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what's your reasons to learn another language? (besides business/career & traveling)
as i search the web for reasons i get 2 things above all else, work & travel. to be honest all the places i think about traveling too already know English as a first or 2nd language. i don't want to be an interpreter for work and don't plan on doing international business. after those 2 things people spew off random health benefits that i could really care less about. in terms of practicality there is no reason for me to learn another language.
the only reason why i am interested in learning is because girls find it attractive for some reason and for the fun of it. it's a shame that there aren't more resources too learn for fun. (like giving compliments, insults, be playful/silly, etc...)
anyways i am curious on why other people learn another language besides for business and traveling.
29 Comments
Fun! I'm surprised you haven't seen much of that around your browsing. That typically applies to me and most of the languages I'm learning. However, I do plan on travelling to the places where these languages are spoken, but that's for the distant future, so learning for fun is still my dominant reason.
because girls find it attractive for some reason and for the fun of it
In my experience, this is not true whatsoever. If it were, I'd probably be the ladies' man at my school.
Why am I learning another language? Well, I'm a seventh grader and they still haven't let me into a foreign language class, so that's one reason. Also, many, MANY, of my friends are Hispanic and randomly say stuff in Spanish and I'd like to understand. But my main reason is because of my boyfriend. He and I have been dating for about a month and a half, and it's amazing. Thing is, he comes from a Hispanic family, so multiple of his relatives speak ONLY Spanish, and I'd like to be able to communicate with them, because I love my boyfriend, and his family. This is why I spend time each and everyday, no matter if I have Cheer, or dance or any of the other million things that make my live very, VERY, busy, I find time each day.
Also, girls that I know, don't really care. I honestly didn't care that my boyfriend spoke Spanish. I mean, he admitted that he doesn't know much.
I can understand why they wouldn't care. Spanish is such a widely spoken language that people seem unenchanted of the beauty of the language (at least that I've met IRL), myself included, and I'm a native speaker of the language.
Exactly. Spanish, I believe, is a beautiful language. But just because you can say "Hola, eres hermosa" (That's from Google translate, I haven't gotten to that point in my lessons.) Doesn't mean girls will like you. If that were true, then almost half my school would have girls swooning over them.
I'm a seventh grader and they still haven't let me into a foreign language class
If you're in America, then this is kind of shocking to hear. At 7th grade at my district taking a foreign language is a requirement and 3 foreign language credits in total are required to graduate high school (including the credit from middle school. Classes are 1/2 credits per year, for 2 years in middle school).
I am in America. I am in North Carolina, and I go to the middle school that is smaller and has more Hispanic people (and we're still better than the other school, though everyone thinks they're better) and I still haven't gotten in, which also means they're letting fluent Spanish speaking kids in, which is an easy A for them. My older brother is in tenth and he has just now gotten in, and he had been taken out before school started, so my parents had to go complain, mostly because he was then put in Marketing, which he nor my parents wanted, and we need to have 2 foreign language credits to graduate. It's annoying. Lucky for me, this year I'm in World History, but it's a high school class, and I will most likely be in Math 1 and ELA 1 which means I will have more time to focus on other things like foreign languages. (My brother was really mad that I was taking a high school class as a seventh grader. It's never happened until this year, and our sixth grade teachers chose us and I was chosen because I aced the class and final exam) Also, please don't make me regret saying what town I live in. I'm trying to build trust in people.
Well, I have no intentions of doing anything with addresses online. (For the future you should post the state only and nothing more if you want to be a little more safe).
I'm curious about what conditions you have to meet in order to enter a foreign language class. It doesn't seem like a very balanced system whatsoever.
Good. Also, from what I've seen, it depends on how many people sign up for the class, if it's their 1, 2, 3, 4 choose, and what other classes they have chosen.
It's not unusual. My state separates English writing and reading as two different subjects, so middle schools here have a class that we call English and another class that we call Reading. There isn't space in the schedule for a foreign language class unless you're one of the few 8th graders who tested out of Reading or you're in the IB program, which has it's own curriculum with a foreign language requirement. High schools group foreign language in the same category as fine arts and technical/vocational education, and 3 credits of that category are required, so it's entirely possible to graduate from high school without taking a single foreign language class. My high school only had Spanish and French up to level 2, except for the IB classes which only full-curriculum IB MYP/DP students could take.
Hi Mila,
that's interesting. Here in Germany you can't avoid to learn a foreign language and you can't graduate without at least a test in English.
best regards Angel
1033
For fun? Because it's really cool? Because it links you with several people around the world?
There are many good reasons one can learn a language, usually for entertainment and abilities to communicate with people around the world. And speaking something different from what you normally yell out is cool.
If the grammar is simple, it takes some careful thought to get what you want to say out. That's why I created my con-lang; it's not restrictive and simple to learn. So, you need to be careful if wanting to say things like "I am done" and not mean "My life is over".
Back to reasons, I guess because it's exciting. Languages are amazing and a link between people. It's nice to say something you never heard before, but you now know what it means. The thrill, the fun, the excitement! This is what I learn languages for.
Sefontila!
You shouldn't learn a language just to impress girls!
Ps: I'm problably much older than you, so ignore me ;)
Maybe, but if this reason can encourage a young human to start learning and understanding another culture/language, I'm fine with it! The main thing is, they start to learn, isn't it?
best regards Angel
tossing out business, career and traveling
that leaves only....
Like the culture, or to pick up women(worst reason ever!).
No I do it for resons you can read in my discussion called "Why learn a new language" go check it out I wanted to use it so I could find even more resons to learn a language!
To insult people, and to watch their facial expressions when they think I'm a witch or a terrorist.
As a bonus, speaking Circassian sounds like gargling rocks in your mouth and speaking Japanese while being super stoned. (Or maybe that's Chechen. Or Abkhaz. Or any of the Caucasian languages ;) )
- 1033
Sometimes speaking English sounds like you're speaking Gibberish. People around me are all like, "Slow down! I can't understand what you're saying!"
I just love history and things like and the language is a big part of that and to get the full feeling of it. It's fun to learn something new that you want to relate to.
Also, I am trying to hit on a Russian girl at school. Wish me luck!
Good luck with that. If you ever need any help with that, I will be willing to help. I am no Russian, but I can at least give you some tips.
The main reason I study foreign languages is this: whenever I meet someone who speaks a foreign language, I try to learn a few words and phrases in that language. And if I meet another person who speaks that language, I love being able to surprise them with their mother tongue.
Though I'm not much of a traveler, I still get to meet people from many different countries, since our city--and surrounding area--has been a real melting pot in recent years. In fact, our company just hired a fellow originally from Bangladesh. And even though he speaks English well enough, I'm teaching myself some conversational Bengali.
All in all, I don't need to master a foreign language (though I sure wouldn't mind if I did!), but it would be great to speak at a conversational level in many different languages.
For Spanish, I had 7 years of mandatory classes in middle and high school. I had little use for it after those classes gave me 6 college credits. My degree program didn't require foreign language anyway, so I went 3 years without using it and I lost a lot of it. In my last year of college, I had more time and a better means of transportation, so I ventured out to more areas beyond my college campus. Those areas had big Spanish speaking communities, so almost everyone I interacted with at stores and restaurants was a native Spanish speaker. I look like I'm probably a native Spanish speaker, so store clerks and food service workers almost always spoke to me in Spanish at first and then switched to English after I struggled to respond. Then I thought about it and decided that it's a pity I'm not fluent in Spanish after I took 7 years of classes. So a little over a year ago, I asked my Spanish speaking friends to start speaking to me in Spanish, I started listening to Spanish music and reading books in Spanish, and I logged back into my Duolingo account that I'd created and abandoned months before on a whim. So for Spanish, it's partly that I feel I should've put what I learned in school to use and continued using it, and partly that so many people I interact with speak Spanish. I'm pretty good at it now, but I speak slowly and I still make mistakes so I don't consider myself fluent. My goal is C1-C2 fluency.
For Tagalog, it's a family and heritage thing. My mother is from the Philippines and most of her side of the family still lives there. I don't have to learn Tagalog to communicate with them because most of them speak English, but I started making a serious effort to learn in the past few months because I can. Most of my mom's family speaks several languages because they learn Tagalog/Filipino and English in school and most of them live where Bisaya/Cebuano is the regional language, meanwhile, I grew up monolingual. My mom didn't teach me Tagalog when I was little because she was afraid I'd have the same experience as my older sister. My older sister was born on a US military base in the Philippines, so she could speak English and Tagalog. My dad retired and moved our family to the US when my sister was 4 years old, so she still spoke with a Filipino accent when she started kindergarten. The other kids mocked everything she said and the school did nothing but offer extra class time and a tutor to help her "learn English," even though she could speak it perfectly fine, just with an accent. So my mom stopped speaking to us in Tagalog and she made a point to teach my brother and I to read and write in English before we started school so the school wouldn't try to hold back our progress by "teaching us English." I learned to understand a lot of Tagalog with context because we often heard her speaking to friends and family and sometimes she uses Tagalog and Bisaya words when she forgets the English word or no translation exists. I'm in no danger of being bullied for learning Tagalog and I have resources at my disposal (though the written/online resources are few and low quality), so I may as well learn. I'll probably never be fluent, but that doesn't bother me.
For Portuguese, Italian, and French, well, Duolingo was fun so I completed these trees and had fun seeing how similar they are to Spanish. About four months ago, I realized that I would probably never even have a chance to speak those languages out loud in a conversation, so I decided to focus my energy on Spanish and Tagalog. I don't maintain these trees anymore, but every now and then I see text in these languages and it's cool that I can understand some of it.
I do it for ease of communication for those classified as the other... i spent the greater part of my childhood misunderstood by my peers and i dont want people to feel like they are not understood so i learn languages of those i know i will encounter every day.
