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The "should-I-study-X-language test"

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Julie
Heptaglot
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PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 33 of 50
21 September 2006 at 3:14pm | IP Logged 
Spanish - 20
German - 18
English - 14
Russian - 14
French - 9
Czech - 8

Interesting :)))

What's funny, it makes quite visible the things that I prefer not to think about ;): that I should still learn English (I know I should, although I don't feel like doing it now) and that eventually I should pick up Russian! (all the tests, including placement tests, show it ;))
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lengua
Senior Member
United States
polyglottery.wordpre
Joined 6443 days ago

549 posts - 595 votes 
Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German

 
 Message 34 of 50
21 September 2006 at 8:20pm | IP Logged 
The test is definitely capable of making us see things we'd rather not think of. But remember it is slanted somewhat toward more popular languages. If there's something you want to study, go ahead and study it - even if it scores slightly lower than a more 'logical' language!
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Julie
Heptaglot
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PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French

 
 Message 35 of 50
12 January 2008 at 5:26pm | IP Logged 
Julie wrote:
Spanish - 20
German - 18
English - 14
Russian - 14
French - 9
Czech - 8


It's fascinating, I did the test again and my results are:
German - 22
English - 19
French - 17
Spanish - 16
Russian - 13
Czech - 10
Dutch - 9

So in general I'm more motivated to learn languages than I used to be, and - now some wishful thinking - more likely to succeed. I wish I knew which answers I chose in my French test when I did it for the first time. But somehow my attitude must have changed (the difference is a huge one), and it found its reflection in my decision (that I made in the meantime) to learn French again after a pretty long pause.

Edited by Julie on 12 January 2008 at 5:32pm

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Pixel33
Diglot
Groupie
Canada
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44 posts - 42 votes
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 36 of 50
12 January 2008 at 8:04pm | IP Logged 
Julie,

If you need some help with your french writting, please do not hesitate to send me a personal message.


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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6462 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
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 Message 37 of 50
13 January 2008 at 3:28am | IP Logged 
Superking wrote:
The only problem for me is that the difficulty of the language is a minus. For me, it'd be a plus. In fact, the writing system is a major part of why I'm learning Japanese.


This is an old thread, but I think it deserves to be revived because it answers most of the question of the type "should I learn language A or language B". However it it isn't the holy grail, and if you find that a certain item that simply doesn't fit your way of thinking then think about how that item should be scored to fit you and see what effect it has on the scores. Superking had one objection during the 'first period' of this thread, and I had another, namely that I think that it should count whether you have been thinking about learning a certain language for a long time or just got the idea from reading something about it yesterday.

EDIT I just thought about one possible factor more (but one that can only count positively): is a certain language the last you miss in a certain language group, or at least a very prominent member of a group you want to learn in its entirety? And the one about using the language in one's daily life should take into account the travelling opportunities (so that is how I have scored it).

I have scored all the languages I know because I study/have studied them (excluding those that I can somehow understand through a neighbouring language, but including Swedish and Norwegian which I intend to formally study in the near future), and I got these results:

Russian: 17
Greek: 13
Latin: 15
Romanian: 12
Italian: 22
Catalan: 19
Castilian: 23
Portuguese: 18
French: 23
Old French: 16
Old Occitan: 11
(High) German: 24
Dutch: 16
English: 27
Icelandic: 19
Swedish: 18
Norwegian: 18

The funny thing abut all this is that the language that I'm most eager to learn right now is Greek, wich has a fairly low score. The reason is that I am close to attaining basic fluency, and it can be used as a bridge to a very tempting language that is not on the list, namely Old Greek. Of course Greek is hampered by the isolation of the language vis-à-vis those that I already know and the relative scarcity of good learning materials (I haven't found any interesting aural non fiction sources on the internet yet), so this is a good example of how careful you should be to interpret the results of the test. But you can see your own priorities more clearly after having done it.


Edited by Iversen on 14 January 2008 at 4:35am

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LilleOSC
Senior Member
United States
lille.theoffside.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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545 posts - 546 votes 
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Speaks: English*
Studies: French, Arabic (Written)

 
 Message 38 of 50
13 January 2008 at 1:08pm | IP Logged 
Nice job with the test Malcom and reltuk. I tried it with languages that I plan on learning or that I have some
interest in:

Portuguese: 13
Latin: 15
Esperanto: 12
Mandarin: -1
Arabic: 2
Occitan: 10
Dutch: 7


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aljaesson
Diglot
Newbie
United States
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6 posts - 6 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Polish, French

 
 Message 39 of 50
13 January 2008 at 8:35pm | IP Logged 
Polish: 26
Spanish: 14
although I would put more emphasis on question 8.
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Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6462 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 40 of 50
14 January 2008 at 4:49am | IP Logged 
I have noticed than my scores all are positive and mostly quite high, while others have low or even negative scores. So I did a test more on a language that I have no intention whatsoever of studying, namely Mandarin. I got 6 points, which is low but above zero - but all those points come from the question about languages already spoken. Nevertheless it seems that (speaking in the language of photography) I have slightly higher 'white point' than most people.


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