language, that's your business. Edited by s_allard on 11 July 2011 at 10:26pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4822 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 151 of 151 11 July 2011 at 9:59pm | IP Logged |
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This topic has been quite interesting because it seems that the point is quite the same after several years.
What I appreciate about other european languages and cultures is the fantastic mix of things which are the same and parts which are completely different. This strong connection between myself and languages I learn is important to me and I don't think I could put enough time to understand a completely different language and culture. More importantly, I don't think it would bring me more pleasure. But the truth is that most language learners automatically choose a popular language even without thinking of other possibilities. For exemple Polish. It is language of a large nation, rich culture etc. but even czechs (neigbours, trade partners, speaking a slavic language) don't learn it except for few individuals. It is considered neither useful nor exotic. And there are much more of such languages, I believe, which is a pity. The question is which of these extremes hurts less? Being too eurocentric or not appreciating our own culture as worthy of life-long study? I guess some of current european troubles are caused by being too little eurocentric in (near) past, by putting too little efforts in getting to know other europeans. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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