Motivation for learning languages
Seeing so many people enthusiastic about languages makes me wonder what led them to leave the comfort zone of speaking only one's native language and learn another.
As for me, I started learning the following languages because:
1) English because I hated to read subtitles or read those horribly dubbed movies.
2) German because the grandmother of a friend of mine told me about the beauty of the German language, which led me to get a minor in German.
3) Japanese because I started learning Judo at 12 and wanted to know what the techniques meant like "seoe nage", "kata guruma", etc. Because of that I decided to study Japanese in college.
4) Chinese because I wanted to know the origin of the characters used in Japanese
5) Korean because I wanted to know how close Japanese and Korean are
6) Italian because there are free courses on TV in Japan and Italian
sounds very nice
7) French also because courses are offered on TV in Japan and I wanted to read "Les Misérables" in the priginal
8) Dutch because I wanted to read Anne Frank's diary in the original after I read it in German
9) Polish because I had a penfriend from Poland during high school and got interested in the language. I took a 6 months intensive course in college in 1993 but forgot it almost completely
10) Russian because I wanted to learn another slavic language after learning Polish and also because I didn't have much to do when I got to Japan in 1998. I can still read the Cyrillic alphabet but don't remember much of the language.
11) Hebrew because I wanted to read the old testament in the original and learned the basics to be able to use a dictionary to be able to read the "torah".
12) Spanish because I started meeting Spanish speaking when I first came to Japan in 1995 and couldn't understand them well at first. When I vosited the States I talked to a lot of hispanics and also used Spanish when I crossed from Texas to Mexico in 2001. Apparently people in Mexico knew I wasn't American and only talked to me in Spanish...
These are the languages that I studied over one year. In addition to that I also started studying Swahili (wanted to learn an African language) , Swedish (the pastor from my old church was from Sweden) and Finnish (there was a Finnish school close to my place until 2003) but don't know if I'll study them again because they won't be useful for me unless I go to the countries where they are spoken.
How about everyone? What led you to study a foreign language?
p.s The only language that I had the chance to improve in the country where it is spoken is Japanese.
-Aprendí inglés porque me era obligatorio en el colegio...
-Aprendí tailandés para que pudiera entender lo que me gritaban las mujeres baratas con las que solía juntarme allí...
-Aprendí francés para mantener conversaciones dulces en francés con mujeres caras...
-Aprendí un poco de polaco porque en mi país hay bastantes mujeres de allí trabajando así como me gusta que trabajen las mujeres, no son baratas ni caras...
Puede que las razones por las que aprendo idiomas les parezcan un poco extrañas, pero es la verdad. Si no quieren saber la verdad, no la busquen...
At present,
English & Mandarin: already done, and yet to be made perfect. Life-long relationships.
German: initial motivation is gone. Now, it's becoming a life-long relationship - on the middle of the way.
French: to read le Russe sans peine; first Romance relationship - on the middle of the middle of the way.
Russian: this will be the first Slavic relationship.
I regard en, de, fr as my future principal languages for learning languages. My hit list is more than that, but the above is enough. I'd probably stop with French within 2 years... and I won't add Russian until then.
Xie: Thanks for sharing your experience with languages.
If I were to describe my current relationship with languages, it would be:
English, German and Japanese: Advanced level and I just need to maintain them but there isn't much to be learned but new vocabulary.
Spanish: I can speak it decently but have to work on the written part.
French: Can read newspapers and listen well but can't speak fluently.
Chinese: I think I finally entered the intermediate level but my written and spoken skills have different levels. knowing Japanese might be the cause for that.
Right now I'm studying French (for the DELF certificate), Chinese (Want to pass the HSK test) and Dutch (As soon as I finish "Introduction to Dutch" by William Z. Shetter I will start reading Anne Frank's "Het Achter Huis", which I bought back in 1998).
One day I want to study Korean and Italian again but need time and motivation for that...
Why is it so hard to study languages? I think that the saying "ars longa vita brevis" is a reality.
1, English: This is a must, no need to explain more.
2, Japanese: I really feel a sense of intimacy (emotional tie) with Japan in terms of culture, tradition, character, race, and history. And it's my most favourite Asian language.
3, Korean: I learned it just for having fun and compare it with Japanese, because Korean is the closest one to Japanese in its grammar structure.
4, Italian: I think it's worthy of the most melodious language in Romance languages, and it's the closest one to Vulgar Latin, and most of Italians are very enthusiastic about foreigners.
5, German: Actually I'm not so crazy about science and technology, but I learned it just because I love Germany and its people, no special reasons.
6, Arabic: This is the only one that shouldn't be listed here, because I've never got to learn it as yet, but I've really wanted to learn it due to its mystical traits, maybe next year or much later.
another Chinese:
Thank you so much for your input. With exception from Arabic we share the same languages!! However, I still have to work on my Korean to get fluent.
I speak English, Spanish and French. I speak some Russian and Arabic too.
The motivation is easy, these languages are very spoken and widespread.
To J.C.
You know a lot of languages and you travelled a lot. So, you can answer 2 interesting questions?
Which are the 3 most useful language, according with your experience?
Which are the 3 easiest languages to study?
Thanks in advance, J.C.
I'm learning some Chinese so I can eavesdrop on what the chinks at the local takeaway are talking about. It's always good to know the enemy's language.
I was kidding about the enemy's part by the way.
English: I'm an American.
French: The girls liked it (especially the ones who were forced by their parents to take Spanish)
German: My area of study is focused on Central and Eastern Europe and the semester I started doing language, Russian I wasn't offered.
Spanish: I learned some when I did construction and I wanted to pick up a little more.
Dutch: It's close enough to German where it would be relatively easy and far enough way where I won't get them completely confused.
Croatian: I haven't started studying it seriously yet, but I would like to travel around the Balkans a bit when I have the money.
I'd like to be familiar with but have yet to study:
Russian: Useful throughout Eastern Europe
Hungarian: just to see if I could do it :-)
English: My native language.
French: Compulsory at school for at least 2 years - found it really interesting so I carried on. Now I'm quite fluent.
German: Same as above, and also my aunt is German.
Italian: I started learning this at school a year ago because I find languages really interesting, and I thought that after French it would not be too hard.
Chinese: People kept urging me to learn Chinese. I had a little look at it, and before I knew it, I was addicted!
Lithuanian: Don't really know that much - I can hold a basic conversation, I have some Lithuanian friends at school.
Portuguese: I can't really speak any - but I can have a decent written conversation - a friend taught me on the Internet. Really really easy after French and Italian.
English: I'm from the U.S.
French: I'm Acadian
Spanish: It's the other major language of the Americas
Latin: school; already knew French and this was the other popular language. Actually proved suprisingly helpful for when I had to learn languages with 3 genders and declinsions.
Czech: studied their twice and dated a Czech girl, would have felt like an asshole to live somewhere without learning the language.
Polish: university offered free intensive courses with practicum, and it helped me get a letter of reccomendation from a department head.
so at age 25, I speak 2 languages fluently, and Czech very well. Spanish I'm ok, but I've never taken classes and it's so easy it's hard to motivate myself to go the extra mile. Terrible at Polish, almost always resort to some sort of Czelish (Czech-Polish hybrid), and I know more Latin than any average person needs to.
I'm increasingly interested in German (used to hate the way it sounds, but I've been there so many times it doesn't bother me anymore) and Romanian (sounds like Italian, but a little cooler to me), but being in grad school for international affairs which affords suprisingly little time to start new languages.
1) English: I'm a native speaker and enjoy speaking it.
2) Latin: Provided me with a challenge; even more challenging than Mandarin at least to me. The declension system was rather difficult to learn.
3) Mandarin Chinese: I found it quite easy to pick up (I already speak a tonal language), but there are far too many characters to learn. I didn't want to invest so much of my time in this aspect.
4) French: I find it incredibly fun to speak, and it has an "upper-class" feeling surrounding it which I like.
5) Italian: I like speaking this Romance language too and find it to be the most beautiful sounding of them all. I just wish it were more widespread and useful.
6) Spanish: Although it's quite easy to pick up, I don't have a particular desire to become fluent.
7) Russian: It just sounds cool and exotic and I hope to learn it more in the future.
Niko, I'm curious - you say you already speak a tonal language, yet you haven't listed it here... yet you have listed English, your Native language. What is this tonal language?
Caspian, it is Thai as well as a bit of Lao.