Controlling Wanderlust

General discussion about learning languages
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smallwhite
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby smallwhite » Tue Nov 06, 2018 3:42 am

Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency without wandering?

Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency while wandering?

What is the ratio? Does wandering really matter?

(I think I've asked before - who are our successful monolingual adult learners anyway? I don't read everyone's logs and can't remember who started before adulthood and who didn't).
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby cathrynm » Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:36 am

Why even worry about it? Among the things that can go wrong in your life, studying too many random languages is a relatively minor thing. Except for a rare few, I presume the novelty of studying 9 languages eventually wears off anyway. Sounds like 'the original poster' is making that transition right now, basically.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby Ani » Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:41 am

smallwhite wrote:Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency without wandering?

Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency while wandering?

What is the ratio? Does wandering really matter?

(I think I've asked before - who are our successful monolingual adult learners anyway? I don't read everyone's logs and can't remember who started before adulthood and who didn't).


Uhm.. dare I ask -- what is fluency anyway? :-p
If you think I count as fluent, then I did it without wandering. If not, then I didn't because I've been wandering for a bit now :)
Either way, I started as an adult.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby devilyoudont » Tue Nov 06, 2018 12:09 pm

cathrynm wrote:Why even worry about it? Among the things that can go wrong in your life, studying too many random languages is a relatively minor thing. Except for a rare few, I presume the novelty of studying 9 languages eventually wears off anyway. Sounds like 'the original poster' is making that transition right now, basically.


So, I actually never tried studying 9 languages at the same time, I was fairly consistent with Japanese and Esperanto, but I would randomly start and quit other languages in a kind of serially monogamous (serially tri-gamous?) fashion. And this period ended for me maybe over two years ago. But, seeing people discuss "wanderlust" fairly often, and the specific conversation I quoted in my post, made me think that perhaps a general discussion on why more experienced learners pick a smaller set of languages to focus on, and how they choose what languages to focus on might be helpful ;)
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby aaleks » Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:04 pm

smallwhite wrote:Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency without wandering?

Who are our monolingual adult learners who have reached fluency while wandering?

What is the ratio? Does wandering really matter?

(I think I've asked before - who are our successful monolingual adult learners anyway? I don't read everyone's logs and can't remember who started before adulthood and who didn't).


I'm one of the few who didn't have English in school, so I guess I started learning the language as an adult. But, of course, no one can be a true beginner in that language.
And in my case no (or almost no) wandering. I was dabbling in French for some time but it was just dabbling here and there.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby fresh_air » Tue Nov 06, 2018 1:59 pm

When I was in my teens I would constantly vacilate between languages, German, Bulgarian, Norwegian, Spanish. I spent a fair amount of time with German and it made me realize the sheer amount of work, opportunity cost, and money it takes to learn a language to a high level and I frankly wasn't wanting to put in more time than I already did reaching A2 with the Goethe Institut. I had a lot of Brazilian friends and the culture really spoke to me, so I settled with Portuguese and "married" the language. It's probably my proudest decision! I take a lot of pride in my decision to invest so much time in one thing.

It's not really wanderlust but I still want to learn Russian and Spanish. I'm not sure which to learn first , or if I should wait until I speak Portuguese at a higher level.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby Mooby » Tue Nov 06, 2018 4:55 pm

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Better to have one sharp knife than a collection of blunt metal.


This motto has been a great help for me in controlling wanderlust. It comes from AJATT's article on 'How Many Languages' in which he writes:
Too many of us language learners are dabblers, dilettantes, hobbyists. Of course, it depends on one's goals. But if we really want the maximum benefits of knowing a language, I think those max benefits only come with (native-level) fluency. If you want to be able to actually cut stuff, you need a sharp knife. You want to be able to use your languages to do (cut) ANYTHING. And fast. Understand everything from standard to regional dialects, read fast, speak fast and correctly, write fast and correctly. Otherwise you just have a collection of blunt metal; it looks good on paper, but it doesn't do anything or it doesn't do enough.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby Beli Tsar » Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:02 pm

Mooby wrote:.
Better to have one sharp knife than a collection of blunt metal.


This motto has been a great help for me in controlling wanderlust. It comes from AJATT's article on 'How Many Languages' in which he writes:
Too many of us language learners are dabblers, dilettantes, hobbyists. Of course, it depends on one's goals. But if we really want the maximum benefits of knowing a language, I think those max benefits only come with (native-level) fluency. If you want to be able to actually cut stuff, you need a sharp knife. You want to be able to use your languages to do (cut) ANYTHING. And fast. Understand everything from standard to regional dialects, read fast, speak fast and correctly, write fast and correctly. Otherwise you just have a collection of blunt metal; it looks good on paper, but it doesn't do anything or it doesn't do enough.


Great quote. But is there something to be said for a reading knowledge of languages, too? Sure, it's hard to get really good at reading without good production, but you can get an awful lot of fun out of a language just by reading, if you like reading. And it's a lot quicker to get there than it is to get 'native-level fluency'. That allows, then, for a certain level of wanderlust.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby reineke » Tue Nov 06, 2018 5:41 pm

You can't cut soup.
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Re: Controlling Wanderlust

Postby IronMike » Tue Nov 06, 2018 6:27 pm

Mooby wrote:.
Of course, it depends on one's goals.


My goal? I want to be able to order a beer in as many languages as possible.
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