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What Would You Do Without the Gadgets? | ||
Tags: Gadget | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5209 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes  Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 9 of 27 25 November 2011 at 1:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I can completely rely on that. Without going in the details, I still can cook with a wood-oven, I have vinyls too =D, I don't own a TV and though I can't make soap, I learned to shower with soap and a little towel with a bowl of water. I grew up in a farm - though nobody would guess today if they see me - and still use a lot in my everyday life. Sometimes, I feel like a real stranger in our world. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5145 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 10 of 27 25 November 2011 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Technology is fine if it enhances and expands what we can do and experience.
If it limits us, takes away what is valuable, worthwhile and beautiful, and makes us its servants, it should be rejected. More specific for language learning, online morphological analyzers, dictionaries and encyclopedias, streaming radio, downloadable video, and multimedia teaching programs are very useful to me. Things like the ipad and kindle laden with geographical restrictions that prevent one from reading and listening what one wishes in one's target languages, I find deplorable. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5007 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 11 of 27 25 November 2011 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not much of a gadget person compared to most of my peers - I have no interest in smartphones and iPads, but it does occur to me that apart from when I'm out or sleeping or cooking I'm almost always in front of a computer. I make websites for a living, and at home I do language study, music study, general sorting things out (finances etc.), or occasionally watching a film, all of which I do on or with the help of my laptop. I suppose, aside from work, the computer's not essential for anything, but it just holds everything in one place and makes it a bit more convenient, so not having it would just be an inconvenience rather than a serious problem. The only thing I'd really struggle with would be finding native content to watch and listen to, since that's made extremely easy by the Internet. Oh yeah, and dictionaries. A paper dictionary is so inefficient and incomplete compared to WordReference.
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| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4759 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 12 of 27 25 November 2011 at 3:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Ari - that really made me laugh, I think I'm prepared too, my brother left his old
katanas at my house haha! Its definitely nice to see that some people feel the same as I do, although I think some members think I'm really old myself now...But I'm in fact only 21 (22 in 2 days :-)). The reason I feel this way is that I've grew up around technology all my life and can barely remember living without it, but that was predominately mobile phones, computers and gaming consoles. Although what is weird is that I never had the internet at my house until I was 18 due to contract reasons so I was sort of 'off the grid' to the outside world in some respects. I've gotten so used to getting up and being able to just go on my laptop and check my emails from different people from around the world and be able to find information about literally anything, on the other hand I don't know if it has made me lazy or a better person by being able to do so. I have to admit though, looking back to when there was only a few stations on television and looking at now, when I can have over 500 on my laptop, in any language I like, it does feel good compared to back then. But what also feels good is old technology as some other mentioned - for example my father has just bought himself a wood-burning stove for his house and its great and I'd have that any day over new technology. Edited by NickJS on 25 November 2011 at 3:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JimC Senior Member United Kingdom tinyurl.com/aberdeen Joined 5347 days ago 199 posts - 317 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 27 25 November 2011 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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Seems a bit strange to read lots of people posting on an interenet forum to say that they don't really care about technology.
Personally I have a lot of technology around, and doubt that I would have been able to learn a second language without it. I use my computer, phone and mp3 player regualrly for language learning. However, I am not obsessed with technology and spend long periods of the day without it. Technology is wonderful if you make it your servent and not your master! Jim 2 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 14 of 27 25 November 2011 at 4:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dictionary lookup with the iPhone:
"What character is that?" *Snaps a picture of it* "Oh, interesting! I'll have to remember that one." *Taps to add it as a scheduled flashcard* Dictionary lookup without the iPhone: "What character is that? Hm, which part is the radical? Probably that part. How many strokes is that? One, two, three, four, five." *Flips through dictionary* "Oh, here it is. Now, how many strokes is it in addition to the radical? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight." *Flips through dictionary* "Oh, here it is! Interesting! I'll have to remember that one!" *Finds a pen and paper, copies the character down and the pinyin and definition, and sorts it with the huge pile of other flashcards." If technology disappears, I'll be thanking the heavens I already know Mandarin! 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5062 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 15 of 27 25 November 2011 at 5:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Without, the gadgets, hmmm, well, before the internet I learned Spanish on my own. For audio, I had AM (MW) and shortwave radio- Radio Nacional de España, Radio Habana, BBC Mundo, Radio Clarín from the Dominican Republic, XEW from Mexico City, Radio Camilo Cienfuegos (a clandestine Cuban exile, or CIA, station). There were no Spanish speakers in my small US upper-south hometown with whom to practice speaking. Still, people would pass through and in my travels I would meet people with whom I could talk. Books in Spanish were hard to come by but I managed to get hold of a few. Language learning materials were also difficult to find. I'd never heard of Assimil back in the 80's. If I bought a language-learning book, it didn't come with audio, I had to write to the publisher using the order form for the cassette tapes.
If the internet and related devices disappeared, living here, I could keep up my Spanish with no problem, Portuguese would be extremely difficult to maintain. Part of the problem with today's technologically dependent society is that the prior infrastructure has either gone away or drastically diminished. Before VOIP, and the technological revolution in communications, I used to pay almost $1.50 a minute to phone England via landline. Foreign language books had to be special ordered with no chance to preview them. Foreign language videos were not available in most video shops outside large cities. Now video shops are a dying breed. I wouldn't know where to go to buy CDs, the record shops have gone, and even if they were still around, I doubt I'd find any Brazilian music there. Shortwave radio is also dying/dead. Before the internet, shortwave was the internet of it's day, where one could hear the news of the world from the source without passing through one's own country's filter. I like reading in Spanish and Portuguese on my Kindle- with the integrated dictionaries, looking up unknown words is a dream, talking with natives via Skype, reading on-line newspapers from Brazil, Mozambique and Portugal, watching Brazilian TV, videos and movies, listening to podcasts and discovering new Brazilian music. All would be more difficult, slower and most likely not feasible without today's technology. It takes a special ear to listen to a fading, crackly and interference prone signal over shortwave radio. If it all goes away tomorrow, my life will be poorer because of it. Count your blessings! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4930 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 16 of 27 25 November 2011 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | ||
I think you'll find that it's the software, not the hardware that is the limiting factor. R. == 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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