Hello everyone,
I found that the musicality of a language is what motivates me to learn it. Well, at least at first stage. I need to be emotionally moved by the sound and tone of a given language to start the learning procress. But I also found it necessery to keep on learning. Some of my friend told me that they also perceive language learning in this way.
So here's the topic. I'm a french native speaker. I'm convinced that there are positive aspects of it, like I don't need to learn its incomprehensible rules since I can speak it naturally. But on the other hand, I am today quite hermetic to french's sonority and way of speaking, which I really regret ... I feel like I'm not capable of enjoying my own language which saddens me terribly.
I really wonder about what you think. Do you feel the same with your own mother language ?
One of the reasons I learn French is because of the music that is sung in French, and how the language sounds.
I completely agree! I'm an English native speaker learning French and one of the biggest reasons why I started learning it as a kid because of how lovely the language sounds! I feel the exact way you feel about French. I think being used to how your native language sounds kind of removes the "magic" of it! This is a lovely post :)
You make a great point here. As a native English speaker, I really have no concept of what English sounds like to non-natives. I remember my high school Spanish teacher once told me that when she was growing up in Puerto Rico she and her friends would make "s" and "sh" sounds to pretend like they were speaking English. Does English really sound like "sh sh sh sh"? I never would have thought that was a dominant sound in the language.
I've spoken to Germans who seem to know that, objectively speaking, German is a harsh-sounding language and not very beautiful to most people's ears. But I really have no idea if English is beautiful or ugly.
I think there's always something that intrigues a person or first draws them in. I'm an alphabet person myself, I'm drawn to languages with beautiful lettering or new and different alphabets. That being said, I haven't learned any with different writing systems because they're even harder and I know it's not enough to keep me there. What keeps me learning a language is real life utility. So I focus on the languages most prevalent in my own community.
Hi Yassine! As a German I also don't like German music a lot. Maybe it's because I can perfectly understand the texts and there is no mystery around it. Listening to music in other languages has this fair of not understanding the text as good and if you understand the text it's an achievement because you learned the language good enough.
Thank you very much for your awesome responses. Actually, everyone seem to have his own reason to start learning a new language but as @SimplySam wisely said, we it to keep us motivated!
And to answer you Wendy, I find english really beautiful and pleasant to hear. Also hearing to english brings me feelings of international exchange, worldwide culture, communication and some other great impression :D
@Yassine That's lovely, thank you for your answer!