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Do we love non-idle activities, or what? | ||
Tags: Reasons for study | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| vikavictoria Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 4849 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes  Speaks: Persian, English*, German, Spanish, Tajik Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 17 19 December 2011 at 4:21am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey All,
I was thinking, you know how there are people whose idea of indulgence and relaxation is to go to the gym for hours (me!!!)? Well, language learning is kinda the same, right? Like, instead of letting your butt rot on the couch, some go to the gym. Instead of letting your brain rot in front of the television, we learn languages, and that is our very idea of relaxation or fun, huh? Why do you think that is? Is it some extra mental energy we have, or just the way we have been raised, or something else? Best, v 5 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 2 of 17 19 December 2011 at 6:10am | IP Logged | ||
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Intellectual curiosity- either you have it or you don't. I don't want to go through life in a world as exciting as this one only speaking/knowing one language. Learning Spanish opened a whole new world of literature, music, people and culture to me. learning Portuguese brings me another world. There are many more worlds of peoples and cultures available to speak to me in a way I've never been spoken to before. Who knows what adventures and new perspectives await! Maybe I'll be able to speak to that hot Danish girl who swam out to my boat today to say hello in English. Maybe by also learning Norwegian, I'll understand the mysteries of lutefisk.
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| vikavictoria Pentaglot Groupie United States Joined 4849 days ago 49 posts - 74 votes Speaks: Persian, English*, German, Spanish, Tajik Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 17 19 December 2011 at 6:36am | IP Logged | ||
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Lutefisk, yeah, I think Solfried Cristin introduced that in another forum thread! :) Definitely, I dislike when people say, "you've learned enough languages," or "I don't like to learn languages, it's useless and boring". These two statements are absolutely untrue, and ignorant.
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 17 19 December 2011 at 7:01am | IP Logged | ||
Well, whether something is boring or not is of course a personal opinion, and you can hardly say it's untrue if someone says "I don't like to learn languages". So what remains is whether or not it's useful. And I suspect that to a lot of people, it is. We can't expect other people to share our passions. EDIT: Oops, I meant to say "what remains is whether or not it's useless. And I suspect that to a lot of people, it is". Edited by Ari on 19 December 2011 at 12:48pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Vos Diglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5366 days ago 766 posts - 1020 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Polish | Message 5 of 17 19 December 2011 at 8:48am | IP Logged | ||
Amen brother! Languages are keys to different worlds without which one would never truly be able to experience nor appreciate entirely. They give you access (well-earnt) to history, thoughts and minds of a people and expand one's world both mentally, physically and spiritually. Like immense living libraries of knowledge, ideas and creativity only open to those who have made the effort to learn that peoples tongue. To think that there exists books and essays written by Kapuściński which still haven't been translated into English! In regards to the original post. Why do I do it? For the love of diversity and the unknown. Each new language is a different bag of grammatical workings which when learnt and combined allow one to express themselves in a different way and also sheds new light on the understanding of language and its history as a whole. And one of the best things, to take Spanish for example, after learning this particular language to a sufficiently useable level one is able to now communicate with an extra half a billion people plus which beforehand he or she may not have been able to do so. The world becomes both simultaneously a much smaller and bigger place with each language acquired. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yaboycon Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4535 days ago 40 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Russian | Message 6 of 17 19 December 2011 at 10:29am | IP Logged | ||
I go to the gym/exercise a lot and learn languages. It is mainly because I made the effort to conciously stop watching TV and stop playing computer games. Science, languages, weightlifting, exercise filled up that time. I feel a lot happier now because I feel like I am doing something productive and enjoying it. I think there can be a lot of things which could lead you to spend your time language learning. It is just another hobby. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6503 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 7 of 17 19 December 2011 at 12:34pm | IP Logged | ||
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One relevant factor is that if you are really really interested in the goal (which could be speaking or writing a language or being able to read all the Great Books in that language) then you may even find the preparations fun - even though others may not understand how wordlists or grammar studies or text copying can be fun.
The sports comparison is a good one. I doubt that you can find a top sportsperson who doesn't do fitness training and spend endless hours on minor details within their own sport. For somebody like me it sounds like a mixture between the Spanish inquisition and Chinese water torture, but if you don't like the training sessions you won't get far with your chosen sport - no matter how much you like the sport itself. Edited by Iversen on 19 December 2011 at 12:37pm 5 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 8 of 17 19 December 2011 at 12:47pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm not really that interested in the goal (speaking or reading a language), but I find the preparations fun. I lost interest in French after I learned it, because studying it was a lot more interesting than knowing it. I'm on the verge of reaching a similar level in Mandarin and I'll have to go to more obscure texts or get into classical language to keep up my interest. To me, knowing a language is mostly a side effect of studying it, rather than the goal. 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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