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Moving Language Mountains | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4263 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes  Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 9 of 11 24 May 2014 at 4:34pm | IP Logged |
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I think I'm finished with English, and that took about 15 years of active and passive - low intensity - work, and nearly 10 years of passive exposure. And I still have a horrible written and oral production. And I don't understand more than half of the words when I hear a scottish accent.
5-10 years doesn't seem so bad. I'm guessing I was finished with English a few years ago. I haven't looked up a word in the dictionary (from English to Italian) in years. Not because I know all of them, but because I know enough of them to guess the few missing ones, even for professional reasons (medical jargon). Edited by drygramul on 24 May 2014 at 4:35pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4961 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 10 of 11 24 May 2014 at 5:12pm | IP Logged |
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In order to avoid wanderlust, I worked on a personal language list 3 years ago. Apart from a few changes in order motivated by travel plans, it's been working so far.
I divide the list between languages that I can learn with less effort because I already have the basic vocabulary for (either because I've dabbled in them previously or because they're close to my native language) and languages I'm going to really start from scratch with "alien" vocabulary. The last one I added for the group of harder languages was Russian. I'm learning Georgian, Russian and Mandarin in the group of 'hard ones'. I'm going to add a new 'hard one' when I stop using textbooks for one of those three. It will probably be Georgian simply because I'll run out of textbooks, and Estonian will take this slot. I'll then keep working hard on improving my Georgian, but through native materials only. As for the 'easy' languages the last one I added was German when I stopped using textbooks for Norwegian. My Norwegian is a middle-B1 perhaps but it also helped my German a lot, so German is catching up and I don't feel I need to spend much time on German textbooks. In a few months, I'll stop using textbooks for German and will replace this time with either Spanish or Italian - I'm going to work quickly on textbooks for these two languages just for activating my passive knowledge and then moving on for a B2 level. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Komma Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 3854 days ago 107 posts - 134 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish | Message 11 of 11 24 May 2014 at 9:22pm | IP Logged |
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Hey, I really like you metaphor, too.
And it's true, you'll never be done in any language not even in your native language. There's always something to discover new. And be it just some specific vocabulary for some topics where one actually leaves the languages-learning and has to start learning the specific topic, but I think that technical terma are also vocabulary and when they are in the language one studies or is native to then it's also vocabulary in my opinion. Another aspect, why you'll never be done: The moutain grows bigger from time to time... just because languages are normally changing and the change will add to the "not yet learned" part of the mountain.. To continue your metaphor: Why not focusing on buliding a nice sand castle out of your "dirt" (like Hungringo says). Depending on what you want to archive in your language (may it only be reading or understanding or speaking or writing or whatever) you start with your language sand pile and start improving. Get new "tools" (like when you only "learned" by now with courses and want to improve reading, get books and read.. etc. so, try to "use" the language in different ways). And with these new tools you can start build a nice castle. Compared to the language mountain it's still not complete, but it looks more like something concrete than only the pile of sand/dirt. And whenever you feel like you are done with your castle you can go back to the mountain and take more sand home and start building new towers and gardens etc. for your castle. But be careful not to forget to keep the castle nice and "renovated" because sand is easy to be blown away in the wind (time). Like I said, it's just an addition to your metaphor ^^ and maybe some advice also for beginners: Don't only take the sand from the mountain home (="learning" the language), but use it to build up a nice castle (="using" the language). And you can adjust both things (learning and using) to fit your own style and needs. And whenever you think you're only digging with a teaspoon, try another method (=another tool) to attack the language. I hope that helped a bit. I just wanted to share my thoughts about your very nice metaphor and the sandcastle mentioned by Hungringo. Thanks for sharing your idea of the "moving of the language mountain". 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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