reineke wrote: It's up to you to research Spanish literature.
Well of course it is
I’ve looked into it somewhat already, and the common genres are not appealing to me. That’s not a surprise as I should probably have some sort of hand-made, vegan, non-gmo, fair-trade, artisan-produced, one-of-a-kind Hypster Identification Card.
I have found one author who seems pretty interesting, and looking at the book prices I would imagine that he wrote originally in Spanish. That would be Pablo Daniel Rodriguez Sanchez. His titles and book descriptions have all the keywords I’m looking for, and the cover art is what I would expect from the genre. But the book is only ~150 pages long
which probably means it’s not a Space Opera like I would hope. Ivy Bass suffers again from a similar problem, being even shorter actually (though cheaper). Then again, they’re about 1/3 of the price of translations of authors I know I like. But they’re also about 1/6 or 1/10 of the length that I’m expecting.
However in Japanese, finding Space Opera, or related type media, is basically trivial. Battleship Yamato, Harlock, The Irresponsible Captain Taylor (Space Opera written as comedy rather than drama, think of Douglas Adams writing Star Wars), and most obviously and pointedly Gundam.
Another interesting genre to me is Nanopunk, which I think is pretty small in English. A good example would be Kathleen Ann Goonan’s Light Music Quartet. Some of Alastair Reynolds stuff could fit in this genre, but I’d normally put him up in Space Opera. It’s not very well established, and I haven’t been able to find what it might be called in Spanish.
There’s also works heavily involving robots, androids, and the internet. A good Japanese example would be Ghost in the Shell. In Spanish I believe it is still called cyberpunk. The main issue with this is they often are both gritty and depressing.
My interest in fantasy is honestly even more minute, consisting of about 3 authors.
A few years ago I met a Ukrainian lady at the German cultural center here in the US whose family was nearly eradicated in WWII . Her German was quite good.
Ah, I feel for her. Of course my situation is nothing like hers. She had a very real and urgent reason to learn German. I (very thankfully) have no such reason to learn Spanish. I just feel like a horrible person for not knowing it, which is honestly not great motivation.
I am definitely not arguing for people to study a language they don't like
It’s not even that I actually dislike Spanish, because I actually don’t have any feelings one way or the other about the language
itself . It’s not like I look at Spanish and I think, “wow, what a stupid way to deal with object pronouns” or “stem-changing verbs are an eyesore”. It’s the peripheral things that kill me. If I learned Spanish, part of my family would be extremely proud of me, but I basically hate all of them.
And I associate not knowing Spanish with a lot of bullying that happened to me when I was younger.
people have successfully learned languages under all sorts of circumstances.
I’m not suggesting that Spanish is some monolithic beast that is impossible to conquer. Spanish, obviously is inside FIGS and as such, there is tonnes and tonnes of material available both in Spanish and about it as well. There is no limit to the websites and resources devoted to learning Spansh.
It’s not as if I am facing any shortage of actual Spanish materials (I could literally walk 0.25 miles to the gas station and buy a Spanish language romance), I just have a shortage of Spanish language fiction that I find interesting.
Now non-fiction on the other hand is pretty trivial. I enjoy basically everything I read which is pop-science (Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku) and I enjoy most textbooks (I read an college-level anatomy textbook in middle school, just for fun).
As far as my frustrations go, I imagine that me learning to read in Spanish will probably mirror my learning to read comfortably in English. By my own opinion, I struggled with reading much more than my peers through to the beginning of 2nd grade, starting the year at a low level. Maybe a Kindergarten level. I could sound out words, but couldn’t understand them in simple sentences. And it’s not as if I my parents didn’t read to me, or with me every night, because they did. When I finally found something that interested me in the library, my reading ability shot straight up. By the end of the school year I was at a high school level, and by the beginning of 3rd grade I was at a college level. In English I struggle with very few texts, mainly philosophy such as Marx.
So why should I be surprised (and why am I surprised) that I’m hitting my head against the wall at this point? Probably because it’s been a long time since I have struggled with an intellectual activity. The other day I was writing a theology paper and it was so hard I started crying
Regarding the "sunk cost fallacy" I think it's inappropriate to apply this line of reasoning to language learning. The idea is that you shouldn't let irrecoverable costs affect your future decisions. A "sunk cost" can be compared with future cost. In language learning your time and effort are rewarded with a "soft" capacity to understand and learn more. Unlike movie tickets, food, or the Concorde knowledge does not expire or get obsolete. No need to feel sorry about Spanish. You can pick it up whenever you want and if you get really good at other Romance languages you will see your future cost of learning Spanish decrease significantly.
I actually really agree with you here. I can sort of fake my way through a lot of written Spanish material to be honest. I think maybe I should just limit myself to improving my reading in Spanish, and I think that will probably resolve a lot of the issue I’m facing psychologically. If I can get good at reading, I can just worry about writing later.
Thank you reineke <3