Where does one find other people with our same passion?

[aabram]

I've taken courses both at uni (both back in days as well in ripe adulthood) and at language schools and my experience is that 99,9% people learn new language for either of the two reasons: they have to in order to meet some criteria at work or school or they have very specific application or reason in mind. The latter may very well be just the love for that particular country or culture or just the need to do business in their target country. So taking language classes just to find fellow language lovers might not be as productive as one might think. There are lawyers, businessmen, nurses or accountants who just want to either move to Norway or Spain because they love that particular country and love their food and by natural extension they want to learn the language. Just that language though.

I think I've ever met just a handful of people in my life who (want to) learn languages for just the heck of it.

[Serpent]

You can look for people from your area online and then socialize in person if it clicks

[Cavesa]

I don't think universities and most language schools will introduce you to other language enthisiasts. Vast majority of learners at university or paying for language classes (especially those in the native coutry) doesn't study for love of a language or languages in general. They do it for career. Such a few weeks abroad or a few years at university are an investment. The people want to learn a language and earn money with it, no passion needed. I am not saying that is bad, not at all, it is a normal career choice. I just find it naive to expect most language students to be genuinely interested about languages, especially those they are not paid to learn. Especially when it comes to language schools (including those in the country, there really isn't that much of a difference), where a part of the students came just because they were required to (and paid for) by their employer/parents (depends on the age of the student).

Really, a language school in Berlin, a common question: why do you learn German? Do you think most people will answer things like being interested in the culture, liking the language etc.? Those answers are a tiny minority. Most answers I heard were of the normal type. Money. More money in future. More money from the employer. More money after migrating to Germany.

Don't get me wrong, I think your assumption might be totally correct when it comes to smaller languages. People travelling for a few weeks to Finland, Slovakia or Iceland for intensive langauge classes are very likely to be there mostly for their pure interesteand they are likely to be learning more languages than the one. But German is not the same case. English is not the same case. French and Spanish and Russian left that sphere long ago too. Mandarin and Japanese are perhaps on the border these days.

But what is a better choice, from my experience, are language exchanges on a large scale (I quite recently got to know about such a regular event with exchanges in several languages in Prague. Unfortunately, they don't continue during the summer, it seems), or foreign language libraries. People who learn just because they have to usually do not spend more free time on it than is required. People genuinely interested are more likely to go to the library, to go to the cinema in the language and so on.

[aabram]

You can look for people from your area online and then socialize in person if it clicks

"Hot single Turkish learners in your area! Click here!"

[garyb]

I meet lots of keen language learners. I might just be lucky to be in the location where I am, a fairly international city with a lot of students and young people.

I've mostly met them at events oriented towards language learners or travellers, like language-exchange events or meetups (there's one at the University during term-time and some language-specific ones on meetup.com) and Couchsurfing meetings. I find that language-oriented events often aren't actually that great for language practice (too many learners compared to native speakers, and too many native speakers who just want to practise English rather than exchange) or for making friends (tends to be people who're new in town and leave again or lose interest in a couple of months, or people who're just there to practice and not to meet people as such, or people who attend once, enjoy it, then never come back), but you do meet other people who have a passion for languages. It makes me feel a bit less crazy, it's nice to have a conversation about the common interest, and I find it inspiring to meet successful learners face-to-face rather than just reading about them on a forum.

[emk]

People trully interested in "just" a few langauges: anywhere. At university, for example among medicine students (they are like shiny jewels among all the crowds, I've met a few already), while travelling (but that is less common than one would guess), in the public transport or bookshops (books are great conversation starters, especially those in foreign langauges)...

I sometimes think that I'm actually really odd by the standards of the HTLAL community, because my only serious language is French! But this is a combination of a few things:

1. Where I live, I'm exposed to fewer people speaking foreign languages in an entire year than I've heard on the streets of Boston in a single day. And of course, Boston is nothing compared to some major European cities. So even if I spoke B2 Spanish, I'd normally (without making an effort) get to have a 5-minute Spanish conversation maybe once per year, and maybe overhear a couple of parents speaking to their kids. Anything beyond that, I would need to seek out deliberately.
2. Getting a language to B2 or C1 requires a pretty significant time commitment, especially for active skills. And I don't have a spare thousand hours just lying around! OK, admittedly a chunk of those hours could be spent reading or even watching TV, but it's sometimes it's even hard to find time for those in any language.
3. I find French far more enjoyable now that I can take take basic conversation, books and most media for granted. Personally, I don't want to try to maintain a bunch of A2 languages. I'd prefer to have fewer but sharper tools.

Now, that's not to say that learning lots of languages is bad. It's awesome! I'm continually in awe at the fact that all you amazing folks exist, and that you humor a puny two-language learner like me.

But I do find it much easier to find people who are really into one language, at least in the US. There's a meetup group about 90 minutes from where I live that's full of people who teach French, or who grew up as mostly-bilingual anglophones in Quebec, or who spent 10 years working in Paris. Even there, I only know of one real polyglot, and he mostly learned his languages while serving in Europe with military. He always jokes he did it for dating reasons.

I think that for the many people, getting languages up to C1 or above is a lot of work, and most people don't bother unless they have some professional or personal use, or if they have a burning passion for that specific language. If you want to find passionate polyglots who love lots of languages, you could try hanging around on places like this forum, or in foreign language bookstores like Shoenhof's in Boston or Michel Fortin in Montréal. Or you could just talk about languages with your friends sometimes, and occasionally you'll find a really cool polyglot who speaks a few, or who is at least very passionate about one language. A surprising number of polyglots basically never mention it, because they don't want to seem odd or sound like they're bragging, but if somebody doesn't occasionally mention it, the polyglots will never find each other!

[Ogrim]

As I work in an international organisation I am surrounded by people who speak at least three languages proficiently, and I have quite a few colleagues who can speak five or six. I have for instance a colleague who is a native bilingual Armenian/Russian speaker, and who grew up in Cyprus and therefore speaks Greek, in addition to English and French, which are the official working languages, and her German is also quite good. Another colleague is bilingual Latvian/Russian, fully proficient in English and French of course, and she also has Italian and Spanish on her CV.

In spite of this, the number of colleagues I know who are passionate about languages can be counted on one hand. Not that I bring up language learning in conversation with everyone, but I've been around these people for many years now, and you tend to find out eventually if someone is a language nerd. So speaking many languages or being polyglot does not necessarily imply that people have this passion, they just happened to learn several languages because of circumstances in life, like being bilingual, growing up with a third language in a different country, learning a fourth and fifth language at school etc. That is the case with my kids to, who speak four languages well and are learning a fifth one in school, and they are 11 and 14 years old. They like languages, but I don't see any passion, at least not yet.

Personally I am quite happoy to engage in language-related discussions here on the forum, I don't really need to hang out with polyglots or language nerds in my private life as long as I've got HTLAL to turn to.

@emk: It is not the quantity of languages you are learning that counts, but the quality of your posts, and there you are a top player in the premier league!

[tommus]

Some community centres and seniors' centres offer language courses for very reasonable rates that attract a variety of language learners. Some are "recreational" language learners and some are very serious. Our local Kingston Seniors Association offers French, Spanish, German and Italian at Levels I, II, III and IV, for a range of abilities. http://www.seniorskingston.ca/sakr/SAKRMbr/Get_Active/Culture___Languages/Languages/SAKRMbr/Get_Active/Culture___Languages/Languages.aspx?hkey=cb42ad69-9683-4557-b6b7-9439d7297e77K%20Language%20Courses

A friend of mine and his wife have been attending the Spanish courses regularly, and they then travel to Spain and South America on language learning guided tours. On these tours, they take language courses in the morning and then guided tours in the afternoon, all in the target language. Those tours are obviously not cheap, but that would be a great language learning environment.

Something else we can do to increase our chances of meeting like-minded locals is to put our town, as well as our state/province/region/country in our profiles.

[Cavesa]

I didn't mean it as an offence towards learners of just one language or people who take into account practicality, sorry if it sounded wrong.

What I meant was different. The fact someone pays for language classes abroad doesn't automatically make them a person with the same passion. Neither does the fact they chose a foreign language as the field to study at university (it is unpopular to say it publicly but many humanities students in general trully chose their field only because it is easier than technics or science). I've met students who even do not read their required books in the language they are studying for their degree! They are not that interested and they don't see it worth the time investment.

It is not wrong that people often aren't learning for any other reason that career, it is just not correct to assume too much you'll find language enthusiasts in such a group. It's just as naive as automatically expecting medicine students to be good people or teachers to like children. Yes, in ideal case, it should be so. But people are not ideal.

While there are people dedicated to one foreign language, awesome and passionate learners, there are as well people who learn three or four foreign languages only for the career promises, no extra interests included. It's not about the numbers.

[aokoye]

I sometimes think that I'm actually really odd by the standards of the HTLAL community, because my only serious language is French! But this is a combination of a few things:

1. Where I live, I'm exposed to fewer people speaking foreign languages in an entire year than I've heard on the streets of Boston in a single day. And of course, Boston is nothing compared to some major European cities. So even if I spoke B2 Spanish, I'd normally (without making an effort) get to have a 5-minute Spanish conversation maybe once per year, and maybe overhear a couple of parents speaking to their kids. Anything beyond that, I would need to seek out deliberately.
2. Getting a language to B2 or C1 requires a pretty significant time commitment, especially for active skills. And I don't have a spare thousand hours just lying around! OK, admittedly a chunk of those hours could be spent reading or even watching TV, but it's sometimes it's even hard to find time for those in any language.
3. I find French far more enjoyable now that I can take take basic conversation, books and most media for granted. Personally, I don't want to try to maintain a bunch of A2 languages. I'd prefer to have fewer but sharper tools.

Now, that's not to say that learning lots of languages is bad. It's awesome! I'm continually in awe at the fact that all you amazing folks exist, and that you humor a puny two-language learner like me.

But I do find it much easier to find people who are really into one language, at least in the US. There's a meetup group about 90 minutes from where I live that's full of people who teach French, or who grew up as mostly-bilingual anglophones in Quebec, or who spent 10 years working in Paris. Even there, I only know of one real polyglot, and he mostly learned his languages while serving in Europe with military. He always jokes he did it for dating reasons.

I think that for the many people, getting languages up to C1 or above is a lot of work, and most people don't bother unless they have some professional or personal use, or if they have a burning passion for that specific language. If you want to find passionate polyglots who love lots of languages, you could try hanging around on places like this forum, or in foreign language bookstores like Shoenhof's in Boston or Michel Fortin in Montréal. Or you could just talk about languages with your friends sometimes, and occasionally you'll find a really cool polyglot who speaks a few, or who is at least very passionate about one language. A surprising number of polyglots basically never mention it, because they don't want to seem odd or sound like they're bragging, but if somebody doesn't occasionally mention it, the polyglots will never find each other!

The important thing for me is how excited or enthusiastic people are about language learning. If someone has that sort of passion it doesn't (to me) mater how many languages they want to learn because I can still related to them on that level. Mind you I also only really want to focus on a handful of languages (German, French, and the other Germanics) so I might also be an anomaly.