Controlling Wanderlust

[devilyoudont]

Of course I’ve been tempted by any language I’ve come across: I just have to limit my number at some point.

Any idea on how to prioritize (i.e. what languages to learn or to take a closer look at, and what languages to ommit)?

I confess that this is a difficult question, and it depends on the individual. Shoot, I'm still trying to figure out how to limit my wanderlust. This might be worthy of a new thread.

Since I just got a full-time job again, being busy again is acting as a natural limiter on my ambitions. After much prayer and contemplation, I concluded that while Spanish and French are "easy" languages, I don't have the drive at this point to continue with them. I also don't need them, especially if my goal is to move to Japan in the future. Japanese, in contrast, gets higher priority in default: it's a language I will need, and I have the interest to continue the language. I don't know what will happen with Scottish Gaelic: I certainly don't need it, but being a heritage language, and my decades-long desire to learn a Gaelic language, still has me consider it.

I agree the topic is worthy of it's own thread! So I made a new thread, rather than respond in the Learning languages of immigrants around you thread.

In the past I more or less allowed myself to study whatever caught my fancy, and then allowed the strength of my interest to dictate if I continued with the language, if I improved quickly or slowly, etc etc. This is more or less the reason why my Esperanto level is so high and my Spanish level is so low

In all, I've previously attempted to learn 9 languages: ASL, Esperanto, Frisian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish, and Swahili. I've also dabbled in a few other conlangs, but most of which I wouldn't consider to be full fledged languages.

But now I'm only keeping up with three: (advanced) Esperanto, (intermediate) Japanese, (beginner) Spanish.

How did I arrive at these three and why not all 9? Well, first of all, I had a higher interest in Japanese and Esperanto. I had experience living in Japan, I have Japanese friends, and I just think Japanese is a beautiful language. And I also really love the Esperanto community. So those two simply wound up being a higher level than my other languages. Spanish is a language that is very common where I live. I have Spanish speaking neighbors, friends, and coworkers. And so of the other languages, I decided to prioritize learning Spanish.

So more or less, until my Spanish is at least as good as my Japanese, I will not be adding anymore languages. I can't give those languages the amount of time they deserve right now.

The experience of having dabbled in all of the above languages tho has also taught me a lot about what kinds of languages I will attempt in the future, and what kinds of languages I won't.

Korean and Russian are both spoken in my community, and there's a large amount of media available in both languages. These are both languages I might learn.
ASL is spoken in my community. This is also a language I might learn.
Swahili is not spoken in my community, however there are some films, literature, etc in Swahili. It is unlikely that I will study Swahili.
Frisian is not spoken in my community, and there is not a huge amount of media available to me in Frisian. I will not learn Frisian.

So what about you guys? How do you control wanderlust?

[rdearman]

So what about you guys? How do you control wanderlust?

Easy, just remember how much hard work it is to learn a language, and I drop any thought of another language immediately.

[smallwhite]

I have a spreadsheet where I calculate the relative worthiness of languages I might want to learn:

number of native speakers
x
usefulness for work
/
hours needed per FSI
x
hours already spent

etc

[Xenops]

So what about you guys? How do you control wanderlust?

Easy, just remember how much hard work it is to learn a language, and I drop any thought of another language immediately.

This has indeed been my thinking regarding Russian, since I have two fluent speakers as coworkers. But they also want to practice English, so...

[patrickwilken]

I know if I take up another language the likelihood I'll get to my aimed for level in the languages I am already learning will go down dramatically. So I'd strongly risk literally throwing away years of hard work, and basically failing in the tasks I've set myself.

My payoff is getting to B2 or whatever. I don't get a payoff learning languages per se (though I enjoy this). I want to be able to be at B2+ level in the languages I am studying to do various things (speak to people, read newspapers/books, watch movies etc). There is no payoff for me being able to say I am learning X-number of languages.

[Axon]

I did a pretty okay job in 2018 by laying out nine languages that I like and doing my best not to devote much time to new ones beyond those. It depends on your individual goals of course, but I really don't think you risk throwing away years of work if you forget some of a language.

I ended up slowly increasing my skills in six of these languages while settling for 6 Week Challenges in the other three. As for wanderlust, I did less than an hour each of Thai, Japanese, Hungarian, and some other minority languages. I've forgotten almost all of the little Javanese I learned in my classes, though I have a feeling I could still understand some of that material if I tried to pick it back up.

So basically I satisfied whatever desire for new languages I had with miniscule dabbling, and then looked for and found new ways to improve on the languages I want to keep at a relatively higher level. My own case is probably atypical though - I only use a handful of languages regularly and as long as I keep improving slowly I'm happy.

[Iversen]

If you want to learn more about a language, but not really have the time to study it, then just tell yourself that this is a brief encounter which soon will be over. This is much easier than actually trying to learn it, so how can it be a problem?

[nooj]

I tell myself that I will get around eventually to learning these languages, but the world won't end if I wait a little bit. But I don't think I'm lying to myself, I really do want to learn them. Just not now...

[Ogrim]

After many years of experience I have learnt to control wanderlust by giving in to it.

I have dabbled in many languages over the years which I won't list as "my languages" because they were brief encounters, as Iversen says, or they were pushed out because of other priorities. To name a few: Czech, Hebrew, Finnish, Gaelic, Japanese, Armenian, Euskara, Corsican....

Nowadays my wanderlust mostly takes the form of picking up again languages I learnt to some extent in the past. They mostly tend to be Romance languages where I have a decent passive knowledge, like Portuguese or Ladino, or most recently Romanian. I'm also dabbling a bit in Dutch, which I learnt when living in Brussels many years ago, but which I have not really "kept alive" since then, and I try to improve my understanding of the German dialects spoken in my "neighbourhood", including Swiss German.

I do however make sure that my wanderlust does not take my attention away from the languages I really want to learn well, like currently Arabic. There I am in for the long run. As regards Romanian, I enjoy spending some time re-discovering it, but only as long as I have "done my homework" in Arabic. Maybe my interest in Romanian will keep growing and I will get serious about it, maybe not, but as long as I have the "inspiration" and it does not steal a lot of my time, I don't see that it does any harm.

[iguanamon]

Wanderlust is mostly a problem for learners who have yet to learn a second language. They often get excited by all the activity here and many of our members who do amazing things with languages that they want to have that fun too. That's fine as long as that's all they expect. It only really becomes a problem when said learner lets it keep them from learning a language and is not happy with that fact. Then, what's at the root of the issue? There may be a problem with the study routine- not enough consistency? Too much formal study? Study out of balance- too much srs? Too much course? Too much native materials with English subs? Not enough fun? Too much fun? Not enough coursework? Not really dedicated or motivated? There's something that lies at the root of it for monolinguals who may be plagued with wanderlust.

So, give into it then. Unfortunately, it's something that they must work through themselves. I can understand it but to me there's so much I can get out of a language once I put in the effort to learn it, that's what motivates me and keeps me from going for "shiny things"... but maybe that's too boring

Edit: grammar