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

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

Postby jimmy » Sun Mar 05, 2023 10:38 am

Hi,
I think that this is very important issue.
based on which type of reasons you make selection of a new language?
I presume that there are some people who dream to fly to a new location and pay attention to the cultural closeness to his/her own culture and select that new language.
but can we say that it would be wrong selection if you want to select a language which both the location where that language is being spoken and culture is too far from your culture?

one another fact that learners pay attention to when make selection of language for learning is the linguistic relation between new language and his/her language.

While I find this logical , it might be insufficient reason to require strong relation between the new language and his/her native language.

what do you think?
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mattmo
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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 mattmo » Sun Mar 05, 2023 11:52 am

I like to call myself a language learner when I have learnt the language to just a beginner level. Otherwise when I'm an intermediate level or above in the language I'd like to say I'm improving the language as learning a language implies you can't speak it that well (at least not conversational to most people).

What do you guys think?
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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 tastyonions » Sun Mar 05, 2023 12:49 pm

I have no real "practical" reasons to learn a language (don't need anything other than English for my daily life, not going to move to another country, not working as a translator or interpreter, and the countries I want to visit are ones where you can get by at least okay with English). So my criteria are:

(1) Do I like listening to it? Does it sound cool / pleasant / interesting?
(2) Is there something about the culture I can get into (music, literature, movies)?
(3) What kind of effort will it take to reach the level needed for what I'd like to do with it?

Point (3) is why I've put off learning Russian and Japanese for years and years.

;)
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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 jimmy » Sun Mar 05, 2023 1:32 pm

mattmo wrote:I like to call myself a language learner when I have learnt the language to just a beginner level. Otherwise when I'm an intermediate level or above in the language I'd like to say I'm improving the language as learning a language implies you can't speak it that well (at least not conversational to most people).

What do you guys think?

you are already beginner of the mentioned new language which you are about to potentially select it for learning.
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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 german2k01 » Sun Mar 05, 2023 3:39 pm

Sometimes you have no choice but to learn it for your survival in your new country. For example, refugees from Ukraine and Syria in Germany. International students. Not easy to find a professional job in Germany if you do not speak fluent German.
Language learning requires a lot of time and effort. The majority of people would spend that time upgrading their academic and working life.

Unless you suffer from OCD (ala Matt vs Japan) and want to be like a Japanese person. I would rather spend that time getting an academic degree and learning Japanese more as a hobby rather than dedicating my growing years to learning one language.

Yes, I have decided to learn German because I have a better chance of getting a good job vs someone with the same qualifications who do not speak German at all. Purely out of necessity.
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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 Le Baron » Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:15 pm

As per german2k01 necessity has always been a factor for me. However there are smaller 'projects' I've had focused only on enough to read books or watch e.g. films (like my failed attempt at learning Bengali). The smaller projects aren't quite as successful for me because I feel a lack of rounded development (listening and reading plus speaking and possibly writing).
so, rule of thumb for me: will I be able to use it? I admit it is vague.
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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 Sae » Sun Mar 05, 2023 4:19 pm

I guess it can be summarised for my current target languages:

Vietnamese:
I plan to visit the country & may one day want to work there. Although I don't technically need to learn the language to do that, but I always figure I should make the effort and the more I learned about the language itself, the more I was interested by it. And I find it charming as a language, I've people call it ugly, but I think it is elegant and it feels like it's meant to be efficient, logical and precise yet how it puts words together to form new meaning can be quite poetic.

Mongolian:

I love the music and I am big into folk traditions, oral cultures and storytelling, so natural nomadism, urtiin duus, tuuli, magtaals and so on in Mongolia interest me. I need to speak the language to be able to understand it all. But I also plan to visit and potentially work there. I also want to sing songs in Mongolian.

Tuvan:

Pretty much the same for Mongolian and the guy teaching me throatsinging is doing it from the Tuvan style and he's well connected within Tuva's own scene and has been involved with the Tuvan Cultural Centre in Kyzyl and when learning it's still classed as an endangered language and there's efforts for things like cultural preservation, I feel like to be involved in some level is maybe a long time goal/desire if I get the opportunity to (and get good enough with both the language & music)

I think my main draws are
1) To use it, whether it's to connect with speakers or for storytelling & musical purposes
2) Because I find them stimulating and interesting.
3) And I also like challenging myself.

There are all languages that are far from my own culture and are in no way linquistically related my own language (I am a native English speaker). However, I have an interest and appreciation for them. The only commonality is maybe a handful of loan word and that be coincidence Vietnamese is an SVO language like English is.

Maybe one day I will try languages I am unlikely to use because there are something I think look interesting to learn that are cool, but I'll prioritise what I want to use.
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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 Lawyer&Mom » Mon Mar 06, 2023 4:53 am

As a grown-up learner extremely tied down to my current location by my mortgage and kids, the largest factor for me is quality and availability of streaming media. I really, really enjoy watching foreign TV. French was only okay on both factors. Korean is making me very happy indeed. Yes, Korean is hard, doesn’t matter. However many thousands of hours of content I will need, Korea is more than happy to provide.
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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 Kullman » Mon Mar 06, 2023 6:51 am

Exclusively by the usefulness of the language itself...

Right now, I'm seriously considering french as my fourth language, because I think it's the most useful language after english and spanish (ok, maybe mandarin is slightly more useful, but it seems harder), and is a language I really don't like at all and, in fact, there is some sort of national rivalry between spanish and french...
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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 księżycowy » Mon Mar 06, 2023 8:29 am

I typically think of it like this (the following list is very much not in order of important, but just a set of questions I concider):
1)What can I learn by learning this language? - and this can range from, "do I get access to content in academic field X or Y" to simply "what do I gain from the experience of learning this language?"

2) Am I interested in the history and/or culture of where it's spoken? - this one is pretty self explanatory. This can even be a curiousity due to not knowing anything and wishing to know more. But even then it's usually tied to another language that I have a stronger disire to learn. I'd say this particular criteria is probably the main motivation for me.

3) Does it sound cool? - I'll admit that a few languages I've selected over the years have fallen into this category, but not many. In fact some languages I'd like to learn I don't really like the sound of, but wish to learn anyway. So this isn't a super strong criteria.

4) On the resource side, I take concideration of: Can I get what I define as a good textbook (with audio if a living language), a good grammar, and a good dictionary (at minimum TL -> preferably ENG)? Without those key parts, I'm more apt to leave a language alone. As I'm often off the beaten track, this becomes important to consider. :P (Though there are some exceptions, naturally.)

I can't readily think of anymore questions at the moment.
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