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What is a useless language to you? | ||
Tags: Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| markchapman Diglot Groupie Taiwan tesolzone.com/ Joined 5260 days ago 44 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: Portuguese | Message 33 of 42 25 November 2010 at 4:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The world does change - slowly. I think. As I'm sure you know, the 'erroneous.. impression' that Cantonese - and
other Chinese languages - are only dialects of Mandarin, arises from political pressures. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| josht Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6234 days ago 635 posts - 857 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Spanish, Russian, Dutch | Message 34 of 42 25 November 2010 at 5:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm hesitant to say any language would be useless to me, but perhaps I'm just a little bit odd. So far, at any rate, I've not really needed any reason to learn a language other than the language itself - the "usefulness" lies largely in the entertainment (dare I say joy?) that the language brings me. In that sense, assuming I had enough materials to actually make progress, I could find usefulness in any language.
That's not to say that culture and history don't have an impact on which languages I tend to be drawn to more strongly - that would be silly of me to say. German and Russian both stand on my List at least in part due to my interest in World War 2. But I can't really say that I must have a "reason" to start a language prior to starting it. If someone asked me why I started learning French, I couldn't give them a decent answer beyond "I wanted to!" (It really was a very spur of the moment thing, my deciding to take up French.) I'm often asked "well, are you going to France?", to which my usual response is "No, not anytime soon, I'm afraid." Often I get a baffled look or remark - I live in Ohio, I have no immediate plans to go to France, so why in the world am I learning French? Because I like it and I want to. For a long time, I thought that I could safely say that East Asian languages would be useless to me. I had no interest in the cultures, and I didn't care for the sound of the languages - I could safely ignore them as they weren't going to catch my interest. But I think I was wrong about that - it's not that I have no interest in them, but rather that I don't really know much about them. I'm fairly sure if I poked around a bit in an East Asian language, I would find some facet of the language or culture that snagged me, and that would be that. I would become enamored by the writing system, or the tones, or quirks in the vocabulary. I think I can safely say the same about pretty much any language - they're all seductive temptresses in their own way, if you just pay them a bit of attention. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jeeb Groupie Joined 4948 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes | Message 35 of 42 26 November 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | |||||
Taiwan KMT used to suppress non-Mandarin Chinese and native people's language. Nowadays, Taiwan is on the road to democracy and freedom. Taiwanese, Hakka and other native languages are being revived. When will other non-Mandarin languages be saved in China? Maybe be the day China has democracy, a good democratic system. But I wonder when will this day come? Maybe at this time, all non Mandarin languages can't be saved anymore. It is just too late. Edited by jeeb on 26 November 2010 at 1:28am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5122 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 36 of 42 26 November 2010 at 1:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In view of some of the discussion going on in other threads, I just thought that I should add, for the record, that a language feeling useless to any individual person, is in no way a value judgement as to the general use of that language, or the wisdom of studying that language.
I have no problem seeing how someone would be enchanted by eg. Latin, and that if you are going to be a priest or a historian, it may be of great value to you. Fortunately most of the posters here have cought that distinction. :-) Most of the people around me that know that I study Russian just shake their head in disbelief, they think it is such a crazy choice. And we are not exactly talking about a language with 200 speakers here... One man's meat is another man's poison. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5309 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 37 of 42 26 November 2010 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not quite true. Not long ago all children (at least from some classes) would learn to read the Classics tolerably well. It isn't harder per se than learning to read English. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5108 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 38 of 42 26 November 2010 at 3:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your comment reminded me of Robert Sheckley's SciFi short story One Man's Poison (Project Gutenberg link), which would get a L3 via L2 tag if it were a real story. :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Lucas Pentaglot Groupie Switzerland Joined 4955 days ago 85 posts - 130 votes Speaks: French*, English, German, Italian, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 39 of 42 26 November 2010 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
I've been one of those children and I can tell you that even having studied those languages for years you need a huge amount of extra information to actually understand a classical text. So "read classics" in class means to spend a lot of times to try to understand the text with the help of the teacher. Every four or five words you are blocked by problems of poetic or rhetoric syntax, dialectal words, archaic forms...because at that time, latin and greek were not stadarized like our actual languages! Then you're right: It isn't harder per se than learning to read English...it's hugely harder than learning to read English! :) I suggest you a test: learn ancient greek (there must be some cool method nowadays), go try to "read classics" and tell me what you understand! Trying to go back to the topic, I would say that ancient greek is not useless...and the is a very simple proof for that: nobody regrets to have chosen ancient greek instead of english...there are only people regreting to have chosen English instead of ancient greek! :) Edited by Lucas on 26 November 2010 at 5:00pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justberta Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5373 days ago 140 posts - 170 votes Speaks: English, Norwegian* Studies: Indonesian, German, Spanish, Russian | Message 40 of 42 09 December 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Norwegian! I can't stand it, the bokmaal/Oslo accent makes me crazy, the slang is
strange. I never use it for anything. I wish we would change our official language to English. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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