Do you think it better to learn many languages to a basic level, to concentrate on a few and learn them in much more depth, or to learn a few languages well, and to learn the basics of others – perhaps many others?<\/p>\n
It will probably depend on what you want to do with each language. <\/p>\n
In my case I’ve studied nine languages in depth, and speak four of them fluently (plus English), and can get by in the others, more or less. The ones I’ve spent most time on are Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, French, Irish, German, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish and Manx, and they’re the ones I know well or fairly well. I’ve been to and\/or lived in places where they’re spoken, done courses, and do my best to maintain them and use them whenever I can, especially the Celtic ones and French. I’m also learning Breton and Russian at the moment. I’ve dabbled with quite a few other languages, for trips to other countries, to try different languages courses, and out of interest. I don’t actively maintain them.<\/p>\n
Recently I’ve been thinking whether I really want to learn any other languages – there are plenty I’d like to know, but I’m not sure whether I have time to learn them, and to maintain the ones I already know. I’m not interested in learning many languages just for the sake or it. I learn each one for a variety of reasons and don’t tend to get very far it I don’t have much interest in the language itself, and\/or in the culture of people who speak it. With Breton I will finish the course I’m working on, but may not continue with my studies, unless I find an aspect or aspects of Breton culture that really fascinate me and\/or appeal to me. The same is true of Russian.<\/p>\n
As well as learning languages, I also play quite a few musical instruments, particularly guitar, piano, recorders, tin whistles, mandolin and ukulele. I used to play the clarinet, but have played very little since leaving school and have decided to sell it. When I mentioned this to a friend he asked me what other instrument(s) I will buy with the money from the clarinet – I haven’t decided yet whether to concentrate on the instruments I already play, or to do that and to get a new one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Do you think it better to learn many languages to a basic level, to concentrate on a few and learn them in much more depth, or to learn a few languages well, and to learn the basics of others – perhaps many others? It will probably depend on what you want to do with each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,13,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-language-learning","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}