An Obligatory "Which Should I Learn?" Thread

[eido]

I know you'll all hate me for posting this, but I've forced myself into a corner.

I have already received great advice about this on my log (and elsewhere) and I've been testing it for the past week or so, but I'm not sure if it's working, mostly because I'm impatient.

I have a wishlist of languages I want to learn, but some languages are hard to find resources for. Faroese and Icelandic are two of them.

I've been told to follow my heart, and also to follow my head. I think both pieces of advice have merit. If I follow my heart, I'll be learning more "exotic", less-learned languages. If I follow my head, I could still do that, but it will take longer. However this path might have more immediate rewards.

The reason I think I'm debating this is I don't know what to do after I hit an A2 level in the lesser-learned languages. So my mind started to wander to: "What if I learned a language these languages are commonly learned through? Would I find more resources?"

Oh course, this could be just simple wanderlust or wanting to try out a new product, but for Faroese, I think there could actually be more resources in Danish than in English. I don't know though - I haven't investigated.

I don't like most of the FIGS or Russian, but I thought if that gave me access to more resources, I could possibly force myself to learn one. Russian for Polish, for example. Or French to access all the Assimils, which could relate to the above goal of learning Danish... Hmm.

But I could possibly end up in a program where I'd need a good basis in all skills at at least a lower-intermediate level, so I need to make up my mind. For this reason The Iguana suggested I learn a Romance language because I already know a fair bit of Spanish. To this I objected, but initially I couldn't resist the government resource he linked to for Catalan that was pretty comprehensive. I like comprehensive.

I was learning Korean for a bit, but I don't know how to direct a teacher with this language, so I stopped. I do think I need a teacher, since without one I won't keep going at a good pace, or know nuance. People also don't think I'm as excited about it, because I'm trying to use it to be diplomatic and enlighten myself in a way I normally wouldn't.

And of course, there's just the idea that I could learn a language to get experience learning that type and move on, or get a base with vocabulary and move on.

So if I had to focus my energies on one or two other languages, which should I focus on? The Iguana would say I've answered my own question, but I don't know if I have here. If I have, maybe you know me better than I know myself.

Make your case. Ready, set, fight! (Okay, don't fight. Be calm and collected like the nerds you are. Ahem. [If nerds could be that way...])

Thank you for your time.

[rdearman]

Here is what I think you should do. You have 6 languages, so find a 6-sixed dice and assign a number to each language. Before you roll the dice commit yourself to learning that language and only that language until you are C1. Then roll the dice. After you're C1 in that language then you can create another list and get another dice. You could pick a time rather than a level like C1, you could say I'll do whatever language wins for 2 years.

I haven't followed this advice, since I've got 4 languages in rotation. But if you're not happy with doing languages in rotation then the dice method is for you. Once upon a time my father told me that if you have two choices but can't decide then flip a coin. If you're happy with the result then go for that one, if you're unhappy with the result do the other. But since you've 6 choices, I would literally force myself to commit, the fact that you're really going to commit to 1 language for 2 years or a C-level might make you decide to pick the one your really want, since nothing clears the mind like a deadline or an ultimatum.

[zjones]

You need to have some level of motivation and desire for the languages you're learning. I know it's possible to force oneself to learn a language (there are plenty of people who need specific languages for their degree) but it will be harder if you are taking a self-study approach and are not being required to learn the language.

Yes, you could learn a language just to get access to that language's programs (Assimil, for example) but I don't recommend doing this. If you don't like French and never have wanted to learn it, I don't see any reason for you to make yourself learn it just so you can use Assimil's Icelandic course for 3 months. Besides you'd need to get to B1 or B2 in French to ladder a course like that, which takes a lot of time and effort (and sometimes angry screaming).

I know there are Icelandic and Polish courses available for English, and even if they aren't numerous or perfect, they will get you started. Besides, at some point you will graduate from courses and you'll be reading the native language, so the beginning course is just a leaping-off point. Once you can read native materials, you'll have a wider array of resources.

I cannot tell you which language to choose, but if you have any kind of gut feeling about a specific language, I'd recommend following that.

Enjoy your journey.

Edit: Another note after reading Rick's post. If you are really torn between two or more languages, follow Rick's advice and choose one at random. If you are okay with your choice, then find a course (any course that you think will work) and commit to finishing the course or working on the language every day for 1-3 months. That short period of time will give you a chance to see what's available for that language without feeling like you have to commit to that language for a year or more. At the end of that time period you can decide how you feel about that language. This is what I'm currently doing with Greek -- I told myself that I'll finish the Assimil course and then I can decide whether or not to stick with Greek or move on to another language. I can actually accomplish something without feeling like I'm chained to that language forever.

[Xenops]

I know there are Icelandic and Polish courses available for English, and even if they aren't numerous or perfect, they will get you started. Besides, at some point you will graduate from courses and you'll be reading the native language, so the beginning course is just a leaping-off point. Once you can read native materials, you'll have a wider array of resources.

I cannot tell you which language to choose, but if you have any kind of gut feeling about a specific language, I'd recommend following that.

I agree with all of zjones' post, but I wanted to emphasize this portion: iguana and zenmonkey are two people that have learned languages with less than ideal resources, and there are probably others. If you really love a language, you can make it work, even if you have to resort to a dictionary. In fact, you would have more fun with your love-language with a dictionary than French with the best learning course ever.

For my other argument I proposed, I originally planned to apply to medical school: either in the U.S., or in Europe. As such, I know a lot about what makes an applicant interesting. While a linguistics department is different from med school, I imagine there are some similarities: I would rather interview someone learning Icelandic than someone how knows all of the FIGS. It's not that I'm bashing FIGS--I actually feel disturbed that I don't love them as much as I should--but someone learning a lesser-known language tells me a lot about the person: she thinks outside the box, she pursues what she loves, and she doesn't let opinions of others deter her.

[David1917]

I looked at your post and it seems to me you want to learn Icelandic (Faroese), Polish, Japanese the most?

Icelandic I think has enough resources in English that you could go right for it, Linguaphone coming especially to mind and being what I'll be starting myself within the next 6 months or so. I think the relative obscurity of Icelandic tends to give undue credence to the erroneous claim that it's overly difficult. See also: Hungarian. But remember, it's just a language. Think of how many people on this forum learn Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc. Icelandic is a distant cousin of ours; no need to learn Danish or anything first.

In lieu of learning something like German for its resources, here's an idea: check out Middle and Old English. I think Prof A wrote once about doing this to get a "feel" for older languages, and Dekaglossai talks about this in his video for Ancient Greek. The latter suggests just going at reading some Middle English for a month, then Old English for a month after that. I haven't tried that, but I am to this end currently playing around with the new TYS Old English course, since it has audio. It's pretty fun and easy, and I wonder how the "feel" will really apply to Icelandic (or Latin or Sanskrit....whenever the time exists...)

Now here's the fun part. If I recall correctly, both Polish and Japanese are members of the 1950's generation of Linguaphone courses that follow the same material, as is Icelandic. Therefore, you can then move into the Polish course on the strength of both your possibly nascent heritage knowledge and the experience with the Icelandic course. There are other good Polish courses as well, including the older generation of TYS in the grammar-translation format, and you could use the Assimil course afterwards as a set of graded readings.* Finally, Japanese. Since this is generally thought to be the most difficult of these 3, it should be last in the Linguaphone journey, and you'll know the material inside and out, so applying it to Japanese will be easier. Assimil's Japanese has an English course, too, though beyond that I don't know much about materials for this language, but people definitely learn it from an English base.

All that is to say, I think the advice people give on learning one language to access another should only be taken if you can see yourself in any way using and enjoying that intermediary language. Otherwise, you'll hate it, it will take you longer to get to a decent enough level, and you'll still be frustrated using a language you only sort of understand to try and crack one you are desperate to know.

*On the strength of Spanish you should be able to parse some of the French translations in the early Assimil lessons, otherwise you'll just need to do some google translating, but keep in mind hopefully you've got a couple Polish courses under your belt at this point. Even a cursory overview of French via something like Cortina or Hugo will acquaint you with some of the intricacies of French that will greatly amplify what you can parse.

[Xmmm]

I found this very helpful to organize my thinking about what to learn: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/fo ... 4910&PN=49

reineke also mentioned somewhere the "Napoleonic strategy". Like you should learn French, Spanish, Italian. And only after that, German. And only after that, Russian or Arabic. etc.

Your problem is that all the cool languages you like are category IV or V, and that is going to (maybe?) put you at a competitive disadvantage relative to your classmates who are taking the easy way out and learning Spanish + Portuguese.

If another Romance language is not appealing, and German is not appealing ... didn't you say you liked Danish? Or Danish music anyway? If you learned Danish, you could get the Scandinavian discount on Norwegian and Swedish (and some really tiny discount on Icelandic), and all the best Greenlandic resources are in Danish ...

[iguanamon]

First, eido, I am not a guru or a great polyglot. There are many more people here who are much better and more diverse with languages than I am. There's a Zen Buddhist koan that says "If you meet the Buddha on the road, you must kill him". This koan has many different meanings but to me, in the context of language-learning, basically "the Buddha is within you". You must work out for yourself what to do. I can only give advice based on my own experience.

When you first broached this subject, I thought you needed to learn a second language solely to fulfill a requirement for a university program to learn a second language to at least an intermediate level in order to enter said university program. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

If the language to learn is just to fulfill that requirement and there is a time limit imposed by the university, then learning a minority language like Faroese means that it may not be ideal because as you mentioned there is a paucity of resources available. Same goes with Icelandic. Learning a constructed language like Esperanto (or Interlingua) would probably fulfill the requirement and take much less time than any natural language would to reach an intermediate level. Still, even though it would be easy for you, if your heart isn't in it you won't learn it.

Learning a related language has its own issues and can drive you crazy too, believe me, but you do begin with a significant head start. Learning French just to take advantage of Assimil, or Russian or German, or even Danish, Finnish or Turkish... just so you can use the languages for other learning resources not available in English is valid and has been done many times here by several members. Again, would your heart be in it? With Spanish and English and a brief look into French common words and grammar, the French that Assimil uses in their courses shouldn't be all that hard.

If I were enrolled in university and had to present a second language at an intermediate level in order to enter a linguistics program, I'd probably pick one that is offered at my university and learn it to as high a level as I could on my own and then take a CLEP test to also gain university credit. This could even serve as "proof" of learning a language to the department in order to get you into the program and it could give you up to 12 hours of credit for much less cost than taking and paying for classes. It could also show the department that you are serious about what you do. You can also just learn any next language you want anyway.

My advice about learning a minority language is based on my own experience. I don't think that I could have learned Ladino if I hadn't learned Spanish first. There is a lack of resources and a lack of uniformity in the language too. Having Spanish and Portuguese at a high level, and the experience of having done that, made learning Ladino and Haitian Creole much easier. I couldn't have learned Lesser Antilles French Creole without knowing Haitian Creole first. There are so very few learning resources available for LAFC (Kwéyòl) and almost no intermediate resources available outside of academic linguistic papers and the New Testament. There are no Harry Potter translations, no dubbed series, no K Pop, no rock music, no fantasy books, no sci-fi available in my minority languages. Still, it can be done if you want to do it. I just had a quick look for some Faroese resources in English, there's probably enough there for you to learn... but it won't be as easy as learning Spanish was.

Learning a language with few resources available means diving into what is there and making the best of what you can find... even if they aren't ideal... even if you don't really like them. That's what learning a minority language is like. It takes much more effort and tolerance for less than ideal resources. It takes time to develop skills to get the most benefit from less than ideal resources, but it is a very useful skill to have in language-learning. Would it be easier to learn Faroese or Icelandic after learning Danish or Norwegian and taking advantage of their resources? Yes, obviously. Would you be excited enough about learning Danish or Norwegian to actually do what it takes to learn them? Or, would you start learning, get to lesson 20 and then go back to Faroese and Icelandic, with predictable results? I haven't learned French but I speak two French based Creoles. So, nothing wrong with learning Faroese or Icelandic and totally blowing away Scandinavians who won't be expecting that!

By all means, learn whatever you want. Even if it's Faroese, Icelandic, Korean or Yoruba, it will either work out for you or it won't. Do what you want to do. Just don't let your expectations disappoint you. Minority and less commonly learned languages require significantly more effort, more tolerance, more creativity and more dedication to learn... but they can, indeed, be learned. You can gain the skills necessary to do that. I did. Best of luck, eido! You are a smart young woman. You'll figure it out.

The Crowd-Sourced Faroe Islands Answer to Google Translate

[Cavesa]

Here is what I think you should do. You have 6 languages, so find a 6-sixed dice and assign a number to each language. Before you roll the dice commit yourself to learning that language and only that language until you are C1. Then roll the dice. After you're C1 in that language then you can create another list and get another dice. You could pick a time rather than a level like C1, you could say I'll do whatever language wins for 2 years.

Awesome advice!
To comfort people with wishlists of less practical length than 6, I'd like to point out there are also dices with alternative amount of sides, like 4, 8, 12, 20, and many others. Even a 100 sided die exists. So, this method is applicable to even the most ambitious undecided learner!

[jeff_lindqvist]

Here is what I think you should do. You have 6 languages, so find a 6-sixed dice and assign a number to each language. Before you roll the dice commit yourself to learning that language and only that language until you are C1.

Where's that D20...? ( )

[eido]

Once upon a time my father told me that if you have two choices but can't decide then flip a coin.

I actually just gave this advice to my Korean language partner the other day. Maybe I got it from you, because I've seen you give the same advice before.
I don't know what level I'm at with Spanish right now because I just passed a mock C1 listening test, and I suppose a B2 reading (if you count 73% as passing) and grammar test. The productive skills aren't fantastic. So I'd have to come up with a good plan.
Learning Spanish at this point is non-negotiable. It is my main focus, and probably the candidate I'd pick more easily for dedicating two years to, without flipping a coin.

Edit: Another note after reading Rick's post. If you are really torn between two or more languages, follow Rick's advice and choose one at random. If you are okay with your choice, then find a course (any course that you think will work) and commit to finishing the course or working on the language every day for 1-3 months. That short period of time will give you a chance to see what's available for that language without feeling like you have to commit to that language for a year or more. At the end of that time period you can decide how you feel about that language. This is what I'm currently doing with Greek -- I told myself that I'll finish the Assimil course and then I can decide whether or not to stick with Greek or move on to another language. I can actually accomplish something without feeling like I'm chained to that language forever.

I've been trying to go through Linguaphone and another book systematically for the past couple of weeks. I don't mind them so much because Icelandic as a language isn't theoretically hard, but the vocabulary is tough to remember and I have to use Google Translate like crazy. A particular book I've been using for some reason takes the Icelandic text I copy and translates it to English sometime during the copying process, so I can't even plug it in to GT. Some weird encoding. Don't get me wrong, copying and pasting is easy, but after a while of not knowing what's going on with some of the grammatical concepts in a monolingual textbook, it's like, "wha?" And I don't know what I should be doing with the knowledge I'm gaining. I can't practice because I can't speak enough yet, but maybe I could try writing sentences. The only problem is I keep wanting to write things at my level of English mastery, not at what I can understand in Icelandic. That worked a little before with Spanish, but Spanish has more resources to explain the intricacies so it's not as difficult.

It's not that I'm bashing FIGS--I actually feel disturbed that I don't love them as much as I should--but someone learning a lesser-known language tells me a lot about the person: she thinks outside the box, she pursues what she loves, and she doesn't let opinions of others deter her.

I'd like to be that way.

I looked at your post and it seems to me you want to learn Icelandic (Faroese), Polish, Japanese the most?

All that is to say, I think the advice people give on learning one language to access another should only be taken if you can see yourself in any way using and enjoying that intermediary language. Otherwise, you'll hate it, it will take you longer to get to a decent enough level, and you'll still be frustrated using a language you only sort of understand to try and crack one you are desperate to know.

Thank you for the thorough reply. I'll be needing to read it a few more times to digest it fully.
I'd say Spanish comes first, but I don't know if the others have a ranking. I'll perhaps need a special way to determine what I should learn, like @rdearman's special coin flipping trick.

If you learned Danish, you could get the Scandinavian discount on Norwegian and Swedish (and some really tiny discount on Icelandic), and all the best Greenlandic resources are in Danish ...

Don't tempt me.

When you first broached this subject, I thought you needed to learn a second language solely to fulfill a requirement for a university program to learn a second language to at least an intermediate level in order to enter said university program. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I'll give you a link to the site. You have to have attained the level by the time you're ready to graduate.
LINK
I think I can do it, I just don't know how. I don't care if Icelandic is cool or shiny to others, it's just cool and shiny to me and I think it's chill. For the record, I've tried to learn Esperanto before. I thought its simplicity was cool, but it frustrated me a bit.
I've been told I give up too easily and I readily admit it.

Thank you all for the replies. I know I'm tough to deal with.