Next quarter my university is offereing Quechua and I’m trying to figure out if I should take it.
Now, I don’t need to take it, as I’m pretty positive I’ll never be in a situation for it to ever be in use. Also, I’ve always wanted to learn French and Portuguese, and I do need to learn Spanish.
On the other hand, when will I ever get a chance to learn an indigenous language? I can always attempt to learn those Romance languages, and college is the time to take esoteric classes.
I’ve asked on this board before if I should have dropped a class. The board said I shouldn’t, I didn’t, and greatly enjoyed the class. I ended up having the highest grade.
If I had a chance to learn Quechua, I certainly would take it!
A conversational Japanese class was recently offered by the local Community Adult Education folks here … but I was THE ONLY ONE to sign up, so they cancelled it!!!
Dang!!! My one and only chance !!! :mad: :smack:
The thing is what would you be giving up? I am all for learning for the sake of learning, but to me learning a language you’re probably never going to use isn’t efficent use of time, UNLESS you have a love of it.
Compare to what you would say is someone wanted to learn how to operate a comptometer or program a computer using IBM cards or be a key punch operator. I guess that’s fine if you really want to do it.
Again, I stress, by all means do it, as long as you’re not giving too much up.
YES take it. Most American Indian languages have grammar or phonology that will kill you. Quechua is by contrast easy to learn to pronounce for a foreigner and has a much easier grammar than any other Native American languages I’ve ever seen.
Would you be taking this course in addition to everything else or will you be taking it instead of something else?
If it’s the latter case, I’d be hesitant. I mean, a single quarter of a foreign language isn’t very likely to teach you anything that’s actually going to stick with you. And while Quechua might be easy for a non Indo-European language… it’s still a non Indo-European language. Unless you have a serious interest in linguistics, I think a course on Latin American history or culture would probably be a much more productive use of your time.
YES! Quechua is that rare combination of “indigenous” – meaning, in this case, “in many ways totaly different than any language you’re likely to come across, therefore will open up your mind to all kinds of alternative ways to process the universe” – AND “actually potentially useful, because millions of people speak it, not just thousands (or dozens), as is teh case with most indigenous languages.”
Good luck, and check back in with some interesting insights!
Take it, definitely. Like you say, this might well be your only opportunity to learn it. You have years ahead of you to learn Spanish and other more mainstream languages.
Having “learned’ several languages and forgotten them all, this will be pointless. You will not be able to use this and thus you will forget it, having wasted your time and the taxpayers money.
^THIS
plus, thirdly, that it’s a rare opportunity to easily learn a Native American language. For anyone who cares about Native American people or issues, I can’t think of a better move. Mark Rosenfelder has been promoting study of Quechua amongst linguists for years, for these reasons.
A native speaker of Quechua came to my house to do some work, and I was glad I had read up enough Quechua 101 to say a sentence to him. Ñuqa Peruta kuyani (I love Peru). He was quite pleased that I liked his language.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t bother taking a language I’d never use when there are so many other languages I could both study and use, and might lead to interesting career opportunities.
Makes as much sense as studying ancient Greek.
Of course, if you are planning to live in the mountainous areas of Peru or Bolivia, you might find a use for it.
You could translate the plays of Shakespeare in Quechua…but I doubt you would find a publisher.
There are two kinds of language learners. The rare kind, less than 10%…probably more like 5%, can just learn any language for the sheer pleasure of it. They can sit down in a short course and pick up more than enough to keep learning.
But the rest of us, myself included, will learn the bare minimum of what we need to know, and helpfully save our brain activity for other more pressing needs. That doesn’t mean we can’t speak new languages- I can speak a few. But it’s not easy. People like this can pick stuff up from classes, but most of it will be forgotten soon after. Immersion works a lot better, but even then you will mostly get up to the point where you can order dinner and making drinking buddies before you hit a heavy plateau.
And for these people (most people) learning a language without some idea of an immediate application is relatively pointless. Whatever knowledge you gain will be lost just as quickly.
I always advocate Spanish as a first language. It won’t get you an immediate job (but in all honesty, no language will- especially not Mandarin or Arabic, despite popular opinion.) But you can at least use it in a real situation on a relatively regular basis, which is one of the main reasons to learn any language. Language is, first and foremost, a means of communication. Learning a language that you will never communicate in is missing a LOT of what it means to learn a language…
And your second, third and fourth languages get easier and easier. So unless you are convinced you are done with learning for life it makes sense to stick with the easy and obvious stuff for your first second language.