Language learning discussion

[Pinja]

So... let's see.

English. Learnt it in kindergarten. Well, everyone learns it, so no specific reason, but there are several reasons why I love being so good at English compared to most people my age that I know. Mostly centered around books. I don't want to wait a year for a bad translation. x)

Then. German. I really don't like learning it. The grammar is just too complicated, the verb forms, so many things to learn... Okay, I think most would find Finnish harder. But still. I guess the original reason was that since my school is basically Finnish-German I'd learn German very well so I came here. Now half of the subjects are in German. Yayz.

Next language. Swedish. Don't like how the language sounds, especially the Swedish they speak in Sweden compared to the Swedish Fennoswedes speak. Didn't choose it, everyone has to learn it. At least it's easy.

Latin. Well, why not? It's not actually spoken, but my plan is to be a total snob about it because I'm just that evil. Randomly quoting Latin stuff. Heh, I think it'll just be cool to know, and I'm generally interested in Ancient Rome, especially the mythology.

So basically most languages I'm learning because of my school, but Latin is voluntary.

[Pessi]

I've read an interesting article today about how speaking a foreign language changes our thoughts and behaviour.

I've also read about a study by a Hungarian lingvist who states that each language group has it's own way to view the world and that the views of Fenno-Ugric languages and Indo-European languages are very different. He goes on to claim that in this world currently under the "rule" on the Indo-European languges Fenno-Ugric people are under a constant strain to try to adapt to a mindset alien to them. In his opinion this is the explanation for the high degree of mental illness, violence, alcoholism and suicides among Fenno-Ugric people.

Believe who may

[EmmaC]

Hi there, well nothing very extraordinary for me. I speak french because I was born in it.
English and german: in school we had english as an obligatory school... then we had to choose between german and spanish.
I was stubborn and wanted to do things in contradiction with what my parents wanted  so I learned german.

Now I am leaving in Canada and my husband speak both english and french fluently so it helped me with english, plus if I want to have the 'real' dialog in a movie, I realised viewing it in VO is better. AND I realised that, in some books, when translated from english to french, some parts were left out....
And now that I have a baby I want her to know as many languages as possible, no fluently but at least enough to not be lost!!!

[JoB]

If any of you should ever need a verifiable reason NOT to learn languages (in this case, German), Ben Bloom, a friendly journalist of The Telegraph, provided the ultimate answer today:
Because it's completely unnecessary.

12.41
I'd love to tell you what Klopp is saying. He is saying a lot. But I can understand precisely none of it. So here's a photo of him pouring some water instead

[kjeks]

If any of you should ever need a verifiable reason NOT to learn languages (in this case, German), Ben Bloom, a friendly journalist of The Telegraph, provided the ultimate answer today:
Because it's completely unnecessary.

You send me to the floor, crying out of laughter. This is brilliant XD

[DancingRanger]

I'm learning Swedish. I want to learn Norwegian, but can't find a good site to learn it from. I tried Spanish in highschool, and German in college niether stuck for lack of use.

[Synthpopalooza]

I think bokmål Norwegian is almost ready on Duolingo if you want to try it.

[DancingRanger]

I think bokmål Norwegian is almost ready on Duolingo if you want to try it.

Cool, I'll check it out.

[Shihchuan]

Native Mandarin Chinese speaker here. I guess I cheated a bit by naturally taking up one of the languages with a "hardest to learn" reputation?  Like many people on this thread, I've always had an immense interest in languages and linguistics -- we are definitely the odd ones out there.

English is a compulsory subject in Taiwan since 3rd in elementary school. Not everyone enjoyed it (many didn't), but we mostly felt like we had to learn it. My English didn't really pick up until I went to the US (Bloomington, IN) for a year with my family during 6th grade: the immersion really accelerated my progress later on, with the help of TV shows and music.

It was also around that time that I started having interests in Japanese, the most popular foreign language choice after English in Taiwan. Reasons were numerous, mine was Japanese music (visual kei fan here anyone? ) Since I loved the songs, I had to know what they were singing about, thus some of my first words in Japanese are weird words like "sky at night" "smiling face" "to bloom wildy" "to hold someone tight" "footprint"....

Next I wanted to tackle a European language, and knowing very little about Europe at the time, I just thought naively "Well, French seems nice! Beautiful culture and all that......", and got me a audio book of common phrases. Luckily I clicked with the language and never regretted learning it, even though when I started out, "Père Noël" sounded like "Becno ela"... My French progressed slowly but steadily, and it really paid off when I went abroad to Paris as exchange student during the last year of university.

It was in Paris that I started learning German: a free class was offered free at the university. I feel that German really does not deserve the bad rep it often gets. Sure, sometimes I have trouble convincing myself that the words are "beautiful", but the flow of the language definitely has its own charm; the grammar is complicated, but definitely not that horrible compared to some others. Plus I'm really fascinated by the fact that there are so many words with subtle nuances or meanings which are hard to translate into any other language.

It was also in Paris when I was invited by a friend to a Turkish class at his school, and thus begins my journey of learning Turkish. Right away I find it to be immensely attractive, with an elegant structure both in phonology and syntax: it just reminds me of Japanese in so many ways, I guess. And it's very easy to fall in love with the culture and scenery of Turkey......

Since I came back to Taiwan I've been reaching out to my own cultural heritage as well, and started actively learning Taiwanese. It's got an intricate pronunciation system that's not easy to get right at first: I spent ages being told that "I speak like a foreigner". Unfortunately, due to the lack of official status, nowadays lots of young people don't speak it well (or at all), and written Taiwanese is still viewed suspiciously even by many native speakers, even though it has existed over a century. I just hope more and more people in Taiwan can come to appreciate the wonderful language diversity in our very homeland......

All these serious language studying is interspersed with some leisurely "flirt" with other languages: compulsory Spanish classes at school in the US, Korean study sessions, self-teaching to read Arabic script and Vietnamese alphabet, and dabbling into Irish, Finnish, Pangcah (an aboriginal language where I live)......Well, what can I say? I have a to-learn list almost two kilometers long!

[AuthorOfLight]

English? I was born in America so that kind of came naturally.

Spanish? I was moving to Mexico so it was basically either learn Spanish or be really confused all the time. Anyway, my parents insisted.

Finnish? Because of Lalli and the fact that Tolkien was inspired by Finnish to make Elvish. In other words, I'm a nerd. (also I really, really love languages and wanted to learn something difficult.)

[GiantBird]

I study Latin and Greek because I enjoy being able to read texts (especially the ancient epics) in their original language. I'm glad I did, because I've finally gotten to the point where I can read virtually anything in Latin or Greek (with a little help from the dictionary, of course).

I study Chinese because I'm in a scientific field, and I figured it might be useful to expand the range of people I'm able to collaborate with. Also, I just love learning the language, and I hope one day I can pick up Classical Chinese as well so I can read even more texts.

I'd also love to learn Ancient Hebrew and Sanskrit...and Japanese, and Hindi, and Russian, and of course Finnish or Norwegian, but alas, there's only so much time in the world!

[Laufey]

I study Latin and Greek because I enjoy being able to read texts (especially the ancient epics) in their original language. I'm glad I did, because I've finally gotten to the point where I can read virtually anything in Latin or Greek (with a little help from the dictionary, of course).

This reminds me of one time me and a friend of mine had a visitor from Ireland and took him to our favourite bar in my that-time home town. The bar in question sat on one side of a marketplace and was partially underground. We were descending the stairs towards it and suddenly our friend asked:
"Is this a public toilet?"

We were massively confused until he pointed out a sign above the door that said - in Latin - public toilet. Indeed, we found out, it had originally been a public toilet but had at some point been turned into a bar instead and the owner had chosen to keep the old sign. Not that people understood what it said of course, and many probably had no idea of the original purpose of the building.

[DB (f.k.a. DaveBro)]

Native US'an, so I learned US English growing up, forever separating me from my UK'an friends.   

Exposed to some French in grade school, plus a very cool book by Cyrus Fisher called The Avion My Uncle Flew.

Studied Latin in high school, can sometimes puzzle things out.

Married a Norski, made the mistake of learning to pronounce written Norsk, which unfortunately does not much help when visiting grandkids & great-grands.    This at least lets me puzzle out bits of Danish and Swedish from time to time.  Best experience in Norsk?  Talking to a foreign cabdriver who learned it the same way I did.  I thought feeling stupid was automatic with Norsk until then.

Crammed on an Icelandic phrasebook for combined military exercise in Iceland in the 90s; managed 1 conversation and purchase of a soda. 

More and more Spanish dialects in the environment, plus bilingual signs; you can't avoid picking up a little.

Visiting Helsinki in ~3 months, so cramming for politeness & survival (& curiosity, oh my).  All those "extra" vowels look daunting!!   

[Daéa Reina]

English? I was born in America so that kind of came naturally.

Spanish? I was moving to Mexico so it was basically either learn Spanish or be really confused all the time. Anyway, my parents insisted.

Finnish? Because of Lalli and the fact that Tolkien was inspired by Finnish to make Elvish. In other words, I'm a nerd. (also I really, really love languages and wanted to learn something difficult.)

I love your "Finnish reasons"!! I'm a Tolkien fan too!

I was born in Brazil, so portuguese is my native language. I learned a little English and Spanish at school, but most of my knowledge of the english language comes from the fact that I like it, and I always listened to music and watched movies and series in this language.

My reason for wanting to learn other languages is basically the same as AuthorOfLight's.
Finnish because I loved the Moomin series, and now because of Hannu and the Hotakainens. (and because is not a latin-derived language, so it's another challenge for me).
German and French because I'm a nerd.

[LooNEY_DAC]

So, I have a problem with languages other than English: I find that I can understand/muddle through the written stuff, but when I listen to dialogue, itgoessofasteverythingrunstogetherintoonesommatslurr'doddlysta'edthing'n'stuff. Speech is impossible, because the word I'm looking for always eludes me until three weeks later when it's irrelevant.

I also tend (in English) to speak and write slowly, taking care in how I formulate my sentences, which is one reason I don't like chat rooms.

I know we have many polyglots here; but are there others with this particular problem around?