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Luso’s Silk Thread - Yürükler, TAC Rare | ||
Tags: Arabic (classical) | Sanskrit | Arabic | Total Annihilation Challenge (TAC) | Italian | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4485 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes  Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian | Message 129 of 162 17 August 2014 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's interesting to read your perspective, Luso. I'm glad that setting German and Italian
to "maintenance" mode is freeing you up to spend more time with Sanskrit and Arabic, which you clearly love.
This is so true. Something I've been thinking a lot about too lately. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5843 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 130 of 162 18 August 2014 at 3:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you, Hekje. I wrote it the way I did because I thought it would probably be useful to someone. I'm glad it was.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BAnna Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4404 days ago 409 posts - 616 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Turkish | Message 131 of 162 19 August 2014 at 8:20am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you Luso. I too am rethinking priorities, so your post came at just the right time. I have not taken any exams but was recently contemplating doing so while participating in a C2 German class. Certification in German or Spanish is not necessary for me in my career and I have no plans to relocate, so to your point, is it worth the time and effort to really achieve near-native fluency? We each must decide the answer to that question for ourselves, especially if we have other language learning and life priorities. For me at this time, I think the answer is no. This year I began studying Russian on my own and due to a recent houseguest, just started dabbling in Turkish. I plan on continuing the SuperChallenge in Spanish, German and Russian, but not do formal study of Spanish or German (my stronger languages, but no need to develop them to a C2 level). There is not time for everything I would like to study, and as you so eloquently stated, "Knowing what not to invest in is important."
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5843 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 132 of 162 19 August 2014 at 11:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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It seems the post was useful. I'm glad.
I really should leave it at that. Quit while I'm ahead, not push the envelope, that sort of thing. But there's one more thing I think I should say. When you study management, there are a few concepts that keep coming up. One such idea is that of a "sunk cost" being irrelevant. In layman terms, this means you shouldn't keep investing in something just because you already invested a lot in it in the past. This seems clear in financial terms (sometimes, not even that), but much less so emotionally. I think most of us have invested in situations (jobs, relationships, other ventures) well beyond a reasonable point, just because our past investment had already been substantial. To give an example, when I evaluated taking my last semester of Italian, I weighed in a lot of factors: extra language skills, usefulness, diploma, boasting factor (less and less, but there's always a bit), time investment, money investment, class availability (C.2.2 classes don't open every semester, and it's getting worse), colleagues (nice older people), self-esteem (whether we like it or not, it's always there), feeling of completeness... These are some possibilities. To be honest, when it comes to this kind of reasoning, I always remember Astérix en Corse (which I read as a kid), when the Corsican guy describes the electoral process to choose a clan leader: "we all vote, then we throw the urns into the sea, and in the end the strongest man wins". For me, sometimes it's a (more honest) version of that reasoning: I make a nice pros and cons list, then throw the list away and do what feels best. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5843 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 133 of 162 10 October 2014 at 11:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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This year, the European Day of Languages was celebrated in the Goethe-Institut. I always try to attend, since there are lots of free classes (some look like this) and food specialties.
This year was no exception: I went to a Spanish class (the door was still open), to a presentation of Austria by a good-humoured Portuguese-speaking guy from the embassy, and ended up helping my Italian teacher negotiate the high-tech, tablet-style whiteboard in her classroom. This year, there were flyers for Finnish, but the English language was not represented (I guess they just don't need to advertise). That's a pity, because the last time I went someone had made a sweet called flapjacks. When I told an Italian guy that I missed the British because of food specialties, he looked at me quizzically and thought I was mocking him. :P Anyway, we're in October now, and I've resumed both my Italian and my Sanskrit classes. Strangely enough, my Italian level is supposed to be quite advanced and I find it easy, whereas the Sanskrit is just the opposite (starter / hard). 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 5843 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 134 of 162 13 October 2014 at 11:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Most of the time, I don't know what to write here. Yet, every now and then, there's a topic I feel I must write about. This is one such occasion.
This is my last semester (C.2.2) of Italian. In the previous one (C.2.1), we had to select a film and talk about it. Now, we have to analyse a book. To make things easier, our teacher made a list of books available either from the Institute's library or from her own. I chose one and got electronic versions, both of the Italian original and of a Portuguese translation. Today, I was talking to a colleague (a former Navy captain) in class. I said in a hushed voice that I had started reading the translation first. He looked at me, smiled and replied: "I never understood the intelectual pretensions of some people around here". I laughed. When we are learning languages, there are some things we are told time and again, and we start taking them for granted. The need to use native materials as soon as possible is one of such things. When I was studying German, I followed that advice more strictly than I should have. For many months - indeed years - I decoded native materials I didn't understand with native materials I barely understood. One day (I was already at C1 level, I think) I saw a German grammar... in Portuguese. Browsing the book, some things became clear in my mind. I bought the grammar and filled a number of gaps in my knowledge. Thinking in retrospective, maybe I shouldn't have stuck with the wrong method (wrong for me, that is) for so long. However, to most of my teachers (not only of German) the use of non-native materials by advanced students is strongly discouraged. My advice is: even if everyone tells you a method is wrong, try to keep an open mind: maybe you are the other 10% (or 1%, or whatever). 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4948 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 135 of 162 14 October 2014 at 8:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree with you about working with what is better for you, and diversifying. I've found good grammars in Portuguese which shed light in important French and German topics. I'd gladly read something in Georgian if that existed. Embracing a new culture involves communication, which is to make common, and thus can benefit from comparison. When you know what the other language/culture is about and what your own is about and where the borders are, and where and how to cross them, it all makes much more sense.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lakeseayesno Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico thepolyglotist.com Joined 4116 days ago 280 posts - 488 votes Speaks: English, Spanish*, Japanese, Italian Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 136 of 162 14 October 2014 at 10:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree as well. I've always considered languages can't and shouldn't be learnt through one-size-fits-all metholodogies, and it seems a bad oversight on the part of teachers of all languages to disadvise openess of method.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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