|
 |
Ever been asked NOT to learn a language? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5122 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes  Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 25 of 35 11 April 2012 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
My brother and I have a history of being good at entirely different things, perhaps to
avoid competition, so I can't really imagine feeling threatened by him on my own turf but I know that he has at times felt insecure because I was considered the 'intellectual one' of the family. If he asked me to stay away from a language because he was learning it (this would be in a parallel universe where the sun is green and pigs fly over London), I like to think I would at least consider it because I am familiar with the feeling of being upstaged by a sibling and it sucks. It might be a problem if it was a language I really liked myself but I could always study it in secret and never let on that I knew it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| DonBerto Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 4389 days ago 6 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Catalan*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 26 of 35 23 April 2012 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
Why bother? I've heard this being told to people learning Catalan so,so, many times...The saddest thing is in some cases, these comments were from native speakers...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5343 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 27 of 35 23 April 2012 at 2:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
The same happened to me when I tried to learn Ukrainian a while back. The irony was that I heard this from a good Ukrainian friend who was studying a master's degree in second language teaching. I recall her response went something like this: "Why on earth are you learning Ukrainian? There's no point, everyone speaks English anyway. If you really have to learn a slavic language, you should learn something useful like Russian instead". I'll admit that this did initially take me aback and encourage me to move over to Russian, but will this stop me from learning Ukrainian in the long run...not on your nelly! (and to run home that point, I'll be listening to some 1-minute Ukrainian podcasts after this post just for fun!) Edited by Teango on 23 April 2012 at 2:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5121 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 28 of 35 23 April 2012 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah! I look forward to pumping you for information when I move on to Ukrainian - which I know I eventually will, once I have mastered that tinsy little detail of having to learn Russian first :-) Knowing you is like having an older brother who can show me the ropes. That is, an older brother who is 15 years my junior, but you know what I mean :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Einarr Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom einarrslanguagelog.w Joined 4400 days ago 118 posts - 269 votes Speaks: English, Bulgarian*, French, Russian Studies: Swedish | Message 29 of 35 23 April 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
|
I remember when I was at fourth grade (back in the day when I was at primary school they didn't teach foreign languages, so in order to learn foreign languages as a young child one's parents ought to pay separately for courses in private institutions. Nowadays they start teaching foreign languages from first grade), I was strongly discouraged not only by my mother, but by my teacher back then as well.
The language was German, and was probably the first foreign language I've ever encountered, because of a very very old self-teaching German manual, that I found at home. After browsing through it many times, I proudly decided that German it should be, yet when I stated that to my mom she decided that that is definitely out of the question. Back then we had to fill - in a paper in which you state which language you'd like to study, so she contacted my teacher, and i remember them both discouraging me to study German,instead, I should sign up for the English class. My teacher reaction was like, "you're one of the best student in the class, you should pick up English, German isn't the reasonable choice". After lots of murmuring, my usual stubbornness collapsed and I signed up for the English class. Today, I believe that probably that was for the better, as nowadays English is Lingua Franca, so probably that was the reason for all the fuzz back then. Still my excitement for German persisted, but whenever I decided to pick it up and study the language extensively, something prevented me to do so. For instance things so happened years after that at high school I had to study French(I still remember my horror back then, cause I didn't believe I'd be able to learn it, not to mention I didn't want to give up on the idea of studying German) so, I nowadays can only a tiny bit of German, definitely not a thing I'm proud of. What's striking to me even today, is my mom's reaction to when she gets to know that I'm undertaking a new language: She'd be always like: First of all, try to acquire proficiency in at least English, since you're lying to yourself if you think that you can speak it properly, then pick up a new language. A fact, that didn't prevent me at all to develop an extreme passion for languages, which sometimes is even a very disastrous thing indeed, as there's always a new language you'd like to master, yet so little time. :D 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5343 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 30 of 35 24 April 2012 at 12:59am | IP Logged | |||||
|
@Solfrid Cristin
It would be an honour to be your big little brother... :) And yes, we may only be able to string a few frayed sentences together in Russian so far, but by the end of this year, I hope to see us shinnying up those Russian ropes with all the finesse and skill of a savvy sea-loving scallywag! Edited by Teango on 24 April 2012 at 1:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gabriel Anton Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4390 days ago 10 posts - 26 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Persian, Pashto | Message 31 of 35 24 April 2012 at 1:25am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I've been asked why I took a French class (don't you know it's not important anymore?)
Or why I was bothering to read a German grammar book (same with Portuguese and Mandarin). I've never been asked not to learn something, but it seems that anything that isn't Spanish gets treated as a curious choice. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dandt Senior Member Australia regarderetlire.wordp Joined 4411 days ago 134 posts - 174 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, French | Message 32 of 35 24 April 2012 at 2:04am | IP Logged | |||||
|
I haven't had this in languages, but I have had it in music. Between my brother and I, I have always been the
intellectual one. He's naturally talented at many things, but for various reasons never sticks with them. I won't go into that here. Flute was one of the things he was naturally good at. I decided one day that I wanted to learn flute but when I posed it to my mother she told me she didn't want me to do so. While he is naturally talented, I had the theoretical knowledge after years as an advance clarinetist. All I would need to do would be to learn the fingerings, which seemed fairly intuitive. In the end I let him have it. the thing is though, if it was a language I probably wouldn't have done so. A language is a much more useful skill than adding another musical instrument. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
