Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

General discussion about learning languages
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IronMike
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby IronMike » Fri Dec 08, 2017 11:59 am

A lot of "my languages" are really only mine because I have a linguistic interest in them. I get a linguistic review of the language or an intro text, read it through, learning about the language's phonology, syntax, morphology, what-not, and then I'm happy. I don't necessarily want to learn how to speak it, but learn what makes it tick.

I have wanderlust mostly for that. I still have a bit of wanderlust to actually learn to speak some (Cornish, BCS, Nahuatl, Japanese) but I have learned to temper that lust.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby MacGyver » Fri Dec 08, 2017 12:57 pm

Other cultures draw me in. Thankfully my hunger to become 'fluent' in the language I am learning now stops me from giving other languages the time of day. Maybe in x years once I am C1 etc, etc.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby nooj » Fri Dec 08, 2017 4:11 pm

People is my thing. I meet people, I go through a period of infatuation with the people (not necessarily in a romantic way) and their culture and their language. I feel I'm a bit off my rocker as a person because of that, but that's truly the only way I get motivated enough to learn someone's language. It's always someone's language, it's never just a neutral language for me. It also means that if I have bad or even just completely neutral experiences with someone, that kind of gets imprinted on the language for me.

Mandarin for example doesn't attract me, but growing up I had a lot of Cantonese friends, and I know that I would gladly learn Canto over Mandarin (besides, it sounds nicer). Mandarin I associate with the international students who come and go and keep to themselves, Cantonese I associate with my friends. Now this is all subjective, but that's how it works for me.

Wanderlust? Nah, just lust.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby Iversen » Fri Dec 08, 2017 9:32 pm

I know my limits and only study the languages which I have decided to study. And precisely because of that I can permit myself the luxury of having a look at some of the other thousands of interesting languages on the planet without being caught up in more than I can manage. I have recently read a book about Quechua. Was it interesting? Definitely yes. Did I learn something from the experience? Oh, yes. Do I intend to study it? No.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Dec 08, 2017 11:03 pm

Xenops wrote:What about you? What makes you drawn to a language you're not actively studying? :D


I have reasons for studying every single language I've spent some time with, and I also have reasons for leaving them (or taking long breaks).

Sometimes the reason is linguistic, often it's related to culture (e.g. literature, movies, music), sometimes it's because I know people who speak the language, sometimes it's just a cool language.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby mick33 » Sat Dec 09, 2017 3:31 am

Dragon27 wrote:It's shiny, I want it.
Yes, this is true for me too. I am sometimes easily distracted, but then I remember that I want to be able have conversations, read books and watch TV shows in the languages I am already learning.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby Hank » Sat Dec 09, 2017 2:52 pm

I never had wanderlust until I found this forum. I never even thought about learning another language after Spanish. Practically everyone here is learning or knows multiple languages. I blame you people! :lol:

I think I have wanderlust for two reasons.

1) I get a great deal of satisfaction and enjoyment from reading Spanish language books and being able to understand Spanish language TV. It's exciting. It's possibly an ego boost as well. I want to be able to do that in more languages. More languages means more fun, right?

2) Even though it's a difficult, time consuming process to learn a language, the little victories along the way, especially at the lower levels, feel really good. REALLY good. And I know that at some point I'll be at reason #1 levels, which is also exciting.

I keep telling myself that I'm not going to learn any more languages after Welsh. I can't imagine trying to maintain three languages. But the truth is I'm already fighting the urge to dabble in Japanese. My wanderlust has me wanting to learn a language with a different alphabet.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby Systematiker » Sat Dec 09, 2017 7:46 pm

jeff_lindqvist wrote:
Xenops wrote:What about you? What makes you drawn to a language you're not actively studying? :D


I have reasons for studying every single language I've spent some time with, and I also have reasons for leaving them (or taking long breaks).

Sometimes the reason is linguistic, often it's related to culture (e.g. literature, movies, music), sometimes it's because I know people who speak the language, sometimes it's just a cool language.


This pretty much could be my answer. Usually it’s from knowing someone, or encountering a language I find cool.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby Ogrim » Mon Dec 11, 2017 4:13 pm

Defining Wanderlust as wanting to learn new languages or improve old languages without really getting serious about it, I have two main reasons for wanderlusting:

1) Travel. If I visit a country or a region where I don't speak the language, I get a sudden urge to explore that language, so I browse the internet to get some idea about its grammar etc, I try to find music in the language and enjoy listening to some songs without understanding the lyrics, I may be so extravagant as to buy a course book, but then the fascination slowly fades as I go back to concentrating on the languages I really want to learn. This kind of wanderlust has happened to me with Armenian, Irish, Hebrew, Greek (although I am working on making that a real study langauge), Croatian and Basque to name just some.

2) Culture/events. This mostly concerns languages I used to have a realtionship with in the past, but that were left behind at some stage. A fortuitous political or cultural event may suddenly rekindle the interest. Recently it happened with Dutch, which I studied back in the 1990s when I lived in Belgium. It's also been the case at some point with Catalan, Romanian and Portuguese. It was also the reason I took up Romansh again some six-seven years ago. Some of them will stick around and become part of my daily routine, others will have my attention for a certain period and then I may put them back in the freezer for a while.
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Re: Why Do You Have Wanderlust?

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Tue Dec 12, 2017 2:10 am

I haven't got Wanderlust.
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