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If you could start over... | ||
Tags: Beginner | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4846 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 9 of 28 04 January 2012 at 5:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I had an opportunity at one point to continue my Russian study, but I went back to Spanish. I would have ideally liked to have done both.
When I lived in Finland and was first learning the language, I relied on English too much and didn't speak Finnish enough. I made a more concerted effort to speak the language when I returned to Finland the second time I lived there. I do wonder as an aside if I would have ever even gotten to Finnish had I continued to higher levels of Spanish and Russian. Other than those, I have few language regrets. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6968 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 10 of 28 04 January 2012 at 6:27pm | IP Logged | ||
I can't see why I wouldn't. The only way that it could be different is if I had been raised in a different environment and so come in contact with people different from the ones I came to know. Butterfly effect, anyone? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6409 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 11 of 28 04 January 2012 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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The same ones, though I'm not sure about German. I think I should've taken Italian or Spanish at the lyceum and just studied German on my own - too much classroom study has made me kinda tired of it though I love it. Though there was no guarantee that if you ask to be in an Italian group you won't end up in the French one instead. My friend picked Italian as her preferred L3 but she got Japanese.
Also I could've learned more when I used to spend loads of time in Belarus. I did love Belarusian, so I'm kinda puzzled why I never tried to study it. And even more disappointingly, I never took advantage of having a Polish TV channel - would've been so helpful to watch it as a kid! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5937 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 12 of 28 04 January 2012 at 8:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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It would have been nice to have learned to fluency or known natively some other language, anything at all, really. I had bi-lingual parents, I spent a summer in Finland around age 12, I took Spanish and then German in school, but I don't think the idea ever even dawned on me that I could actually learn a language.
These days, well, I think know just enough Japanese to make my father cringe in horror. Somehow, I find this oddly satisfying, so I don't regret studying. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4821 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 28 04 January 2012 at 10:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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If I could make a hole through time and space and speak with that nine-years-old girl who was already in love with French without knowing anything about it (I really have no idea why I knew for sure that I wanted to learn it), and with her parents as well, I wouldn't try to change the choice, I would thank them. Since those days, so many people have asked me "Why are you learning useless French instead of useful German?". But it was the best choice of the first foreign language for me.
It brought me a lot of fun, great culture, and the experience of being in love with a language. And "details" like Assimil :-). Quite recently, it helped me find, by pure luck, a research center (the only in the world) dedicated to a subject I am very interested in. It may sound stupid, the more without knowing details, but one accidentally found french popular science magazine in the library changed a lot for me. And quite a lot of literature to the subject seems to be published first (or only) in French. So, perhaps it was the destiny what had made me choose French :-D English is a useful language to me, and it brought a lot in my life, but the beginings were really hard. There is quite no way I could have changed or avoided the "torture", it was probably the price I had to pay. I do not regret that I hadn't started German earlier. I was not ready at the time, I didn't want to, so it would be worthless. Spanish as third language was a nice choice but I should have begun sooner or just worked more hard. And I should have added one more language (perhaps even Japanese or something like that). I agree with Cristina that one should use the opportunity of easy learning when they are young. I am 21 now, that is really not old. But I can already see the difference between myself now and the version of myself which lived on the Earth about 5-8 years ago. I'm not sure whether or under what circumstances will I get abroad for longer (at least a month). When I do, I am quite sure I will agree with Cristina again :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aquiana Newbie United States Joined 4521 days ago 6 posts - 8 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Mandarin | Message 14 of 28 04 January 2012 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would have continued Japanese. I don't believe it's very common for a 9 year old in a monolingual
family, no real interest in languages, and no connection to Japan/Japanese (friends, family, school, media, etc.) to take on the task of learning Kanji. Especially when said person has absolutely rubbish work ethic. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4701 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 15 of 28 05 January 2012 at 12:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I sometimes wonder if I should've taken a spoken language like Spanish or French in high school rather than Latin. I liked Latin enough, but the real reason I took it was because we only had to learn to read. I was a bit shy then, and the thought of having to roll my r's while the class watched horrified me!
I'm not so shy now, and these days I can rrrroll with the best of them. But then I think: my friends who took Spanish back then can't speak for crap ... I don't think high school Spanish would've gotten me any further than I eventually got on my own. What I would change, though, would be the types of materials I picked up along the way. I refused to spend money on the more expensive courses, and I now have a couple decades worth of barely touched phrasebooks for Greek, Samoan, Portuguese, Japanese, Thai, Nepali, and who knows what else. I should've just saved up and plunked down the money for Pimsleur, and actually learned something. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| birthdaysuit Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4629 days ago 48 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Swedish | Message 16 of 28 05 January 2012 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Certainly I would have started much earlier, AND with a language I didn't create
myself... When I was 8 I made up a language. Obviously it was nonsensical and unworkable, but to this day I can still count up to ten in it, and I remember a handful of phrases. It's a pity it took me 17 years from then to get serious about real languages. The passion was there at 8, revived itself in my early teens (when I begged my mum for one of those 5 language translators for my birthday) and is here to stay now. French would have been my first at 8, no doubt. Erm... sorry for the biography. What was the original question? :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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