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Teenage Polyglots | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4410 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 25 of 33 16 December 2012 at 2:17am | IP Logged | |||||
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Young language enthusiasts aside, I don't think the teenage years are particularly good for language learning, well certainly not the early-to-mid teens. Young people at that age can be horribly embarrassed to speak a foreign language in front of their peers, it isn't cool, or they are rebellious and just don't see the point.
English is probably a special case because it dominates popular music and culture and will be regarded as fashionable, but I don't agree at all with this popular assumption that young people learn languages so much better than adults. Small children in an immersive environment, yes. Sulky teenagers, no. Edited by beano on 16 December 2012 at 2:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6491 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 26 of 33 16 December 2012 at 12:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you happen to live in an environment with comrades who speak weird foreign languages then you can pick them up before you have learnt to read, but to read books you need to be able to read, and in spite of all the sounds and imagery on the internet you also still need to be able to read to surf efficiently.
So before you can decide to learn languages on your own you will normally have become a teenager - and hopefully not a sulky one. This also means that you will be learning such home-grown languages alongside with those you learn in school, which at least should give you some common ground in grammar and some techniques for learning - even though the most efficient methods for homestudy aren't necessarily those you will learn from a teacher. But in practice I doubt that a lot of teenagers choose foreign languages as their hobby. I did (alongside with classical music, mathematics, paleontology and history), but I was somewhat nerdish even at that age. And I'm proud to say that I still am. I began learning Latin words because I couldn't find Danish names for many exotic species in the English field guides - and even less for extinct species. I began learning Italian because I wanted to know the meaning of the tempo markings in my musical scores. For this purpose I used a book by 2x Kirchheiner, and when I discovered that the same authors had written a textbook for Spanish I also began learning that. In school I had English, German and later Latin and French, so I had laid a solid foundation for my later studies during my teenage years, and I doubt I would have got where I am today without that early start. Edited by Iversen on 16 December 2012 at 12:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| sans-serif Tetraglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4347 days ago 298 posts - 470 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, German, Swedish Studies: Danish | Message 27 of 33 16 December 2012 at 1:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sounds like you're a good deal less intimidated by actually speaking languages than I am. :-) (This is a compliment, by the way.) What opportunities did you have to practice your speaking skills? Did you mostly work on output through writing? This is interesting to me, as I feel I've never gotten anywhere without native-speaker interaction, whether in chatrooms, face-to-face or on Skype. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5635 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 28 of 33 16 December 2012 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When I was a teenager in the 1970s (EDIT), I wasn't nerdy with languages, I did not have learning languages as a hobby back then. My hobbies were rather playing tennis and table tennis in clubs, hiking tours and I had guitar lessons. My ambition of English, French and Latin were to get good marks in school. So I studied my schoolbooks to get good marks in these subjects and in the other of my school subjects. This was very normal for a grammar school student, so there was no hint in my teenager time that I could become a polyglot later in my life.
Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 16 December 2012 at 7:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6697 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 33 16 December 2012 at 6:46pm | IP Logged | |||||
In the 1070s? Sorry, I couldn't resist. ;) 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5635 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 30 of 33 16 December 2012 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
What a funny mistake! I will correct it immediately. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6242 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 31 of 33 19 December 2012 at 1:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Thank you for the compliment. :) I used to be pretty shy, actually. At some point I just didn't care about mistakes any longer, which made the whole learning process a lot easier. I had lots of opportunities to practise my languages because I've always travelled quite a lot since I was little. It all started from writing, though. I had an Indian penpal (native speaker) to whom I wrote letters in English and thus gradually got better and better. My mum encouraged me to talk to local people whenever we travelled abroad, also because she doesn't speak very good English. ;) By the time I finished secondary school I was fluent and decided to attend an English-speaking high school. As for the other languages, I just studied them at school and watched TV programmes with Finnish subtitles - I remember that Marienhof was my favourite. :D At 15 I stayed a week or so in a monolingual host family in Germany, and that helped a great deal in improving my oral skills in German. I don't think I've got a gift for languages or anything like that, I'm just interested in being able to communicate with people from different cultural backgrounds, and I think motivation is the key to successful studies. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4388 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 32 of 33 01 January 2013 at 7:23am | IP Logged | |||||
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19, and I know nobody else who is actually interested in really learning languages... Im not fluent in anything but
english, but I think its really a bummer I dont have anyone nearby to practice with and that I have to depend on the internet to get effective practice :/ but anyway, I also get good encouragement from the environment here ^.^ 1 person has voted this message useful |
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