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What do you love about your languages? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Jon1991 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5152 days ago 98 posts - 126 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 1 of 18 02 November 2010 at 9:12pm | IP Logged |
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I'm just curious to know what other people love about the languages they are studying or can speak. I'm not asking why you study the language, simply why you love them. I know this is a very opinionated topic so I'm happy to hear what people can come up with.
Spanish - Spanish is my second favourite language. I love the way it sounds like a super fast machine gun coming out of the mouth, it sounds very energetic and sensual but I can sometimes find the speed in which native speakers speak very confusing. I enjoy reading Spanish as I find it easy in comparison to other languages, so I'd happily sit there for 30 minutes flicking through El Pais. I love Spain, the people are wonderful (even though they stereotype English negatively as violent and drunks), Spanish cities are lively but friendly places (Madrid is my favourite) and of course there is the hospitable Spanish climate and beaches. Latin America has always attracted me as I see it as an exotic place with fantastic food and ecosystems, the continent always conjures up images of the Mayans, Inca, the Amazon, Football, partys... Russian - This is my absoloute favourite language as I love everything about the language - the sound, the alphabet and the complexity. Every time I hear Russian, I automatically go into a trance I love the language so much. Unfortunately my University does not offer Russian, so I'll have to make to with French and Spanish. As a country, Russia fascinates me, I find the history and culture fascinating and my dream would be to travel to Sankt Petrburg, Maskva and around Sibir to experience this incredible region. Not to mention, Russian girls are f***ing fit! French - Ermmmm....I don't like the language, even though I'm studying it at University (mostly due to my previous knowledge of the language, its usefulness and France's proximity to my country). I'm not to keen on the way French sounds and I find it difficult to read due to the conjunctions and how words join (e.g. Qu'est-ce que) However I do love France as a country, I love the landscapes, the countryside, the cities, the coast, the cuisine and the history is interesting too. I admire the pride French people have in their culture, traditions and language; Edited by newyorkeric on 03 November 2010 at 6:41am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| sydneycarton Newbie United Kingdom Joined 5295 days ago 23 posts - 46 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 2 of 18 02 November 2010 at 11:13pm | IP Logged |
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As for German, it's not particularly the language that I love, rather the culture and liberalness of the (especially young) people over there. There are some great cities; the youth tend to be politically aware; from a supporter's perspective, the football is great from top to bottom; the women are pretty; the beer is unrivalled. What more does a man need? ;) Edited by newyorkeric on 03 November 2010 at 6:40am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6943 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 18 03 November 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged |
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BOSNIAN-CROATIAN-MONTENEGRIN-SERBIAN/SERBO-CROATIAN: I am sorry to report that of all of the languages that I know, this one ranks as being my least-liked language. It has little to do with the characteristics of the language itself which are pleasingly and familiarly Slavonic but rather with the morbidly fascinating but ultimately abhorrent (to me) view of many of its native speakers that language is/should be the primary indicator of national identity. As I was learning the language I got a taste of the prescriptive tendencies found in Croatian linguistic circles when my Croatian friend helping me to learn the language would insist that what I was learning or using was wrong because it was a "Serbianism" (even though my course was called "Teach Yourself Croatian" and was published in 2003 or 12 years after the collapse of Yugoslavia). Later on as I got deeper into linguistics and understood descriptivism, I began to feel at odds with the harmful tendencies resulting from language purism in the Balkans which have been especially pronounced in Croatia. For example I found it quite outrageous on reading in a Croatian linguist's essay that some Croatian refugees originating near the Croato-Serbian border during the civil war of the 1990s were ostracized and taunted by other Croats because the refugees were speaking in a way that was considered too close to Serbian. The refugees' sub-dialect was at odds with the prescriptions of "pure" Croatian as dreamt up by some nationalist twits sitting further away from the war zone.
Unfortunately now whenever I see BCMS/SC, I can't quite shake this feeling of nationalist purism masquerading as "patriotism", even though Croats (not to mention Bosnians and Serbs) have responded quite positively to my efforts in using BCMS/SC. I still remember how much more forgiving and helpful the hostel staff in Split became once I started dealing with them in BCMS/SC in contrast to the other guests who spoke only English. CZECH: I have little affection for Czech even though I have several Czech friends and have enjoyed travelling in Czech Republic. The language just doesn't click with me and for the time being, it's about 85% mutually intelligible with Slovak. I have little reason to advance my Czech seeing that my Czech friends normally understand me when I speak Slovak, and I normally understand them when they speak in Czech. ESTONIAN: Despite this being tied for the most difficult language that I've studied to date (Lithuanian ranks up here too), I have a soft spot for it (and Estonia). It sounds vaguely like Hungarian but with unrecognizable words or like an unfamiliar Finnish dialect - very charming. It also looks fascinating with lots of doubled vowels and õ despite the fact that it masks a Byzantine manner of inflection (just try to master the Estonian partitive as a foreigner...). My trip to Estonia also solidified my affection for Estonian and some day I will go back there. FINNISH: After the comparative misery in trying to master Estonian grammar, Finnish has been a refreshing choice and a real delight to study. I love its sound and rather intricate (but generally predictable) grammatical patterns (although Hungarian seems even more predictable for me than Finnish). Finland is close to the top in my favourite destination for travel (and also the most expensive one - 50 Euros for a 3.5 hr. ride on a long-distance bus???!!!) and whenever I work on Finnish, my mind drifts to memories of Juhannus (~ Midsummer's Festival), drunken/profound discussions in saunas, and making new friends among the Finns. FRENCH: I don't mind it because it's still relatively useful and it has helped me to gain some insight into the workings of other Romance languages not to mention the Latinate word-stock in English. However it ranks quite low on my list of languages when it comes to affection. I just can't come to love it, and when given the choice, I would rather visit Lapland than France. :-P GERMAN: I get along with it because it provides an interesting point of reference to English and it appears to maintain some prestige in scientific and artistic circles (I do like the odd opera, and understanding the German libretti is a bonus). German culture however doesn't overly excite me, and this carries over into my feelings about the language (I did say that I only get along with German ;-)). HUNGARIAN: I love it because studying it opened my eyes to the linguistic world outside the usual Indo-European suspects. It's also the easiest of the Uralic language that I've dealt with (Estonian and Finnish have been much harder for me than Hungarian). It sounds great, and I also get good vibes from it because of some very good experiences meeting and spending time with Hungarians throughout Eastern Europe. LATIN: It's been so long since I studied Latin that I've become indifferent to it. I do remember being tickled on comparing it to English and French but it's hard for me to come to like it considering that Latin was taught to me as a truly dead language and so we focused on gaining a reading knowledge of it (we didn't even learn to use it to write anything substantial to say nothing of learning how to speak it - and we do have a reasonable idea of what it sounded like. Hell, I would have been happy even if our teacher had taught Medieval Latin to us and so we could use it like modern Catholic priests who do speak it from time-to-time) LITHUANIAN: I have little love for this language but it's not because of any bad experiences with Lithuanians (my trip to Lithuania a few years ago was great and my hosts were generous and entertaining every step of the way). Rather this language's grammatical and phonological intricacy made it very difficult for me to get a handle on it and so my learning experience was quite frustrating even though "Teach Yourself Lithuanian" is actually a decently laid-out course. Nothing seemed to stick after several months and I was relieved to return to studying languages that were more familiar. POLISH: This is my second-favourite Slavonic language and third-favourite language overall. I was "imprinted" on Polish as it was the first Slavonic language that I studied and my good experiences with it only encouraged me further to explore other Slavonic languages. I never came to see Polish as funny-sounding or nothing but a series of sh, ch, zh as is commonly-held by speakers of other Slavonic languages. Like Hungarian, it sounds great to my ears (but I still give pride of place to Hungarian as the most beautiful language). Through my trips to Poland I've only managed to deepen my affection for Poles and their language. SLOVAK: My favourite Slavonic language and second-favourite language overall. I pretty much got off on the right foot with Slovak even though this remains the first language that I've never studied in a classroom at a later date (Slovak classes for foreigners just don't exist for many miles in my neck of the woods). In contrast to the closely-related Czech, Slovak doesn't have the former's somewhat off-putting pitch contour and I actually like its comparatively flatter or more even pitch-contour. One of my Czech friends once told to me that Slovak seemed to her like Czech for dummies. In a way I agree. Slovak seems to have much more regularity in its inflection and makes fewer distinctions than Czech yet this doesn't appear to detract from its expressive power. I also love Slovak not only because of my positive experiences while travelling in Slovakia and meeting all sorts of Slovaks, but also because it seems to be the only natural Slavonic language that has the greatest chance of being best understood by speakers of all other Slavonic languages. SLOVENIAN: Despite the scarcity and low-quality of materials (Teach Yourself Slovene was one of the worst language courses that I've ever used), I didn't come to hate Slovenian. Certainly it being Slavonic helped, and so I could grasp the basic concepts drawing particularly on knowledge of BCMS/SC and Slovak. The language is interesting in still using the dual and pitch-accent, but these on their own weren't really enough to hold my attention. I just wanted to learn some Slovenian before visiting Slovenia, and just plowed ahead no matter what its characteristics. Slovenia came off to me a bit like what would happen if you would combine Switzerland and some non-descript country with Slavs. A charming, neat but somewhat low-key place where the locals happily deal with you in some better-known language seeing that you don't know the local idiom (be it Slovenian for Slovenia or "Schwyzer-Tütsch" or Romansch in Switzerland). At least Slovenes and their country didn't negatively affect my perceptions or feelings about Slovenian :-). UKRAINIAN: Even though my plans to visit Ukraine fell through, thus stripping much of my need to continue learning Ukrainian, there's a small part of me that wants to restart my studies. Ukrainian actually grew on me because to my pleasant surprise it doesn't have the same degree of vowel reduction that makes Russian sound strange or awful to my ears, yet it has a substantial stock of Polish loanwords to the point where picking up vocabulary was much less difficult than I had expected. The Cyrillic alphabet is a neat thing to know how to use, and it was with Ukrainian where I finally solidified my knowledge of it (I had taught myself to read Russian and Serbian Cyrillic before but I never learned either of them fully. When learning BCMS/SC I naturally picked up the Latin script as used in "Croatian" which is the same as the Latin alphabet of "Serbian", but paid almost no attention to learning how to use Serbian Cyrillic actively). I like Ukrainian because it seems to be a bit like a cross between Russian or Belorussian on one end and Polish on the other - it's philologically fascinating. As a bonus I'm finding that I can better pick up the gist of something in Russian using Ukrainian since it's definitely closer to the former, than any of BCMS/SC, Czech, Polish, Slovak and Slovenian is. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5314 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 4 of 18 03 November 2010 at 12:41am | IP Logged |
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What I love about both French and Polish is that the languages are totally incomprehensible for the untrained ear - they're in some way extremely exclusive.
What I especially love about the polish language is the constant changing of hard and soft sounds, as for instance in words like "sztućce" (cutlery), "wziąć" (to take) or "śniadanie" (breakfast). Moreover, Poles tend to be extremely welcoming when they realize that a foreigner actually learned polish to a considerable extent (though it seems somehow scary to some Poles that someone actually took the effort of doing so...). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5553 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 18 03 November 2010 at 1:03am | IP Logged |
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Understanding more languages means that I am not only entitled to my own opinion, but that I actually am capable of forming that opinion without having to rely solely on third-hand information and experience.
Apart from that there are always aspects of the culture (or cultures) of the speakers of a language that I personally like, and others that I could do without. Same goes for individuals. Actually, it's probably due to individuals and my experience with them and not significant enough to be mentioned in detail. Oh, and I love the way Korean sounds like it was made for being shouted and whispered and yelled and sung (or yodelled) in. I love the way Cantonese wouldn't go with yodelling, ever. I love the creaky voice in Mandarin's third tone. About other languages ... I don't even remember. Edited by Bao on 03 November 2010 at 6:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Thantophobia Groupie United States Joined 4949 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Japanese | Message 6 of 18 03 November 2010 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
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I love Japanese. Not only do I love the way it sounds, but whenever I learn it, it brings away the monotony of everyday life, just same boring routine of nothing. It takes that away. It adds a whole new dimension to my life.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sierra Diglot Senior Member Turkey livinginlights.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 296 posts - 411 votes Speaks: English*, SwedishB1 Studies: Turkish | Message 7 of 18 03 November 2010 at 6:32am | IP Logged |
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My favorite thing about Turkish has to be the frequency of ş and ç (sh and ch). I
love the way they sound. The verb ending -miş is a twofer; it has one of my favorite letters and, awesomely, roughly means "supposedly" or "apparently" or "so I heard." I also love Turkish names, which often mean something. I know brothers named "War" and "Peace," along with many guys named "Volcano," one named "Steep," and on and on and on. One of the things I love about languages in general is that they all have their own wonderful words, and by learning them you appreciably increase your knowledge of the beauty in the world. English has nest and hummingbird and trickster; Swedish has pjäxor and körsbär and kyrka; Turkish has bariş and gittikçe and timsah. Maybe someday I'll know enough languages that I'll have a beautiful, bewitching word for everything. Edited by Sierra on 03 November 2010 at 6:36am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Old Chemist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4960 days ago 227 posts - 285 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 8 of 18 03 November 2010 at 9:11am | IP Logged |
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Very interesting thread. My languages are fairly mundane in comparison, I am most proficient in French, German and Italian. I agree with those of you who write on French, I'm not terribly enamoured with the language, although I love some French short stories and novels. I think due to meeting some of the negative attitudes some French people have towards foreigners has influenced me here - I have even had French teachers who have said this negativity can make a stay less than pleasant, although I suppose a case could be made against most people on such grounds, like the German woman who ranted at me and called us "Strassenmaedchen" because of the fire bombing of German cities, something I actually think was awful, and the American who, on believing me to be English, went on and on loudly about how badly England had treated Ireland, despite the fact that I am part Irish.
Anyway, back to languages, unlike most people, I love the sound of German and I always find anything written in German interesting. Italian I liked for the sound of the language and the great literature. I think, as a personal view, I would find it very difficult to learn a language without some sort of literature as it has frequently been what has drawn me to languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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