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Have you ever felt like... | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5616 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 1 of 8 19 November 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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...the world wants you to learn a specific language?
I studied Swedish for about a year and got quite good at it, but I ended up dropping it and picking up Norwegian instead. I love them both, really I love all the Scandinavian and Nordic languages. But the complete lack of learning materials I enjoy for Norwegian is a big downer. But for the last few months I'm coming across dozens of things I really like, in Swedish. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies, certain YouTube channels, music, websites with both Swedish and English, things like that. It's making me want to switch again, with another factor being that I want to move to Finland one day and knowing Swedish instead of Norwegian would help me in that. Has this ever happened to you? You're learning one language but you feel like the world is saying "NO LEARN THIS ONE INSTEAD IT WOULD BE SO MUCH MORE USEFUL AND YOU LIKE THIS ONE JUST AS MUCH"? Also, do you think it'd screw me over to switch again? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| psy88 Senior Member United States Joined 5403 days ago 469 posts - 882 votes Studies: Spanish*, Japanese, Latin, French | Message 2 of 8 20 November 2011 at 12:22am | IP Logged | |||||
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It might sound trite but "follow your heart". Study the language for which you feel the most passion. The concept of "useful" is very much relative to the individual: as anyone who has been on this site knows, there are "outsiders" who question the "usefulness" of learning any foreign language. Do not be discouraged by the nay sayers; go for the languages-and languages- that you enjoy.
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| ALS Senior Member United States Joined 5616 days ago 104 posts - 131 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Finnish, Russian | Message 3 of 8 20 November 2011 at 12:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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My problem really is that I love both languages pretty equally, but there's just so much less material for Norwegian that my time studying Swedish was a lot more enjoyable.
I don't know WHY I'm torn up about this. I feel like I left my first spouse, got with another one, and now I'm cheating on my new spouse with the old ex. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5085 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French | Message 4 of 8 20 November 2011 at 2:15am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hah - I learned French to B1 level, then ended up moving to Spain rather than France
(which turned out to be a lovely move, but still...). So yes, all of a sudden the world was saying that French was not going to be much use to me. I had a period of mourning for the fluent French speaker I might have been, and then got on with it. It still bugs me a little at times, as I really would probably have been fantastic at French by now, rather than just kind-of-okay in Spanish. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4671 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 5 of 8 20 November 2011 at 2:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Of course! Polish job offers tell me that I should learn Hungarian and Czech (well, I've started learning the 2nd one), eventually Slovak or Chinese. Besides, these job offers tell also many other 'interesting' things... (such as 'You should study economics!', 'You should be a go-ahead person!' 'You should look like a model!' 'You should be perfect and be happy for being paid 300 euro monthly!').
P.S. Unfortunately it's not completely ironic... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4677 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 6 of 8 20 November 2011 at 4:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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I felt like Netflix was running out of movies I wanted to watch. Then I discovered a couple of Spanish movies I really enjoyed (with subtitles). That lead me to other works by the same actors and directors, until I was watching only movies in Spanish, but from just about every Spanish-speaking country. Then one day I decided, Hey, I'd like to be able to watch them without subtitles.
And thus began, about 11 months ago, my first language-learning project. So, yes, in a way the world told me to learn Spanish so I could open up a whole new world of movies to enjoy. Now I'm reading books in Spanish too! Bonus. I don't know what my "official level" is, but I can read Harry Potter and Pérez-Reverte and watch Mexican movies and Columbian telenovelas. And I think after I've gotten better at Spanish, there's probably a whole new world of Italian movies waiting to be watched without subtitles too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4821 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 8 21 November 2011 at 2:39am | IP Logged | |||||
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That happens all the time.
I don't mean people telling me "You should learn German, it is more useful than French.", those are not the world. I mean the "chance" that I stumble upon a book, an author, some music etc. But it is hard for me to distinguish between these "signs from the fate" and wanderlust :-) A good sign happened to my aunt. She found a Spanish dictionary on the ground. -The job offers prz mentioned are fun. Lately, I should have been learning Dutch and Portuguese by their opinion. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 5846 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 8 of 8 21 November 2011 at 3:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think this is called "gnosis" ( intuitive knowledge ). Real gnosis is difficult to cultivate, if it exists at all. In most cases ordinary superstitions and coincidences are taken to have deep meaning, which I think is not a good way to chose a language. Look it up on Wikipedia if you are curious, but my opinion is that idea can do more harm than good.
She's lucky she didn't find a Swahili dictionary ;-). Edited by Sennin on 21 November 2011 at 3:27pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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