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I drop Dutch (for now) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4417 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes  Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 9 of 17 20 February 2014 at 11:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
Living in the country where the language is spoken would be the perfect motivation for me. What better reason to learn than being able to speak with the people around you. People are quick to label a language as "not useful unless you go to....." but doesn't it become incredibly useful if you do live, work in or travel to these places? Besides, you could probably talk yourself out of learning almost every language in the world, barring a handful of international ones, if you class it as useless outside its own domain. Edited by beano on 20 February 2014 at 11:57pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3842 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 10 of 17 21 February 2014 at 12:18am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all, thank you for the support and the many answer (as usual, I really love this forum).
First of all, you made a good question, @serpent. "am I sure that I have a free slot?" answer: it depends. In this moment I'm studying - French - Persian - Mandarin Between those three, French is almost for free because I have a good comprehension and I can listen native resources; I'm also attending classes so the effort is necessarily really regular. I'm between A2 and B1, so my task is consolidating grammar and acquire new vocabulary. Pronunciation, comprehension, is going in the right direction. My goal with this language is fluency in every aspects. Persian, thanks to the 6 week challenge I'm having a good head start. My main interest about this language is about understanding: I want to be eventually able to understand the spoken language and read texts. Speaking and writing skills will arrive as side effect but are not my main goal. Mandarin, I'm studying the characters. I will learn the most frequently used 3000 hanzi and the most frequently used 3000 words. Than I will move on the rest of the language, but it's not for this year. My goal with this language is fluency (but I'm not interested in writing, only reading e conversational skills). So I have a free slot. But I don't have necessarily to use it to learn a language. I have some ideas that I will formulate in a separate thread. @Hekje, thank you for your words. How I wrote, I'm dropping Dutch for now, that means that I'm taking a break (don't know how long). @Stolan: German has indeed a great potential for my future and career. Japanese is because I have a crush for Japan and Japanese culture since I was child and I'm planning a vacation there next here. About Cantonese, I'm studying Mandarin and right now only the writing system. But the writing system is in common so for certain aspects I'm already studying Cantonese :D For what concerns the spoken language, I don't know if it is a good option studying Cantonese before Mandarin instead, for example, dedicate extra time to start with the spoken language. Even if I think Cantonese can be a huge load of fun. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3842 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 11 of 17 21 February 2014 at 12:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Of course. But being fluent in Dutch is a little plus if you live in the Netherlands, unlike being fluent in Italian is life changing if you live in Italy as foreigner. Dutch is not extremely difficult to learn the written language but FOR ME is really painful the spoken language, for a lot of motivations. But the truth is that I had the absolute need to speak Dutch only two times in more than one year. The first time I was in a Vietnamese restaurant and the Vietnamese lady was fluent in Dutch but didn't know English at all. The second time same scenario, but he was a man and he was east european. In both cases I said four-five words in Dutch, I did a couple of gestures and the transaction went well. In all the other cases every Dutch person old people included have nearly native English. Also, in my city the half of the population is not Dutch. So I have a number of friends but no one of them is Dutch. But this is not the motivation that brings me to drop temporarily. The motivation is that in this moment I find painful studying this language. I don't find the motivation, I do it because it's reasonable to, it's almost a work. I would like to have a Dutch girlfriend to have extra motivation, but can be really difficult if you don't know already Dutch :D And the blond hair is considered boring here :D Don't take me too seriously, I agree perfectly with you but in this moment is not working for me. It's the only language with which I feel a really strict commitment in term of time (like "I have to learn the language in 5 months, better if 2), and this just because I'm not enjoying the process. It frustrates me to not be able to understand words that I know in their written forms and knowing that I will never pronounce them in the same way even if natives tell me that my pronunciation is very clear and understandable... beucase their it's not for me. It's incredible. Stupid example, I'm listening a podcast, the guy says the sentence first in English, than in Dutch. He says the sentence in Dutch the first time, my reaction: WHAAAAT? what the hell did he just say??? wait, now he will say it a couple of times again. He repeats, in the same exact way. WHAAAAAAAT? how is possible, I don't have any clue about how to reproduce this set of indefinite vowels and consonants. third times: ok, I give, it's impossible, I hope next sentence is better. But it's not only him. When people starts to talk me in Dutch I don't understand anything, when I ask to say it in English then sometimes I'm able to crack the code of which words did they use, but man!!! I feel like I'm not ready for such a language, like I know that I'm not ready to learn Basque because I'm not an experienced language learner and that language has an insane difficult grammar. Than in the end being here is not enough to me to enjoy learning this language. I don't want to say that Dutch is extremely difficult, it's not most likely: I'm the problem. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6392 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 12 of 17 21 February 2014 at 2:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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What I mean is that you have just begun Mandarin and Persian. If you're serious about these two, I think it's better to devote your newly available free time to them.
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| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4183 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 13 of 17 21 February 2014 at 11:02am | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah , i haven t learnt a lot of swedish ,i have to admit it . I am inclined to believe that German is more helpful once you pass the beginner stage. What i have noticed , is that German gives you a huge boost with dutch right from the beginning . 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3842 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 14 of 17 21 February 2014 at 4:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is indeed a good advice yours. Two target languages from scratch it is quite a work, plus French... But I will use that slot, not for a new target language therefore. You will discover very soon my crazy idea. Anyway, studying other languages improved my English in this two months! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4183 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 15 of 17 21 February 2014 at 7:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Tristano, i am definitely curious to know about your crazy idea:-)
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| VivianJ5 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4057 days ago 81 posts - 133 votes Speaks: English*, French | Message 16 of 17 21 February 2014 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm having the same issue, am thinking of dropping the Dutch. I'm actually enjoying the language, finally
understanding things I've been ignoring for many years, BUT...recently found out we are probably (almost definitely) leaving sometime in the next year. Which, of course, figures: I finally make a concentrated effort to crack this tongue, and now I know I won't need it by next year. Can't win for trying... Doesn't mean I have to completely drop learning Dutch, but will probably transfer most of my language learning time to starting Spanish, or trying to get past beginner level in Italian (a language I learned many moons ago). But if I were you, I wouldn't drop Dutch completely: it really does help with feeling more at home in a country to learn the language. I sincerely wish I had known how long I would be here when I first arrived: we thought we'd be here one or two years, it's now been almost five. My mistake...and hopefully something I won't repeat when (if?) we ever have another expat assignment. Good luck with all your languages! 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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