Quote: (08-26-2016 09:56 PM)Agreddor Wrote:
Quote: (08-22-2016 04:02 AM)SegaSaturn1994 Wrote:
Personally I don't really like traveling and I've only been to one country aside from my own. I suddenly started learning languages in my mid 20's, spurred by taking an elementary course in estonian. I've since learned 9 languages (excluding my native language and including english) for 4-6 years depending on the definition of learning as there have been years when I have not attended any courses in a particular language.
In total I've completed courses in 20 languages (including my native tongue) but half of those languages ended with the introduction course out of practical necessity due to the teacher leaving town or the course being discontinued for some other reason. Though those courses were mere scrapes, they did at least allow me to gauge just how much effort you really need to put in a language if you're not surrounded by it or concentrating on only a few. What I thus found out was that one semester in community college does not give you any practical conversation skills (a2-b1 or higher); it's more like 4-6 years in community college assuming you don't actively seek out vocabulary and grammar knowledge that your course does not look into at the time, which changes everything obviously.
Languages did lead to one date that was awkward as hell and has superficially impressed a few girls but not on a sexual level. The only satisfying conversations I ever had were with guys. Needless to say that the sexual dimension was absent there as well. I realized I could have stuck my neck out with a lot more confidence in a situation or two if I had concentrated on max.5 languages instead of such a large number but given that I don't really have the hots for any culture and hate travel, I have not seen much reason to do with it.
What I've found out is that once you get fluent in the basics the language loses its magic and you start to wonder what other languages look like. I'm afraid that I'll never experience the high of discovery that I once had when starting out.
For the record I was diagnosed with Aspergers a long ago and though languages have boosted my confidence a lot, I'm still terrible with women.
That is quite remarkable, being able to speak 9 languages and having studied 20 in total.
What were these languages?
I do agree with you that once you understand the basic grammar of a language, grasp the fundamental nuances of it and are able to express yourself, it only gets harder from then and achieving fluency becomes hard work.
You sound like you're just starting out with game. Take solace in the fact that once you've unplugged for awhile, and have built a decent lifestyle for yourself, women become your lowest priority. I am happy to discuss via PM if you wish.
Thanks for the heads up/support.
My native tongue is finnish and english the second strongest language. I'm intermediate or, more neutrally expressed, have completed intermediate level courses in swedish, german, estonian, russian, french, portuguese, italian and spanish. As you can probably readily deduce, there's a fair bit of overlap in many of them, which makes learning much easier with the exception of russian.
In my home country you can take state sanctioned tests in all but estonian and portuguese.
I took introductory courses in hungarian, northern sami, chinese, japanese, turkish, finnish sign language, latin, karelian, esperanto and norwegian. I'm currently pondering whether or not to continue norwegian because it would be easy to bring up to a functional (A2 or higher) level based on prior exposure to swedish and to a lesser extent german.
It is believed that going beyond B2 is very unlikely to happen unless inhabiting a country where the language is spoken (with the exception of english in numerous countries; the first time I spoke english outside of a classroom I was already in my early 20's but had been writing for years). In fact a lot of immigrants probably struggle to reach B2 anyway. I've met a lot of people who still make obvious mistakes in their first few introduction sentences despite having lived here for several years. If you want to make languages your sport, I guess you'll have to decide do you want to be like those people, who can get by but will never be mistaken for a native or someone who can speak fewer languages in minute detail. Whatever the choice, the exciting thing is that there are always new courses to take and new languages to explore regardless; you might be able to visit every sovereign country of the world in your life if you're hell bent on it but you most likely won't utter a word in every language.