leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6362 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog
| Message 1 of 28 09 January 2012 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
Does having someone tell you your target language is easy, or something to that effect, encourage you or
discourage you?
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Michael K. Senior Member United States Joined 5541 days ago 568 posts - 886 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto
| Message 2 of 28 09 January 2012 at 12:34pm | IP Logged |
It really depends on the context and person saying it.
Saying the language is "easier" might be more accurate.
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Ellsworth Senior Member United States Joined 4769 days ago 345 posts - 528 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish
| Message 3 of 28 09 January 2012 at 12:38pm | IP Logged |
Question leosmith, has anyone ever told you that? Looking at your language repertoire, I
can't imagine anyone saying that :)
In answer to the question, I think it is discouraging, because hardly ever do you find
the language you are learning easy and it kind of minimizes your work.
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smallwhite Pentaglot Senior Member Australia Joined 5120 days ago 537 posts - 1045 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin, French, Spanish
| Message 4 of 28 09 January 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
It can be encouraging. If I'm having a hard time learning beginner's Japanese, and want to give up, and someone tells me it gets easier later on, that's very encouraging.
And if the person is saying that just to annoy me... I don't know. Usually it's me saying that to annoy people...
Seriously. It doesn't bother me at all, because ease is one of the main criteria when I choose my L2s. I prefer L2s that I can reach B2/C1 within one year. If you tell me my L2 is easy, well, you're right! That's why I chose it!
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July Diglot Senior Member Spain Joined 5085 days ago 113 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishB2 Studies: French
| Message 5 of 28 09 January 2012 at 1:17pm | IP Logged |
It gets annoying when you've been learning a language for two years and people go 'Oh, I
thought you'd be finished learning such an easy language by now'. Of course, since they
normally don't know three words of said language, it's not worth getting het up about.
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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 6 of 28 09 January 2012 at 1:33pm | IP Logged |
I am often told that the languages I know are easy. Compared to Mandarin and Korean, I am sure they are, but I still know how much it takes to learn a comparatively "easy" language, so I am neither discouraged nor encouraged by it. I find it sad when people struggle with one of these languages, and think they are stupid because they do not learn the language in 6 months though.
I have news for you guys: There is no such thing as an easy language. They all take time and effort to learn, at least if you want fluency and a good accent. Some take less than others, but most languages take years to learn properly. I was just on the website of the University of Oslo, to see how long it takes to get a degree in Russian. They count 3 years for basic fluency, and 5 years for advanced fluency. And there we are talking full time studies. They count on gettting to A2 after 18 months of studies. Full time. It made me feel so much better about myself right there :-)
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Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5659 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map
| Message 7 of 28 09 January 2012 at 1:54pm | IP Logged |
If someone who has previous experience with my target language tells me that for him / her this language is rather easy to learn this would encourage me.
If someone estimates a language as easy who has never studied it, this would be irrelevant and without influence on me.
Fasulye
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 4868 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 8 of 28 09 January 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged |
"I am often told that the languages I know are easy. "
You mean close to your own? Like Swedish or Danish, Germn and English (at smaller
degree).
But Romance languages are not very close, and none of those languages you know are easy,
of course.
I'm lazy, so the closeness encourages me.
Edited by Марк on 09 January 2012 at 2:01pm
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