Wanderlust support group 5

[Rí.na.dTeangacha]

Russian has been winking at me for the last few months for some reason.

[oho]

Question: what's your method to keep your wanderlusts at bay? It would be interesting to share some tips, maybe we could help each other out.

Personally, when I get a wanderlust, I realize that's the moment to remind myself why I'm studying Hebrew, this means it could be a good idea to write down a list of the things I like about the language and the country where it's spoken and its culture.

Second, I find it very helpful to have a reality check to remind myself that I still have a long way off before getting fluency in my target language and that an extra language would be detrimental (e.g: I go on tandem, start chatting with someone and realize how stilted my conversational abilities are, or sometimes I open up my Hebrew novels and see that I can still understand little of them).

On a more sophisticated level, lately I've also been trying to apply so-called "cognitive defusion" which is one of the practices of ACT to wanderlusts. The results seem to be quite promising.

[linguoboy]

Question: what's your method to keep your wanderlusts at bay? It would be interesting to share some tips, maybe we could help each other out.

I follow Wilde's advice: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Generally I find that, as soon as I encountre any real resistance, I decide I'm not really up to the challenge and take a step back.

(For instance, I got frustrated trying to write a reply in Italian to a friend yesterday so I fired up the Italian course on Duolingo to practice my pronouns. I give it a week before I get bored and move on to the next thing.)

[oho]

Question: what's your method to keep your wanderlusts at bay? It would be interesting to share some tips, maybe we could help each other out.

I follow Wilde's advice: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Generally I find that, as soon as I encountre any real resistance, I decide I'm not really up to the challenge and take a step back.

(For instance, I got frustrated trying to write a reply in Italian to a friend yesterday so I fired up the Italian course on Duolingo to practice my pronouns. I give it a week before I get bored and move on to the next thing.)

I suppose that's ok if the wanderlust only makes you want to start a duolingo course (even though there's still the issue of the time taken away from your target languages). On the other hand my wanderlusts are always accompanied by the strong impulse to buy good grammar books that cost 30-40 euros or more.

[linguoboy]

On the other hand my wanderlusts are always accompanied by the strong impulse to buy good grammar books that cost 30-40 euros or more.

Well, I work for a university library so this isn't as much of a hazard.

[dEhiN]

I follow Wilde's advice: "The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it." Generally I find that, as soon as I encountre any real resistance, I decide I'm not really up to the challenge and take a step back.

I like your approach. It's funny because while I invariably take this approach, I have generally seen it as a negative thing. I've even used terms like "interest du jour" to apply to it as a way of possibly vilifying and therefore discouraging that behaviour within me. Yet, try as I might, I seem to naturally change interests fairly often and also, naturally follow those new interests down the rabbit hole for a time before finding another new interest and moving on. The only good thing I can say is that usually for things that matter, I tend to rotate through and eventually come back to the same interests. That's why over the past 9-10 years I've been into language learning, I've basically always stuck with French and Tamil (and to a lesser extent, Spanish and Portuguese); even when I've migrated away from them, I have tended to come back to them after a bit.

I suppose that's ok if the wanderlust only makes you want to start a duolingo course (even though there's still the issue of the time taken away from your target languages). On the other hand my wanderlusts are always accompanied by the strong impulse to buy good grammar books that cost 30-40 euros or more.

I personally find that the reality of my financial situation usually takes care of any impulsive desires to buy learning resources in a wanderlust language. While technically I probably could afford to buy a grammar book in whatever language has caught my fancy this week, realistically my budget couldn't sustain that. This forces me to find free resources to satisfy any wanderlust.

As for time taken away, sometimes I wonder if we create unrealistic expectations on ourselves that if we really want to learn a particular language, we should dedicate any and all study time to only that language. Unless someone can tell me that they dedicate every single free second they have to language study, the fact is probably that language learning is one among several things they do in their spare time. So, from that point of view, learning a little about a wanderlust language instead of watching Netflix probably won't really take time away from their target language. There's also other factors, like our brains needing time to digest what we've learned in our target language after a study session. While pursuing a wanderlust language is still "learning", it does give our brain time to digest our target language as it were - particularly, I've found, when the target and wanderlust languages are pretty dissimilar. Lastly, and related to what I just said, there's only so much time in a day one can spend studying any particular language. So, I think truthfully, the argument of taking time away from a target language isn't really an argument that holds up and it's just something we tell ourselves, perhaps out of guilt.

[Yasna]

Question: what's your method to keep your wanderlusts at bay?

I remind myself of how much value my priority language will bring to my life once I'm proficient. And once in a while I give into the wanderlust, because it's fun.

[linguoboy]

Indonesian. And I can't even remember now what prompted me to start Indonesian lessons on Duolingo last week. There must have been something concrete, but I'm damned if I can remember. I figure it'll be like every other time, I'll pursue it until the memory burden gets too onerous (and they introduce new vocabulary quickly!) and then drop it for something else.

ETA: Oh, I think I remember now. I was listening to an Aboriginal rock group from Groote Eylandt, started reading about the local languages, and discovered that there were loanwords from Makassarese due to trade relations. So then I started reading about Makassarese, was struck by how similar it was to Indonesian, and before you know it I'd added the course.

[vijayjohn]

I really want to figure out the etymologies of words in Indonesian.

[linguoboy]

I really want to figure out the etymologies of words in Indonesian.

Wiktionary tends to have good etymologies for those they have entries for, often tracing them back all the way to Proto-Austronesian (where possible) with a rich array of intervening protoforms. That's how I just learned that mereka is originally a borrowing from Javanese.

[vijayjohn]

I really want to figure out the etymologies of words in Indonesian.

Wiktionary tends to have good etymologies for those they have entries for, often tracing them back all the way to Proto-Austronesian (where possible) with a rich array of intervening protoforms. That's how I just learned that mereka is originally a borrowing from Javanese.

What about (non-Austronesian) loanwords?

Also can anyone tell me where tf pinta in Indonesian comes from? Is it a native word?