Catalonia and Catalan speakers would probably take issue with your definition of major Romance language. A language spoken by 27 million people in Romania or a language spoken by, sure, just 2 million people, but more importantly, over half of one of the most prosperous cities in Europe - Barcelona - probably has a pretty strong argument to be included in any major Romance language list.
I find that language learning has become such a parlor trick in the modern world - perhaps more so in my native country than in others. Few people still look at it as a tool any longer and when people can’t see any greater return on investment (outside impressing monolingual people at a bar or reading a book in its untranslated form for example) in language learning than they might in learning some playing card magic trick, they aren’t likely to pick the harder route and commit to learning a language to competency.
Like other posters on this thread have pointed out, those with the most success in learning languages found a way to utilize language for more than just entertaining themselves or others - whether its furthering a career in education or some other field, or communicating better with others, remembering that language is a tool above all else can help a great deal in achieving “polyglottery.”
I’m not saying language learning can’t just be driven by a desire to learn a language for the language’s sake, but I think there’s a lot more determination and personal drive required to stick with it when that is the primary reason the language is being learned.
Yes, Romanian is a Romance language, but it doesn’t have the status or speakers of the other 4. Anyway, there’s no point getting into an argument over what constitutes a major romance (or Latin) language. I suspect that no one was confused as to which four I was referring to. I’ll have to run this by my Romanan friend though and see what he thinks
Bortrun, I only say Romanian because in linguistic discussions of Romance languages, Romanian is always mentioned. It’s linguistic factors which make me want to include it in such a list.
Z33Dubyah, economic arguments mean absolutely nothing to me in the context of languages. Still, Catalan is great; I can’t wait to learn it one of these days.
I think that when the desire is for the language’s sake itself, the desire is much stronger than almost all other reasons. I wake up and start learning languages and only stop before going to bed. I have absolutely no ‘reason’ to learn languages. That’s motivation! But, it seems to just come naturally and I don’t need to force myself or anything like that. As it says on my profile: I’m obsessed.
Studying foreign languages all day for no particular reason is certainly a fairly uncommon obsession. Is it just studying for studying’s sake, or are you motivated by the thought of the people you’ll be able to talk to, the books you’ll be able to read, etc. ?
All of that stuff comes later. That’s all bonus motivation, and great stuff, but certainly not the initiator. The first thing is a deep love for languages. Even on a language learning site I’m a bit of an oddball! haha
Actually, It was in my childhood when I first fell in love with languages. Being partially raised by my Jewish great-grandparents I heard multiple languages daily, as they were very socially active and had a fairly wide circle of friends. Every day I would hear Yiddish (which I was initially able to understand and speak, but almost completely lost later one), Polish, Russian, English, German, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, bits of Hebrew and other various languages. Unfortunately, I moved away from there and lost not only the company of my deeply understanding and generous great-grandparents, but also the languages I loved so dearly - including loosing one of my mother tongues. The quest to recapture the ‘mame-loshn’ (mother-language in Yiddish) is something I’ve taken up recently and will not stop until I’m at a native level, once again. In my early 20s, I started listening to music in all sorts of languages, something which continues to this day, and I found my love once again after being separated from them for so long. There’s no language I don’t like; I see value in every single one. I’d love to spend the rest of my life with languages as my main activity. The passion burns in a manner which is hard to describe. At times I’ve felt like I just can’t do it - that I can’t learn languages - and I’ve said I’ll quit and never try again. My wife reminds me, in these dark moments “You can’t give up. You wouldn’t allow yourself.” She’s absolutely right. Languages are the air that I breath.
There is a reason in all of that Bortrun. I love languages. That’s why.
“Then why nitpick?” So non native English readers of these posts can learn about this common mistake. Some people do not like having their grammar in forum posts corrected (especially if they are writing in their native language), some welcome it. I did not know whether you would welcome it or not, so I apologized in advance.
Still, Catalan is great; I can’t wait to learn it one of these days.