Do you ever 'fear' starting a new language?

General discussion about learning languages
MaggieMae
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Re: Do you ever 'fear' starting a new language?

Postby MaggieMae » Thu Mar 23, 2023 10:16 pm

I definitely feel the dread Rdearman and Le Baron are mentioning. I just started Mandarin. I really want to learn it, for myself, not because some government decided I had to (which is the case with German). But I'm definitely finding it VERY difficult to start with, and most of that is coming from knowing that I'll need to spend hours upon hours learning stroke order, new characters, new vocabulary, a vastly different grammar system from my own... I just did all that in German, and that's at least in the same language family as English...

So I find myself blocked at the first few lessons. I've gotten really good at, "I am an American. I'm not Chinese. My cup. Your cat." But that's where it stops. I find myself filling my free time with other things because I don't feel like I have the energy I'll need to fully commit to learning.

It probably doesn't help that I fast tracked German, due to life circumstances. When your full time job for a whole year is only learning a single language, I bet the perception of what it actually takes to learn a language the "normal" way gets twisted all out of proportion.
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leosmith
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Re: Do you ever 'fear' starting a new language?

Postby leosmith » Fri Mar 24, 2023 1:40 am

MaggieMae wrote:I find myself filling my free time with other things because I don't feel like I have the energy I'll need to fully commit to learning.
I would call this lack of motivation rather than fear.
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zjfict
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Re: Do you ever 'fear' starting a new language?

Postby zjfict » Fri Mar 24, 2023 2:44 am

Starting projects like learning a language have always been a piece of cake. My fear is pushing through challenges in language learning or anything else without throwing in the towel. All of this to say, no fears in starting a new language!
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sporedandroid
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Re: Do you ever 'fear' starting a new language?

Postby sporedandroid » Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:42 am

I’ve sort of been “scared” about studying Finnish for years. I’m still not sure if it’s a good idea to study it. Especially because I don’t feel like as passionate about it compared to Icelandic. The main reason I’m not studying Icelandic is intrusive thoughts. One reason I’m starting Finnish is because I just happened to find resources I liked. I just dabbled a bit and I ended up enjoying it. When I’m into Finnish, it does seem more fun than other languages I’ve studied.

Sometimes it does seem like my motivation is a bit on the low side, but that just tends to happen with new languages for me. I’ll have days when my motivation is super high and days where it isn’t too high. When I make more progress in a language my motivation tends to become more consistent. Either way my motivation for studying Finnish seems better than it was for French or German.
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