¿Have you ever experienced this?: the moment you start learning a new TL, consuming medias in your previous languages seems like a missed opportunity and you feel guilty doing it, losing a (big) part of the pleasure and interest.
I’m a native French speaker living in France, and till a year ago, 90+% of the medias I read, viewed, or listened to were in English, plus the occasional news article in Dutch (I’m Belgian).
Once I started actively learning Spanish and reached a certain level, the contents I use to love in English became less enjoyable because of this “guilt”.
Yes, learning Finnish daily for 4+ years but still fall into my old routines of binge watching English content. Easiest way for me to avoid that guilt is just turning on Finnish subtitles for whatever content i’m watching. It feels like studying because I am a native English speaker and can pair that meaning to the Finnish subtitle without any trouble. Importing the translation and studying it later has some benefits, although I often find i’ve learned hundreds or thousands of new words that a regular Finnish person never actually says.
Just need the discipline to enjoy what you enjoy and still maintain the habits that brought you fluency in the first place. Learning from native content, books (not translated from some other language. e.g don’t need to waste time reading some translated version of Harry Potter, or in my case suomentanut books from Russian/Swedish), and consuming media (news/reality tv/sports commentary/music/job specific literature) that people who actually speak the language consume.
I don’t count out archaic content either, we can’t relive a childhood that some foreigner had but we can study content that was relevant in their childhood to capture some of the lingo, mindset and experience that helped shaped their world views and vocabulary. It’s not about knowing every word (impossible!), but knowing the relevant words and phrases. I still expect another 5+ years of study to achieve native level fluency. Its not a race to the end, more a journey to the destination where these speedbumps (guilt/procastination/wrong study choices) are just another obstacle to overcome.
Best of luck with fluency in your fourth language!
I also used to get some of this type of guilt. My tip for handling it is: don’t Try reminding yourself that you can do what you want. For me, I’m learning Latin now because I want to, but I’m planning to read some books in other languages this year because I want to do that too. Some people can focus super hard on one thing in many years, some people can’t. I’m just happy that I seem to be able to stick with a language for some months without being bored, and as the years go by I’ll learn more and more. But watching tv shows in an other languages or reading one or a couple of books is not going to remove your other efforts. You can still do a little bit of work for your target language. And it’s fine to take a break too.
I don’t feel guilty or find less enjoyment on my native language consumption. Maybe I’m not advanced enough =).
However, as I read things on the web in English, I sometimes think…shoot, I can simply read this in German or Spanish with translation feature of google translate or deepl so I can still consume the new or articles more relevant to my everyday life than German news. Although I do like to read German news too.
Not really much of an option for this on youtube or tv, other than something like netflix you could use dubs if the target language is available, but I don’t really care for dubs much so don’t see myself ever really doing that regularly.
Things might have changed recently, but last time I tried, automated dubbing was still very much in the uncanny valley. It was very cringe for me, personally, and that’s in English.
Try reminding yourself that you can do what you want. For me, I’m learning Latin now because I want to, but I’m planning to read some books in other languages this year because I want to do that too. Some people can focus super hard on one thing in many years, some people can’t. I’m just happy that I seem to be able to stick with a language for some months without being bored, and as the years go by I’ll learn more and more. But watching tv shows in an other languages or reading one or a couple of books is not going to remove your other efforts. You can still do a little bit of work for your target language. And it’s fine to take a break too.
