to which type of reasons do you refer to as a language learner when you make a language selection for learning?

General discussion about learning languages
Irena
Green Belt
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2022 11:42 am
Languages: Serbian (N), English (C2), French (C1), Russian (C1), Czech (C1), dabbled in a couple of others, dreaming of many others
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Re: to which type of reasons do you refer to as a language learner when you make a language selection for learning?

Postby Irena » Sun Mar 19, 2023 10:57 am

And now I want to contradict what I just wrote. :lol: You can successfully learn a language for a bad reason. Suppose you learn a language because you think it'll improve your economic prospects, and then your economic prospects don't improve. For instance, you get a degree in language X because you think it'll lead to a good job, only to wind up getting a job that you could just as easily have gotten with no degree at all or with some Mickey Mouse degree that would have required a lot less time and effort than your degree did. And then you regret ever having bothered with X.

But if you learned a language out of personal interest, and that language does nothing to improve your economic prospects, that doesn't mean you were wrong to learn it. If you got what you were hoping to get, then all is good. But there are plenty of people who think that languages are a chore that should only ever be bothered with as a means of improving one's economic prospects. And then if they see someone who learned a language for some other reason, they conclude that the person made a stupid choice. And that's just silly. You might as well argue that playing basketball is a waste of time unless you're doing it professionally or hope to do it professionally.
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Lisa
Green Belt
Posts: 309
Joined: Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:08 pm
Location: Oregon, United States
Languages: English (N), German (intermediate) Idle: French (beginner) Esperanto (beginner) Spanish (was intermediate)
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 15&t=10854
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Re: to which type of reasons do you refer to as a language learner when you make a language selection for learning?

Postby Lisa » Fri Mar 24, 2023 9:00 pm

I think availability of material also matters to me. The fact that kwiziq supports french was a +1 for french, and not having a good availability of printed books and some of the online tools support for esperanto is a -1.

When it comes to computer languages, I am sticking with my NL (not my original but I started using it when I was a very young programmer). If your human language skills are weak you can point and wave... but bad things happen if you make small grammar mistakes in strange programming languages.
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