How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

General discussion about learning languages
Bilingual_monoglot
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Bilingual_monoglot » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:33 am

Somehow, I tend take up languages in pairs, so I think it's best to talk about them in pairs as well.

English and Tamil were both languages I had no choice in learning, both as co-native languages, and languages I had to learn for school.

Next up are French and Esperanto, both of which I got interested in at around the same time period. I actually don't remember why I learned French, though probably for some combination of the sound, Canada, and it's exoticness. For Esperanto, I liked the idea of it because of how it matched my own idealism (and still does). The clincher for me were its ease of learning, and watching Evildea's videos.

Now, Malay and Chinese. Both of them I'm learning for the same reason. That reason is, that these are both widely spoken languages in the area where I live, and I think it would be nice to be able to speak the national language of the country I live in (something most non-Malays in my country can't do), and the language of the majority race here. Also, Chinese would, i assume, be helpful in learning Hokkian and Cantonese (2 languages I would also like to learn for their importance to Singapore).

The next language I'm planning to learn (and the one that doesn't have a pair yet) is Russian. My reasons are that I like how it sounds, my own fascination with Russia, and that my sister is planning on taking classes later this year, so why not join them?
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Agorima
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Agorima » Thu Apr 15, 2021 8:30 pm

English and French were studied at school.
Greek and Czech have been chosen because I actually lived in both countries (still living in CZ).
Other languages like German, Russian, Spanish are on the list, because life may change.
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Neurotip
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Neurotip » Thu Apr 15, 2021 9:44 pm

I loved languages at school and took as many as I could ... sadly there were only two on offer, French and German, and I had to drop both at 16 in favour of sciences. Maybe it was that fact that drove me to pick up Italian at about that age - as well as becoming obsessed with Italian-language opera. A couple of years later it was also opera that led me to a brief flirtation with Czech, although that never really went anywhere.

Nearing the end of medical school, my psychiatry professor mentioned one day that he had a friend in Sweden who had offered to host a student for a couple of months and would I like to go? Obviously yes but only if I had a year to work on the language first... in the end I barely spoke any Swedish there at all owing to extreme courtesy on their part and extreme embarrassment on mine.

After that it was about fifteen years before I picked up another new language, unless you count various fitful attempts to work through Allen's Middle Egyptian (it's still on the bucket list) - the motivation here is simply that hieroglyphs are just the most awesome-looking script ever, and ancient Egypt is so, well, ancient and alien, and so the feeling of being able to read and understand them is amazing and why would anyone not want to study them? (Sometimes I really don't understand humans.)

In a rather clichéd way, turning forty prompted me to re-evaluate my hobbies and focus on the things I know I enjoy and can do well. So in the last five years or so I've taken up language-learning seriously and picked on Greek, Icelandic and now Arabic. Why these particular languages? Greek because I fell in love with its sound many years ago and always knew I'd have to learn it one day. Icelandic because I went to Iceland and fell in love with that weird, lumpy hair-shirt of a language, I have no idea why. Possibly it's a sense of tracing my own language's family tree and finding long-lost relatives, both for Greek and Icelandic. Arabic because who wouldn't want to be able to read and write that gorgeous script (sorry, hieroglyphs) - and there's also a 'because it's there' element, the lure of the challenge. In my mind Arabic also has the scent of mystery and magic about it, and again an alien-ness that I find irresistible.

...since you ask. :D
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Sumisu
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Sumisu » Fri Apr 16, 2021 12:32 am

Ever since learning Latin to a decent level in high school, I've always wanted to learn a "living" language. I tried to learn Spanish many times over the years, as that is the language most spoken besides English where I live, but failed each time. Besides these Spanish attempts, I made no further progress in my goal of learning a new language, until three years ago, at age 40, I visited Japan. While we were there I joked with my wife about learning Japanese. It seemed so far-fetched that I wasn't even serious about it at first. But the kanji drew me in to the language. Seeing it everywhere, I wondered how in the world it worked, and how anyone could possibly decipher them.

Once I got back home, I bought a Japanese text book, just to get a taste of how the language worked. I still had no intention of learning Japanese to any kind of high level. But I ended up completing the book and have just kept going and going ever since. If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to stop banging my head against the wall with Spanish and try out some other languages. Maybe Spanish just isn't for me. But it's never too late to learn a language and I'm now so deep into Japanese that it looks like it will be "the one."
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby IronMike » Fri Apr 16, 2021 2:18 am

Neurotip wrote:After that it was about fifteen years before I picked up another new language, unless you count various fitful attempts to work through Allen's Middle Egyptian (it's still on the bucket list) - the motivation here is simply that hieroglyphs are just the most awesome-looking script ever, and ancient Egypt is so, well, ancient and alien, and so the feeling of being able to read and understand them is amazing and why would anyone not want to study them? (Sometimes I really don't understand humans.)

If you want a fun way to learn Middle Egyptian, check out Glyphstudy.
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby lichtrausch » Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:09 am

German is a heritage language for me. I learned it because I was bothered by being the only person in my high school social circle who didn't know a second language.

During university I became obsessed with Japanese thanks to kanji, the sound of the language, and the culture. I really wanted to read Haruki Murakami in the original and planned on moving to Japan.

I chose to get serious about Mandarin for a number of reasons. I like the culture and people, I constantly encounter the language in my everyday life, and the language is likely to be professionally useful. Also, coming from Japanese and being very comfortable with Chinese characters, I thought to myself "how hard could it be?" As it turns out, pretty hard.

I started learning Korean shortly before moving to South Korea for a job. I didn't get very far back then, but in recent years I got back into it in a major way because of the culture, the people, and my strong attraction to the language itself. Also, Seoul is one of my favorite places on Earth.
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Apr 16, 2021 4:50 pm

A lot of my interests (such as Opera, Western Literature, and more recently Chess) happen to have the same handful of languages that are the most important: English (which I got for free), French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.

Hebrew because my parents speak it. Arabic because I got frustrated with Hebrew.

Japanese because I like anime.

All the rest of them are just because I thought they seemed cool.
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby iguanamon » Fri Apr 16, 2021 5:46 pm

Yeah, we get this thread on a recurring basis, still it's worthwhile to inform new members. My story started pre-internet. I grew up in a small town (pop. 6,000) in the Upper South of the US. When I was a boy we hardly left the state and rarely traveled to the small cities in our state. We had no immigration nor immigrant communities.

I did have a radio. I can remember being in bed late on a cold winter's night with the snow falling outside and listening to Radio Havana booming in on my transistor radio through my headphone. They were broadcasting a baseball game, in January ! I couldn't understand it but some of the vocabulary in Spanish for baseball is from English- "strike"; "out"; jonrón (homerun). I listened trying to figure out what was going on. After the game the station was broadcasting Cuban music and that was it. I was hooked as a 10 year old. I had a shortwave radio and would listen to the broadcasts in Spanish from Spain, Cuba, Colombia, the DR and Argentina.

Eventually I got a hold of the University of Chicago paperback bilingual Spanish/Engilsh dictionary and then the coursebook "Spanish Step by Step" by Charles Berlitz. It came with no audio but had its on transliteration of the pronunciation for English-speakers. I devoured it. I picked out more and more Spanish on the radio. Radio Havana mailed me a weekly copy of their communist party propaganda newspaper "Granma" (now online)... and my journey began. When I reached high school I was able to take Spanish 1 and made good grades easily. Spanish 2 came next and that was it. No more Spanish classes were available in my small town school, but I kept up reading and kept up listening.

When I got to university, I was able to "CLEP" out (College Level Equivalency Program) through exams for 12 semester hours of Spanish. After university, I joined the US Army and had Hispanic barrack-mates. They taught me a lot, especially colloquial conversation. I lost most of those guys after AIT (Advanced Individual Training, I was a meteorologist). I did my six years duty and left the Army. I took a trip by bus through Mexico and Central America. In the mid 1990's, I was able to buy books in Spanish. The cable company started carrying Univisión. I was able to devour novelas in Spanish with Spanish subs sometimes. I lived in Puerto Rico for a while where I dated an "independentista" and hung out with some party members at the old bar "Hijos de Borínquen" in Old San Juan.

About a dozen years ago, I found the HTLAL forum online. I learned more tips and techniques for language-learning to build on the Barry Farber book.

I decided to learn Spanish because I wanted to learn the second most widely spoken language in my hemisphere. I loved Cuban/Caribbean Spanish music and the culture. I learned Portuguese because of a love of Brazil and Bossa Nova music... and because while close to Spanish, it was also quite different in many ways. I learned Ladino because... c'mon... the Sephardim preserved their language and added a pan-Mediterranean flavor to it for 500 years so far from Iberia... and they wrote it in Hebrew script (Rashi/Solitreo). I learned Haitian Creole because it is a big language here in the Caribbean and the culture is fascinating. Haitians are a warm and friendly people. I learned Lesser Antilles Creole French because, it's close to HC (yet different enough) and I run into it here. Catalan came about after a trip to Barcelona and I loved hearing it and seeing it.

I speak Spanish on an almost daily basis here on the island. The other languages are not spoken as often, but I do something in them every day.

Over the years I have been blessed by having these languages in my life and as part of my life. I have read books that have never been translated into English, watched TV; films and listened to music not known in these parts. I've made friends. I've traveled and felt at ease; I've seen beyond the tourist facade and gotten a glimpse of a fascinating world few who don't speak the language ever get to see- all because I know the language... and the never-ending journey continues :D
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Neurotip
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby Neurotip » Fri Apr 16, 2021 10:08 pm

IronMike wrote:
Neurotip wrote:After that it was about fifteen years before I picked up another new language, unless you count various fitful attempts to work through Allen's Middle Egyptian (it's still on the bucket list) - the motivation here is simply that hieroglyphs are just the most awesome-looking script ever, and ancient Egypt is so, well, ancient and alien, and so the feeling of being able to read and understand them is amazing and why would anyone not want to study them? (Sometimes I really don't understand humans.)

If you want a fun way to learn Middle Egyptian, check out Glyphstudy.

Nooo.... the wanderlust.... again it comes....
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księżycowy
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Re: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed?

Postby księżycowy » Fri Apr 16, 2021 11:32 pm

Alright, I'll bite.

I think grouping a few of my languages would do well.

German, Polish, Irish: These are all heritage languages. In fact, my one grandmother spoke Polish (unfortunately, by the time I came into the picture she had lost a lot of it). My other grandmother, on the other hand, always said that I would never be able to learn Irish. (I intend to prove that wrong, eventually. :D ) Anyway, I can remember when I was young pouring over my father's old German textbooks from college. This eventually moved into looking into getting Irish resources at Barnes & Nobles when I was slightly older. Finally, after learning that my one grandmother was Polish, and used to speak it, I instantly became interested. I can remember speaking some random Polish phrases to her for a while. Dzień dobry, dobranoc, etc. Nothing extravagant.

Japanese, Chinese, Korean: First there was Japanese and anime. I was huge into art and related fields as a child. It was particularly in high school when I was very into anime in particular. I can also remember watching Japanese movies, like Zatoichi, various programs on SciFi (when they were still called that in the 90s), Godzilla (original, not the remakes). All of this made me very interested in the culture and history of Japan, in addition to the anime and art angle. Chinese is a similar story, in that it was movies that got me interested. I can remember watching various Chinese movies around the same time. I especially liked kung-fu movies. I can't really recall any of the titles. Once again, the subject matter of the films made me very interested in the culture and history of the Chinese. And some of the movies were from Hong Kong, so this was interest in both Mandarin and Cantonese. (I've since come to learn there are many varieties of Chinese, and I am interested in quite a few. :P ) For Korean, it has been a relatively new addition, by comparison. I don't really have a long history with the language, or much knowledge on the history or culture. For a while I wasn't all that interested, to be honest. That began to change as I started exploring the language itself, and found it to be a very pleasing sounding language. I also met various Koreans a few years ago that made me what to know more.

Ancient/Koine Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Latin: For Biblical Hebrew and Greek, by the time I signed up for my Master's degree, I knew that I had an interest in languages (in addition to religion), so I wanted a field that would use that interest. So I ended up on the track to learn both and read texts in them (with a focus on Koine Greek, rather than Ancient, but my interest is to spread out into the classics of Greek literature). Latin is kind of in a similar situation to Korean, in that it just kind of tags along with the others.

Everything else: Pretty much because, why not? :lol:

EDIT: Typos.
Last edited by księżycowy on Sat Apr 17, 2021 11:55 am, edited 2 times in total.
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