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If you could start over... | ||
Tags: Beginner | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5146 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 28 04 January 2012 at 11:22am | IP Logged |
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If you could start over, would you chose to learn the same languages?
Mine are English, German, French, Spanish and Italian, and yes, I would have learned the same ones again. English out of need, German while it is practical to know, French because of its importance in Europe, Spanish because although my blood is Norwegian, my heart is Spanish, and I could not live without knowing that language, and Italian because it is beautiful. For a European, I have chosen those who make most sense. What I would have done if I had to start again though, would have been to add Mandarin, Russian and Arabic, and possibly Hebrew and a few others. I would have loved to bring Mandarin and Russian into my life at a point where it would have been easy to learn them. I do not generally try to impose my advise on anyone, but for all those language learners out there: Go! Travel to other countries, learn as much as you possibly can while you are young and it is easy to get a good accent, and learning is almost effortless! You may think you cannot travel to your TL countries, but you can! I went to Spain when I was 11, I went to France when I was 14, and I came back repeatedly after that. I have also done courses in several other countries. You may think I came from a rich family or had a diplomat father, but neither was the case. I came from a family with very few means, but I had a mother with a lot of imagination and an iron will. She found families in both Spain and France where I could stay cheaply, and the one time I needed to go to an expensive course, she rented out most of our house for the summer to pay for it. There are masses of courses and scholarships you can apply for, I have gotten every scholarship I have ever applied for. If I can, you can. If you are over 18 you can go work in other countries, particularly if you are an EU citizen, because then you can go work in any EU country. If you are unemployed in one country, go to another one, and learn languages in the process. Lots of people need au pairs, and with imagination and will power there is nothing that can stop you. I know that when you have a family, things are considerably more difficult, but you do not know that they are imposssible until you have tried. In 2002 I wanted to go to Belgium for a 3 months' stay at the European Commision. And how do you do that with a job, a husband and two kids aged 2 and 5? Well first I convinced my husband, then I convinced my boss, who supported my application, then I started teaching the children survival French, found them a school and convinced my husband's boss to let him work at the office of an international organisation for those three months. (Did I mention I can be VERY persuasive :-). I was the only person ever to have gone through that programme bringing a family. Everyone else was single, but that just goes to prove that anything is possible, if you just want it strongly enough. Oops. I seem to have single handedly derailed my own thread, but it actually does go together. Would you have learned the same language over, and do you see any opportunites of going to you TL country? 14 persons have voted this message useful | |
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4674 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 2 of 28 04 January 2012 at 12:25pm | IP Logged |
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I am not so sure about Finnish (though I don't regret studying), but I would have
definitely started to study German at an earlier age. I took a course when I was 17, and I stopped there due to my laziness and engineering courses that sucked my time. Instead of re-taking it some years later, I wish I had continued with it. I guess I would be fluent by now, but aah never mind, I still have many years to go. English is out of question. I would learn it after every rebirth :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 28 04 January 2012 at 1:09pm | IP Logged |
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I should have started earlier learning the Slavic languages - maybe by sneaking into rooms with courses in the smaller ones (like I did with Italian at the university). And maybe I could also have thrown in one Asian language like Indonesian just to get some perspective on the Indoeuropean ones.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5794 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 4 of 28 04 January 2012 at 2:02pm | IP Logged |
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I guess I wish I'd paid more attention to my interest in languages and had the confidence to do something about it at a younger age. Looking back I remember while still at primary school spending my pocket money on very basic language courses for French and Italian. When I got to high school I remember getting one of my friends to teach me some Gujurati and I persuaded a Thai exchange student who briefly attended our school to teach me how to count to ten. But, apart from the French I learned in class, my language experiments never got beyond a few phrases as I had no idea how to take my interest further. Access to information was probably the biggest barrier. If this site had existed in 1995 maybe things would have been different!
Although I am focusing on Japanese right now I have no desire to move to Japan to work. But I would love to spend some time working in another European country at some point, but it will probably be a few years in the future as I have career things I want to achieve here first. I am still working on persuading my husband that this is possible. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5541 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto | Message 5 of 28 04 January 2012 at 2:03pm | IP Logged |
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I wish I would have started earlier, too. I had so much free time as a teenager that I just frittered away.
The only problem is I may not have known where to start as a teenager. This forum and YouTube didn't exist back when I was in high school, so I wouldn't have known about Assimil or how to go about learning on my own. The first course I ever bought was a German course that didn't even have audio, but now I know how important audio is. As they say, you live and learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Mani Diglot Senior Member Germany imsprachendickicht.b Joined 4717 days ago 258 posts - 323 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Swedish, Portuguese, Latin, Welsh, Luxembourgish | Message 6 of 28 04 January 2012 at 3:42pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, I would choose to learn the same languages again, I only regret a little that I haven't learned more when opportunities to do so showed up.
Being very shy as a child at the age of 9 I refused to switch schools and attend the "Russian school" right next to my school. It was quite a normal school only with 1 additional hour of Russian each day from 3rd grade on, but I was too afraid to leave my class, my teacher and my friends. And in 9th grade I didn't take the Latin class because some girls who occasionally teased me took it. (I know I was stupid! Till today I sneak around every Latin book that crosses my way, pick it up and try to read a bit - I will learn you one day, Latin!) The thing I regret most is that I didn't fly to Turkey alone to visit a girl who was an exchange student at my university and became my friend then when my former best friend backed off and said she didn't want to go there anymore. I had really liked that Turkish girl and her family (I met them when they were visiting their daughter in Germany). I think we would have had a great time and we wouldn't have lost contact. (And in addition I would know some Turkish now - more than the 20 words that I remember from my 2 month self-study crash course.) But as I can't go back in time I can only try to my best now and in future and be a little less shy ... and, well ... a little more persistent. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| garyb Triglot Senior Member ScotlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5019 days ago 1468 posts - 2413 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, French Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 28 04 January 2012 at 5:45pm | IP Logged |
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My first language experience was studying French at school - despite it not being well taught (all the usual language class problems) I still enjoyed it and it did give me a foundation which I was able to build upon when I regained interest later, making the idea of learning it much less daunting than starting from scratch.
There was an embarrassingly large gap of time - a couple of years - between me deciding I wanted to pick up French again and me actually doing it. But I was busy with University, music, and women at the time, all worthy pursuits so no regrets. One regret is not doing a semester or year abroad at University. I actually considered doing one in France since I already knew some French, but that wasn't an option for my course. Germany and Italy were possible, but at the time I didn't have much interest in these places or desire to learn their languages (how things change!), and wasn't aware that Italian was similar to French so not as "foreign" as I thought. I think there were also "summer job abroad" type schemes. These days I'd jump at such a chance, but I just wasn't adventurous back then. I also had an Italian girlfriend for a good few months, and again I had no interest in the language at the time. However, my current interest in Italian was born when I later went to Italy to visit her and decided to learn some basics of the language beforehand... I guess overall it's just the case that interests change, so it's a bit sad that I had all that time and opportunity yet no interest in taking advantage of it, but that's life. I also believe in "when the student is ready, the teacher will come" and "you live and you learn" as Michael says, and I just wasn't ready for these opportunities back then. Now I have a full-time job, so just leaving for a few months isn't easy, probably isn't good for my career, and there aren't schemes to facilitate it. However maybe that's a defeatist attitude and the opportunities are there if I look for them? I reckon if I stay at my current job (Web development) for a while and build up a bunch of skill, experience, and savings, I could reach a point where I'm very employable and/or less location dependent and a lot of opportunities could come up. Edited by garyb on 04 January 2012 at 5:48pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Sterling Diglot Newbie Germany Joined 4520 days ago 3 posts - 5 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 8 of 28 04 January 2012 at 5:52pm | IP Logged |
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I would learn the same languages. Although, as the rest of you all, I would have liked to
start sooner, I don't regret learning German at all. I learned Spanish for two years in school and have forgot most of it. Spanish has never been high on my list although I could see myself learning it eventually. Right now, I am working on learning French and Danish. French is quite difficult for me and it would have been best to start learning it sooner but it's a good language to learn. I don't have any regrets though. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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