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Your favorite language | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Magdalene Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4836 days ago 119 posts - 220 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, German, Modern Hebrew, French | Message 1 of 25 14 November 2011 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Among my favorite posts on this forum are those some of you write discussing the
idiosyncrasies of your favorite language, as well as the joy you find learning it and interacting with its speakers, native materials, etc. These posts brim with such passion, and they're all the more interesting to me because I don't have a favorite language. I love all the languages I study, to be sure, but I don't regard any particular one much more fondly than I do the others. I attribute this to my general lack of favorite-having; in any particular realm, there are a lot of things that I like a lot, but rarely does one become an all-time favorite. So I'm curious: for those of you who claim a favorite language, what do you like about it? How did you come to realize it was your favorite? When did you realize this (before or after you started learning it)? Has your favorite language changed over time? And for those who don't have a favorite language, why not? Edited for formatting. Edited by Magdalene on 14 November 2011 at 5:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| WentworthsGal Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4688 days ago 191 posts - 246 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish, Spanish | Message 2 of 25 14 November 2011 at 6:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Good question! :o) I don't really have a favourite language either... It changes depending on what I'm studying at the time, and whether I'm doing well in it too! At school I really enjoyed French. I started to teach myself Turkish whilst at school and that then became my favouite. At the moment I'm studying Swedish and more recently Polish but because I'm more advanced in Swedish, this is my favourite language at the moment... I'm sure this will change again in the future lol.
I look forward to finding out what other people think too... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6956 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 25 14 November 2011 at 6:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
My favourite language remains Hungarian because:
...and...
See this thread where several of us describe why we love the languages that we do. A related thread is “Your favorite dialect(s)”. P.S. I should give honourable mention to Northern Saami as this post from a few months ago is still largely valid. Edited by Chung on 15 November 2011 at 4:49pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6382 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 4 of 25 14 November 2011 at 7:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My favorite language, hands down, is Cantonese. It's a joy to speak and to listen to. It's so vivid and alive. Imagine a
language spoken every day by millions of people in one of the most modern cities in the world, which still doesn't have a standardised written form. It's a rebellious underdog language brimming with swears and crude slang (two of the numbers between one and ten mean "cock" if you pronounce them with the wrong tone) and a down-to-earth humor visible in many common word formations. It's got everything I love about Mandarin, but twice as much of it! More complicated characters (and more of them!), more tones, more sounds and more formality registers. Unfortunately, I find myself spending more time with Mandarin. It's got a million times as much written material, lots more resources, more opportunities to practice and Cantonese speakers don't even respect their own language and often consider it inferior to Mandarin. But a solid foundation in Mandarin is a good way to conquer Cantonese, and every moment I spend with Mandarin, I'm thinking of Cantonese. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4834 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 25 14 November 2011 at 7:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I am like Magdalene in that I avoid having a favorite for the most part. I like being able to have variety and enjoy the nuance of many different things. I also know that if pressed to choose, I could never settle with just one language.
That interest in many things is just a feature of my personality. I do the same with playving a variety of musical instruments. I'm better at some than others, but I enjoy all that I do and wouldn't want any of it taken away. But... if I absolutely had to pick one of my languages, I would go with Finnish. I know it to the best degree, for one, and I realized that my experience in Finnish was the first time I had been completely independent as a young adult. Had I gone to Hungary, for example, as I had originally anticipated, I'm sure all my praise would be for Hungarian. As it is in my present, my Hungarian is barely remembered (though I was studying it first), and my Finnish persists even after years of no direct exposure to the language or culture. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4703 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 25 14 November 2011 at 7:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There is great joy in finishing a complicated construction in German by topping it off with the conjugated verb. Since the number of verbs at the end can be up to like, 4? fininally ending with the conjugated verb is like "whew"
blah blah blah blah, dass ich schwimmen gehen wollte it's mentally satisfying. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Humdereel Octoglot Groupie United States Joined 4778 days ago 90 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Written), Turkish, Persian, Urdu Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 25 15 November 2011 at 1:00am | IP Logged | |||||
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My favorite has been Arabic. Despite the case of diglossia and the several dialects, it has been a fun, rich, and puzzling language to work with. I love the writing and the bountiful literature associated with it, whether it's the 1001 Nights, Abu Nawas, or other literary works. The spoken forms have been a joy to go through. Learning the Egyptian and Levantine, Gulf, Hijazi, and Iraqi slang and idioms and being able to piece together the several branches of pop culture has been quite an adventure.
Aside from that, and my native Spanish, I also love Turkish and Persian,although I have less experience with these two. Visiting Turkey before and speaking the language greatly enhanced my experience and it was amazing to dig into Turkish culture. Persian, although I'm less skilled in it than in Arabic and Turkish, is also highly fascinating, whether it's reading the powerful works of Ferdowsi, Hafiz, Saadi, and beyond or simply speaking the language to those who speak "New" Persian. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 5942 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 8 of 25 15 November 2011 at 1:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I must belong to the group that doesn't have a favorite language because every time I try to pick just one, there's an outcry in my head of all the other beloved languages that I'm neglecting.
For example: "Japanese is my favorite language." (No! What about Swahili and Persian?) "Greek is my favorite language." (Wait, you're forgetting Russian and Finnish!) "Dutch is my favorite language." (Why not Romanian or Swedish?!) And that's not even considering languages that I like but haven't had the chance to study properly (Polish, Georgian, Arabic, Hungarian, etc)... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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