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Easy language to broaden culture | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4879 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 25 of 42 21 April 2011 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As I mentioned in a previous comment, I don't expect learning a language to be enough, but it will give me the ability to delve into a new culture and give me the opportunity to see things from their eyes. I know very little about politics, but it is a situation that I hope to remedy in the not too distant future. I've got the rest of 2011 to devote to french study, and after that I'll keep learning about the french community in Canada. I'd like to get a french Canadian magazine subscription along the lines of 'Macleans', so if you've got any recommendations I'd be glad to hear them. There seems to be a negative reaction towards picking an "easy" language, and my wanting to break away from the "anlgo-centric" cultural viewpoint. This is probably due to poor word choice on my part, because I really can't imagine what would be so bad about my idea as it is in my head. On reflection, I think even a language such as American Sign Language could be a candidate, despite it being American in origin, due to the deaf culture that I've caught glimpses of and have been fascinated by. I want to be able to see things in a different light, and this isn't an easy thing to do, as others have mentioned. Because learning about a culture "from the inside" isn't an easy thing to do, I'd like to not be struggling with the native language for years to come. If Persian and Arabic both have cultures that are fairly different from what I'm used to, but Arabic is arguably more difficult, then I'm probably going to choose persian. Again, this won't be my only criteria for choosing my next language, it is just the factor that I would like to discuss right now.
I've got little to no problem with language death. It's a huge task to save a language from the brink, and I'm not interested in fighting that battle. I do know however that video and audio recording are being taken of the elders who still speak Cree natively, and it is nice to know that we will have those recording for posterity. More thoughts and comments are welcomed and appreciated! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5190 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 28 of 42 21 April 2011 at 8:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Somewhat of a surprising comment for someone who just claimed to want to learn languages to understand other cultures and who is part Cree to boot. Edited by Arekkusu on 21 April 2011 at 10:30pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6248 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 29 of 42 21 April 2011 at 9:52pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Reading a decent book or two for tourists would give a better introduction, with perhaps 1% of the effort. The amount of culture and customs that you can learn via 'survival' language is significantly less than that which you can pick up via a few hours of reading or watching serious video about a culture.
I wouldn't go to China with the idea of randomly getting along in Russian, either. Randomly mixing with native speakers is one way to learn and get by, but it's certainly not the only option. If you want to get around in a place in a language that's not widely spoken there, yes, you need to plan in advance. The edge of Esperanto in this is that Esperanto speakers tend to be incredibly helpful towards each other. I can't count the number of nights I've slept in rooms owned by Esperanto speakers, or the number of meals I've shared with them. And at Esperanto events, I can live purely in Esperanto for a week, and if I wanted to spend all day hearing about other cultures from people who live in them, I could. And foreign Esperanto speakers visiting an area are often keen to get to know and talk to Esperanto speakers living there. Esperanto speakers often show each other around during visits, while sharing bits of local culture with each other, or at least recommend interesting local things to do/see. You can't assume that this will happen with a specific person without asking, but it's fairly common. You can get similar experiences with other languages, especially by making friends from the area(s) you're interested in, but the 'barrier to entry' with Esperanto is lower, in my experience. Between interacting with survival level language in an area, or touring it with a friend who speaks the local language fluently/natively but with whom you need to speak in another language, I find the latter to be a significantly richer experience. I've done both, in quite a few countries. Actual immersion for extended periods of time is also possible, though it doesn't sound like what the original poster is seeking. I know people who have had Esperanto be their primary language for months or years, too, and others who have it as their household language. Esperanto also has a rich tradition of original and translated literature. I've found Esperanto translations to usually be better than English ones - partly because they're often done by native speakers of the source language. In most places, it would indeed be sheer folly to try to get by with only Esperanto with no advance planning. I freely admit that if your main interest is interacting with survival level language as a tourist in one specific place, it makes more sense to learn the main language of that place. Similarly, if you're deeply fascinated by, say, Russian literature, there is no alternative to learning Russian. However, for the specific goal of broadening your cultural worldview while wasting as little time as possible on prerequisites, I honestly think Esperanto is the single most useful option. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6965 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 30 of 42 21 April 2011 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually if the goal were for someone to simply expand one's cultural vistas, don't overlook travelling using Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club (Pasporta Servo would be OK however it's designed for Esperantists, and so the pool of people who could help you or available to meet is tiny compared to what's there on Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club. Anyway some people who are on Pasporta Servo are on Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club too). I can't tell you how much more cultural knowledge I got via Couchsurfing or Hospitality Club through visits or just discussions/debates with other members of these groups done all in whichever language we had in common, be it in my case in French, German, Hungarian, Polish, Slovak, not to mention English (at least half of the time). I say all of this even though I'm a language geek and get a kick out of doing things in the local language. With this in mind, it's not quite as useful as it seems to learn foreign languages to broaden cultural perspectives even though it doesn't necessarily hurt since the odds of your finding multilingual people these days are actually fairly high. A sympathetic guide or local friend with whom you can contact, meet and communicate meaningfully in ANY language while travelling/exploring culture is priceless and trumps a simple accumulation of foreign languages. There's also an implied opportunity cost since you could have used the time to travel or widen cultural vistas now rather than learn the foreign language in isolation with the expectation/hope of using that accumulated knowledge for travelling or widening your those vistas. Edited by Chung on 21 April 2011 at 10:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6279 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 31 of 42 21 April 2011 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Actually there is very little overlap, partly because many Pasporta Servo hosts don't speak English (i.e. they are not indoctrinated, in developing countries like China where good English almost certainly means an elite school), and partly because they come from different traditions. To illustrate: the newly-launched online version of Pasporta Servo currently has 2000 members; Couchsurfing's Pasporta Servo group has only 68 members. All in all there are 1000 Esperanto speakers on Couchsurfing, most of whom only speak it at a beginner level, while Pasporta Servo hosts tend to be better-than-average Esperanto speakers. Pasporta Servo was first published in 1974, Couchsurfing in 2003. Couchsurfing is a new phenomenon, while Pasporta Servo has matured and become an integral part of Esperanto culture. You can tour Iran or Senegal and be hosted by Esperanto speakers - it's not amazing or scary, it's what Esperanto speakers do and have been doing for almost 40 years now. Traveling with or without Esperanto is a vastly different experience, even taking Couchsurfing into account. You just have to experience it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6474 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 32 of 42 22 April 2011 at 12:00am | IP Logged | ||||||||
In larger languages, thousands of books are published each year. There is no way you could read all of them anyway. Now if you only look at the number of translations (see the Index Translationum), you'll still find that even for small languages there are still hundreds to thousands of translations available in English or French and the best books are most likely to be among those that are translated. Translations are generally pretty good. There is always something lost, but in order to appreciate the original more than the translation, you need to know the original language extremely well and that takes a lot of time. For example, if you want to read Russian literature, you'd need to spend about 3000 hours (as estimated by the DLI) of your time just to get to the level where you can actually start reading - more than enough time to read the complete works of Tolstoi, Dostoyevski, and Pushkin in translation. I think reading a lot of different books from different countries might give you a better idea of which culture/language interests you most and then you can still learn the language to read the originals. For example, I read Persian poetry (Hafez, Rumi, Sadi, Omar Khayyam) in German, which sparked my interest for learning Persian. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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