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Learning a language but not using it? | ||
Tags: Motivation | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Heather McNamar Senior Member United States Joined 4604 days ago 77 posts - 109 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 1 of 32 28 October 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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This has been on my mind for a while, but I was inspired to ask it by another thread in the forum. My question is, would you learn a language even if there would never be any chance you would use it? For example, suppose I wanted to learn German, but I don't know anybody who speaks German and I don't know if I ever will meet anybody who speaks it. If you learn a language, it's generally expected that you will use it in some capacity, after all. Any thoughts?
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| Hampie Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6481 days ago 625 posts - 1009 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin | Message 2 of 32 28 October 2011 at 3:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yep. For the sake of it. Languages have a worth of their own for me.
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| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4666 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 3 of 32 28 October 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dito. I learned Icelandic just out of curiosity what it might be like. I would love to go to Iceland and use my Icelandic one day but just now I don't have any plans of actually doing so. It's the same with my Swedish and Scottish Gaelic. I have never had the opportunity of using them two but I just had to learn them.
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| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6404 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 32 28 October 2011 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't have much opportunity to use any language that I've studied, except for opportunities I create for myself. I
went to China to use my Mandarin; I didn't learn Mandarin because I wanted to go to China. I have never had any use for my French or what little Spanish I know. There is no language I can think of that would be useful to me, but I still like studying them. Knowing a language is to me mostly a byproduct of studying it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6372 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 5 of 32 28 October 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Here's what
furyou_gaijin said about this. I recommend to read the whole thread. It really changed my philosophy about learning languages. Thank you furyou, wherever you are. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5156 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 32 28 October 2011 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I cannot imagine any language which I would never get to use. I will always have some reason for learning or dabbling in a language, although my reason may sound queer to everyone else, and I will always find some use for it.
English - get to use it all the time Spanish - useful to speak with my friends French - practical when I go to France and Belgium, and for pronouncing the names of my beloved historic roses, which are mostly in French German - useful in Germany and for pronouncing German roses Arabic - great for speaking with friends or going to Arabic countries Hebrew - useful in Israel Italian - useful for holidays in Italy and for pronouncing wines Dutch - would have been useful to speak with the members of a commission I am part of where the majority of the members speak Dutch or Flemish Polish - would have been incredibly useful to communicate with all the Poles working in Norway Swedish - practical when speaking with immigrants in Sweden who do not always understand Norwegian so well Russian - useful for work purposes and to speak with friends Greek - got me lots of extra smiles in Greece Swahili - would have been useful if we had gone where we had planned this autumn instead of Mauritius Slovak - would have done wonders for my communication with some friends who help me in the garden Turkish - will be great for when I go to Turkey in two weeks What could possibly be a language I would find no use for? Welsh, Native American languages, Elfish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6731 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 32 28 October 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
This is interesting - almost since the day I started studying Mandarin everybody has kept asking me "So, when are you going there?". I'm not in a hurry. As soon as it's about languages, you get questioned about use, what point there is studying this and that, and so on. The only language I have real use for is English (people from abroad tend to visit libraries, and then the local university has a number of overseas students who all speak English). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5947 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 8 of 32 28 October 2011 at 8:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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Use Finnish? Ugh, well, I guess, I never thought about it, really. Hmm. I suppose useful for irritating Finns in internet chatrooms with confused Finnish. Puzzling through Finnish websites. The number of times I've actually 'used' Japanese or any other language in some useful way, maybe like just a handful. Really, I think I'm more into the learning. Maybe some kind of use will pop up in the future when I get better at this.
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