I'm pretty sure I pick up learning French about twice a year, stick with it for a week or two, and then I inevitably descend into the "meh" stage. To avoid feeling guilty about this, I always end up convincing myself "Future Janabutts will have more time to dedicate to this hobby." I also do this with learning to program, building custom effects pedals, and circuitry in general. Oh, and of course, I will never learn how to play that banjo I bought on a whim.
I'm the exact same way with Spanish. I had some formal education when I was younger and I keep trying to pick it up again but I always get side-tracked. I just downloaded Dualingo for my phone and hopefully it will help me stick with it because I may need it if I get the chance to work in Panama for a few weeks in January.
I took spanish in High School and one year in College. I find that when I spend a week or more in a spanish speaking country it all comes flying back to me and I can carry on pretty well. Good luck with it! What will you potentially be doing in Panama? I have a cousin living there.
Like I said to Cortez below, Spanish is the second language of the people that live there, so we will see how much it helps my Spanish, but I'm looking forward to it either way. We're working on getting clean water to rural communities there. We will be building and showing people there how to build simple water filters.
We will be building and showing people there how to build simple water filters.
That sounds like a worthwhile endeavor, best of luck with it. ... I mean, muchas suerte
Well . . . yes and no. There is a lot of research on how immersion can affect language acquisition and the general thought at this point is, yes, immersion can help in language learning, as long as there is sufficient familiarity between the learner's mother tongue (or L1) and the language being learned. Essentially, if a language is too dissimilar to your first language, then being immersed in the culture can actually limit one's learning because it can be overwhelming. This is one reason why it can be really difficult for say, English speakers to learn to speak Cantonese fluently and why it's common to encounter various immigrants in the U.S. who may have lived in the country for a long time, but still speak using grammatical constructions similar to those found in their L1. One reason why language classes can be good, is that a capable language teacher will be able to help break students of their tendency to form sentences in their L1 and then translate them word for word into their target language (L2). This might not seem to be a problem, but it's a bit like when kids learn to read. Most people will subvocalize at least a little bit when reading and this is actually the greatest obstacle to reading quickly. It's easier to tell with kids, because they may be reading silently, but their lips might be moving. Anyway, it's like running two programs on a computer at the same time, generating responses from one program and then pasting them into the second program and hoping that everything will come out right, knowing full well that the second program operates along different parameters.
I think the greatest advantage in living in the culture who's language you wish to learn is that you learn to actually communicate. Colloquialisms are not often taught in a classroom and make a very big difference when actually speaking a language, rather than just understanding it.
This is true, but for colloquialisms to be understood and taken in, context is necessary. Again, if languages are very similar to one's L1, colloquialisms will more likely make sense to the learner. Take English and French for example. For an English learner of French, the phrase "cherchez la femme" might be familiar, but translating it (look for the woman) into their L1 is likely to convey a similar meaning in context. If we take an English learner of Vietnamese (which I speak a bit of and have trouble with) then the idioms and colloquialisms will seem very strange unless or until one has sufficient context for them and a certain amount of accepting those idiomatic quirks as "just the way the language is." For example, a common phrase "không sao đâu" literally translates to "no stars where" but colloquially, it means "never mind". It's hard to become a fluent speaker of languages that are vastly different from one's own using only immersion or only classes. What the literature suggests (which I support, due to my own experiences in teaching) is that learners need high context environments, dealing with realia (real examples of the languages as native speakers use it) supported by exercises designed to break down reaction time and to eliminate word for word translation from L1 to L2. Learners are also helped to acquire language by other learners rather than being taught to as is found in traditional teacher-centric classrooms as it allows greater opportunity for self-assessment, monitoring and comparison of language use.
Well Spanish is the second language of the people I would be working with, so it may be a bit counter-productive to take too much from my experience there. I will probably need to be proficient by the time I start. And it's just a good life skill to have, especially living in Texas.
Also, how is that banjo of yours? Is it in good shape? I've always wanted one.building custom effects pedals
-Very cool. What kind of pedals have you built? I wouldn't know the first thing about how to do this, but I have always thought bgood79 would be good at this. What do you think bgood?
I've only ever built a "baby's first fuzz pedal" which is one of the easiest. You can find tons of schematics hereand on the website hack-a-day. My Banjo is actually pretty nice, when I say I'll never learn it, I mostly mean learn it as well as I can play guitar. I can pick some notes and diddle around on it, but nothing special, but I don't think I can let go of it too soon since one of band uses it. I keep it as an "if you provide it, they can't say no" kind of deal. I can play the Mandolin like a beast though. If you want to pick up a nice starter Banjo I'd recommend a Deering's Good Times. By starter I don't mean dingy, I know a lot of folk who play these all the time.
jonaswildman, have you ever built any of your own gear? Janabutts, thanks for the links. That Deering's Good Times is a pretty banjo and for $400 it's definitely not too expensive. That said, I have to buy a violin next. Actually two violins, one for my 2.5 year old daughter and one for me. Actually, I'll likely rent hers and buy mine. The mandolin is such a lovely instrument to play. I probably play the mandolin like you do the banjo. I know about 6 chords and can fake my way towards almost sounding like I know what I'm doing. I have zero technique though. I play it like a rhythm guitar and have barely any picking skills. They sure are fun to play though, aren't they?
The violin's a heap of fun, and contrary to what most people seem to think, it isn't especially difficult to pick up. I've found so far that the fingering is similar enough to the other string instruments I play for it to be easy to pick up. The bow is the trickiest so far, but it's getting there.
Ive never have had the urge to build anything related to music. That side of music doesn't interest me at all. I thought it was cool that Elliot Bergman made his own Kalimbas (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1YwFw4ZH8F0) and sold them at Nomo shows and I am intrigued that The Books make their own stuff though.
I keep this 4 string guitar in my office to pick on when I get the hankering: it's a lot of fun.
Don't be jealous, I work from home :-) I could keep a drum set in my office and no one could care less. In fact, I will often sneak downstairs in to my studio mid-day to play the drums. It's really nice. I'll never work in an office ever again. Not ever.