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Ever been asked NOT to learn a language?

 Language Learning Forum : General discussion Post Reply
35 messages over 5 pages: 13 4 5  Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
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Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
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 Message 9 of 35
04 April 2012 at 2:12pm | IP Logged 
My grandma is my only Belarusian family member that approves of my study of it:( Others say it's useless etc. They also used to tell me not to study Polish because "they don't like us", but now that we're actually going there they don't mind anymore.

But "don't study it so I can be better than you at least at something"? Nope, never, fortunately. It's easy to be better than me - just study French :D

Edited by Serpent on 04 April 2012 at 2:12pm

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Ojorolla
Diglot
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France
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Speaks: French*, English

 
 Message 10 of 35
04 April 2012 at 2:29pm | IP Logged 
I kind of understand your family members. I'm discouraged from learning Japanese for similar reasons : so many people are good at speaking Japanese. Even if I mastered it, it would be something really trivial.
And machine translation does a pretty good job between Japanese and Korean, which makes me even less motivated.
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Solfrid Cristin
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Norway
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 Message 11 of 35
04 April 2012 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
Ojorolla wrote:
I kind of understand your family members. I'm discouraged from learning Japanese for
similar reasons : so many people are good at speaking Japanese. Even if I mastered it, it would be
something really trivial.
And machine translation does a pretty good job between Japanese and Korean, which makes me even less
motivated.


I would love to feel that Japanese were so easy that it felt trivial too! :-).

I can understand the competition issue in the case of my daughter, though. She has grown up with me
mastering a lot of languages, and I get that she wants a language where there is no competing. The irony
of course is that she is at the stage where she is starting to surpass me. Already her English accent is
considerably better than mine, and it is just a matter of time before her Spanish will be better as well. I will
do my best to accept that gracefully.

My sister is a different story. I grew up hearing how accomplished she was, and how lazy I was, and partly
because of my dyslexia ( and partly because she is really good with details) her written English, French and
German is considerably better than mine. I would have understood her feelings if I were brilliant and she
was hopeless or really slow, but neither is the case. She is really good at languages, and there is absolutely
no reason why she should have low self esteem. I therefore still struggle to understand why she would be
worried by the competition. In the 20 - odd years that have passed since this I think the only time when we
were speaking Italian when we were together was a week's holiday in Italy 15 years ago.
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hrhenry
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Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
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 Message 12 of 35
04 April 2012 at 3:30pm | IP Logged 
I can sort of understand your daughter's request. and I think it's pretty cool that she wants to have something she can call "hers."

I don't have teenagers around me, but I certainly remember when I was one. There were two things I was good at when I was a teen: music and languages. It always gave me a lot of pleasure knowing that if there was a question about either, my family would come to me. Part of coming into one's own, I suppose.

And I'm willing to bet that once she's got a handle on Georgian, she's going to want you to learn it, too. She'll just be the authority position on it in the family. Again, I think that's actually pretty cool. Encourage it for all it's worth, I say!

R.
==
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Bjorn
Diglot
Senior Member
Norway
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Studies: German, French

 
 Message 13 of 35
04 April 2012 at 3:44pm | IP Logged 
I got a hint to stay away from Spanish.
I promised to stay away for a few years.
Not a problem really, I'm a slow learner :-)

As hrhenry said, people want something that they can call "theirs".

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atama warui
Triglot
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Japan
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Speaks: German*, English, Japanese

 
 Message 14 of 35
04 April 2012 at 3:49pm | IP Logged 
You could tell her you'd like her to be your tutor when she feels she's good enough at it, after at least (x amount of study time). Maybe that would be a compromise, and it could encourage her at the same time.

I never had such an experience. My sons don't share my enthusiasm for Japanese, both are pretty bad at English (not their fault, the school English here is not really good - but enough for the basics I suppose)..
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Medulin
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Croatia
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Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 15 of 35
04 April 2012 at 4:25pm | IP Logged 
Indian people told me: don't bother with Indian languages, English is held in high regard in India, and people think the better you speak English, the more of an intelligent person you are.

This may explain why I have found Tamil and Malayalam dictionaries (made for speakers of these Indian languages who learn English) but not a single normal course.

Edited by Medulin on 04 April 2012 at 4:25pm

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ellasevia
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 Message 16 of 35
04 April 2012 at 4:49pm | IP Logged 
A few years back, one of my best friends told me not to learn German, or at least to not study it on my own. She already spoke it semi-natively, so although she never said so explicitly, I suspect that it was for the same reason as your sister and daughter. The same friend also was annoyed at first when I started studying Japanese shortly after she began taking a Japanese class at school.

A few years later, she's still one of my best friends, we often talk and write in German, and we won a Japanese competition together last year. It all works out.


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