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Too addicted to make up my mind.. | ||
Tags: Maintaining Languages | Wanderlust | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5231 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes  Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 9 of 16 13 July 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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There is an asymmetry in all ancient Greek sculptures with respect to their legs. One leg seems to support all the person's weight, whereas the other is engaged in some movement. I don't know if there is an established terminology in English for this, but one may call the first "supporting leg" and the other "playing leg".
As an analogy one could distiguish one or more supporting languages from playing languages. It doesn't really matter what you do with your playing leg or language(s) as long as you don't neglect the supporting one(s), otherwise you would fall over. A complete symmetry is hard to implement, and it is even unaesthetic -- just imagine Aphrodite standing there like a tinker. 
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6235 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 16 13 July 2010 at 2:22am | IP Logged | ||
It's called contrapposto. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5763 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 11 of 16 13 July 2010 at 3:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Also typical of trying to learn and maintain several languages:
You study with intense concentration and effort to get Target Language The First all nicely arranged and draped, and you're very happy with the results, until you remember to check on Another Language, so you look over your shoulder, and you see that you have left Target Language The Second with its bare rear exposed for all the world to see . . . But seriously, the art analogy is very apt here and I love the word contrapposto, too. Life is messy and uneven - so is language study. But it's well worth doing even with imperfect results. And sometimes you get something as beautiful as Grecian art as a surprise reward, when you keep working a language, or many languages. I feel this way when I sense connections amongst words and ideas I'd never have known if I hadn't wandered around the language world a little, and now and then stopped to take a really long, exact look at something said or written - some grammatical fact, some unfamilar phrase or strange phoneme, a new script, maybe - and just marveled at how such things could ever be. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5148 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 12 of 16 13 July 2010 at 4:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I have wunderlust a bit, but I think that I might be over the worst of it for now. My interest for other languages usually peaks if I go into a used bookshop and see a really cheap book for some language that I am interested in learning at some point. I already have a list of the 25 or so languages that I would like to play with at some time during my life, so if I couple this with finding a really cheap book about the language, I get tempted to study it. My other situation derives from the fact that I am from a small town, in which the majority of people speak either English or Spanish. As such, if I find out that there is a native Romanian living only 40 minutes from me, I become interested in possibly getting private lessons and studying Romanian. I have, however, tried to be strong and stay focused this summer though.
If you want to improve your other languages, but learn some others as well, this is what I usually do. My second language is German, so now I am concentrating my German efforts on padding by vocabulary a bit. As I do this important yet mudane task, I am also working on the more elementary stages of another language (for me Dutch), as I've always wanted to learn it. When I get tired of German, then I'll focus more attention on Dutch or any of the others I am learning, and then add German back in when I regain interest. In this way, I have time to explore, but am also striving for the best - fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Flip_flop Triglot Newbie France Joined 5048 days ago 11 posts - 16 votes Speaks: French*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Italian, German, Mandarin, Polish | Message 13 of 16 13 July 2010 at 10:31am | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks everyone:) I didnt know i'd get so many interesting replies!
Actually, i have been thinking a lot and i have come to the conclusion that i really should focus on those i have already started. If i add new ones, i may not be able to speak them well and being a perfectionist..:) So here is the plan i came up with. Chinese 1H30 per day Russian 1H30 per day German 1H30 per day AND Spanish, Italian, Portuguese around 30 min or even more if i have more time and will. Since i got pretty far in those languages, i can read a book, a magazine..in order not to lose what i have already learnt. I will try to stick to this plan cause i may be interested in many other languages, i have to be sensible and understand that a choice has to be made. And when i have improved my Chinese, Russian and German, others such as Polish, Swedish and Turkish will join them:) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5938 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 14 of 16 20 July 2010 at 2:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Sprachprofi, your system sounds very compelling and beneficial, and I even started to write up a plan for a program like that for during the school year. However, as I began to make the plan, I found that I need to feel like I'm making progress in all of my languages at the same time, even if it's only a little bit. In the future I might be able to convince myself to adopt such a scheduling, but at the present I can't bring myself to accept that.
What I have found that works for me the best is to select a few (anyone outside this forum would laugh at my idea of "a few") languages which I can study for a given period. During the school year, the optimal maximum number is seven, one to study for a little bit each day of the week, with attainable tangible weekly goals. This is how I conducted the past school year and it worked really well. For example, in the coming school year I plan to have something like the following as my schedule: Monday: Russian Tuesday: Dutch Wednesday: Swedish Thursday: German Friday: Greek Saturday: Japanese Sunday: Swahili For the summers I have much more free time so I make myself a similar schedule, but with three focus languages, which I study for two, one, and half an hour respectively. They follow a nice rotation pattern over a certain period of time (in this case eight days). This is the schedule I currently follow: Day 1: Russian, Japanese, German Day 2: Italian, Swedish, Dutch Day 3: Swahili, Russian, Japanese Day 4: Greek, Portuguese, Swedish Day 5: German, Swahili, Russian Day 6: Dutch, Greek, French Day 7: Japanese, German, Swahili Day 8: Swedish, Dutch, Greek I should note that I've lumped three of my Romance languages (Italian, Portuguese, French) into a single category, but only study each once in each eight-day period, because I wanted to work on them but I didn't need as much intensity as for the other languages on the list and so I let them share one "day". Another way I try to prevent myself from starting a new desired language too soon is by saying that I have to "finish" a different one first so as to make room in my schedule. This allows me to have an incentive to keep working on the older language while still knowing that I'll be able to start the new one at a definite time. I just did that this month with starting Russian, by saying that I could start Russian in July but I had to "finish" Esperanto and my Romance languages besides Italian. Although I didn't quite finish all the Romance language study, I have reduced it enough that the remaining ones can all share one day, so I allowed myself to start Russian anyways. If I could get myself to stick with only two or three languages of study at a time, I would be able to make the schedule very simple and just study all everyday for a certain reasonable amount of time. I hope this makes sense and that it might help someone or give them ideas for how to organize their studies! EDIT: Another example of postponing studies of a new language that I have done is with Arabic, saying that it will definitely be my next language (unless something else arises) and that I will start around January, as I am anticipating reaching a level where I can culminate studies for one of my current languages, most likely Swedish or Dutch. Edited by ellasevia on 20 July 2010 at 2:27am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| bhandarigroup Newbie India bhandarigroup.in/ Joined 5089 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes | Message 15 of 16 22 July 2010 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
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You have to concentrate on one at a time. It helps to understand and learn that particular language very well. I suggest not to jump on the other, if the one is not completely knowledgeable. It will make you stubborn in the middle of the path. Learning is an ongoing process and it will take time to lean the new things.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5807 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 16 22 July 2010 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I temper my wanderlust by having a "day job" language and a "hobby" language. Right now I'm studying for university French exams -- day job. I've started learning Catalan, because with French, Italian and Spanish already, it's really easy to pick up Catalan. No heavy study, just swimming around in new words -- hobby.
I have goals for one language. That's my day job and I can't let other things get in the way. (French, just now.) I have aspirations for another language. It's my hobby, and I don't let it get in the way of my day job. (Catalan) I have other languages I'm comfortable (but still far from perfect) in. Because I know people who speak them, these are just my life and I use them simply to socialise. (Gaelic and Spanish.) I have other languages I've never got very good at, but they were hobbies and I've always accepted that the "hobby" languages are disposable. (Polish, Russian, Japanese, etc) and there's one that I used to be reasonable at that I don't use very often (Italian). But these aren't dead, they're rusty. I know that it will take a bit of "cleaning" to get me back to where I was, and I'm comfortable with that. When I want to get them back, and improve them, I will. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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