Which Describes Your Language Learning?

K. T.   Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:13 am GMT
a. Accidental polyglot/bilingual. Grew up in a bilingual or multilingual environment, or had to study a second language in school from an early age.
b. Have a set of core languages, then learn bits and chunks of other languages.
c. Study one language at a time, in a methodical manner.
d. Interested mostly in one family of languages (IE languages in general, Romance languages, etc.)
e. Interested in practical languages only: English
f. Accidental polyglot II-had to learn another language (like it or not) to survive.
g. Interested in all languages. Try to learn as many as possible
h. Just started learning a language or two.
i. Only like classical languages, or only learn languages in order to read them.
j. Interested in any language that seems interesting.
k. cultural motivation (ancestry)
l. Barack Obama made me feel dumb because he said I only knew "merci", so I ran out and bought "Platiquemos" and hope that's the right book to learn Chinese.
over the hill   Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:18 am GMT
How about:

m. Need foreign languages as an entrance requirement for colleges, and (I think) as a requisite for a Regents Diploma to graduate from High School.
Xie   Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:31 pm GMT
>>a. Accidental polyglot/bilingual. Grew up in a bilingual or multilingual environment, or had to study a second language in school from an early age. <<

English. But I won't say I'm truly bilingual. My spoken fluency still fluctuates depending on context and environment.

>>f. Accidental polyglot II-had to learn another language (like it or not) to survive. <<

English.

>>g. Interested in all languages. Try to learn as many as possible <<

Yes.

>>m. Need foreign languages as an entrance requirement for colleges, and (I think) as a requisite for a Regents Diploma to graduate from High School. <<

English again.

But I think being a monolingual Anglophone isn't that bad after all, if you have both the motivation to learn any languages there are, and if you are knowledgeable enough, even only in English, to study any subject there is on earth.

A lot of Chinese are roughly divided into 2 groups. One of them is elite and can study anywhere they like, given the time and money. The other is just too confined to syllabi or English that they leave little room for academic improvement. Hong Kong guys normally know more English than the other Chinese, but their academic ability, I think, is far from satisfactory, compared to Anglophones who are supposed to be from colleges of the same kind of ranking/fame, etc.

For many subjects, Chinese is simply useless (in Hong Kong and abroad), forcing us to do it in English, but our English isn't good either. Then, we suffer. If you knew English only, you could only fail if you don't even know a triangle has 3 sides - as how some youtube videos portray some Americans as they are.
Xie   Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:33 pm GMT
If both Anglophones and me compete, I could only "beat" them infinitely in writing the same term paper in Chinese. But since Chinese is useless for that purpose... at university, people like me just have to learn even more English at this age and at this time.
fraz   Fri Sep 25, 2009 2:36 pm GMT
Grew up a monolingual English speaker but married a German and hard to learn that language in order to communicate with her family. The fact that I'd always enjoyed visiting the country made it much easier to motivate myself.

I have little interest in learning other languages. I did dabble in French but quickly gave up as I saw little practical use for it. Plus, starting at the bottom was soul-destroying.
-Mjdt-   Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:26 pm GMT
H) I guess. It's a hobby I picked up on about 2 years I think. I was arbitrarily put into French classes at school (all pupils were placed into either French or German classes), and all I picked up was some basic vocabulary and canned phrases. I thought I would try and learn it properly this time, and these forums have helped a lot in improving my reading knowledge. I've also dabbled in various other languages as well. I believe that I'm a fairly left-brained person, so I find the workings and grammar of languages interesting, especially synthetic ones. I've studied some Latin and I've been tempted to delve into something like Polish or Russian, languages that retain a lot of the complexities of PIE grammar and have a fairly broad currency.