My experience trying to pick up a Slavic language
Hi everyone!
First of all, I wanted to make clear that my goal in writing this post is not primarily to ask for advice (although advice is welcomed, of course) but just to share my experience and hopefully learn from your experiences, in case you have had similar ones in this regard.
As the title says, I am having trouble trying to make up my mind as to which amongst all the Slavic languages I want to learn. I have repeatedly started to learn, say, Russian, but after I while a quit and say to myself "let's try Ukrainian, it seems a little easier and I am more likely to visit Ukraine than Russia", but after some weeks learning Ukrainian, I say to myself "Maybe I should come back to Russian", because I love classical Russian literature, for example, but then, after a couple of weeks learning Russian again I say to myself "You know, you are not very likely to travel to Russia, why don't you learn Czech? You have always wanted to travel to the Czech Republic, you love Czech composers like Dvorák and Smetana", then I start learning some Czech, and then... You get the picture.
My "problem" is that, although I have a strong interest in foreign languages in general and Slavic languages in particular, I don't have a particular reason to learn one of them specifically: I am not planning to visit a Slavic country, I don't have a partner who comes from one of these countries, I don't need one of these languages in particular for my job, etc. In addition to that, it is obvious that I have problems keeping the focus on one thing. Also, it's it not that I want to, say, "brag" or something but it's true that I have a wide range of cultural interests and at the same time I tend to associate the interest for the language to the interest for the culture, so when I listen to a piece by Chopin, I find myself thinking "I should give Polish a go", and then, if a week later I am reading a translation of a novel by the Czech writer Milan Kundera, I think "Maybe it would be better to shift to Czech", but then the next week a buy a CD by Tchaikovsky and then...
I know it's ok just to dabble in a few languages if you don't have the intention to learn one of them really well, but the truth is that I actually would like to learn (at least) one Slavic language well and then use that knowledge to learn another or a few more, and I know that you cannot learn two similar languages at the same time, so I really would like to pick one, stick to it and learn it to a decent level.
I know all the classic advice: choose the one that you feel more attached to (but I can find emotional/cultural ties to almost all of them), or just choose the one who has more resources (that would be Russian, of course) or choose one which is well connected with the rest of them, so that it's easier to learn the others afterwards (some people say that would be Slovak, other people say Croatian, maybe also Ukrainian), and so on and so forth. I know all these pieces of advice are reasonable (I would myself use them to help other people) but the truth is that they haven't helped my so far.
I guess I am not alone, or at least I want to think so! :-)
Has anyone had similar problems? I mean, not necessarily with Slavic languages, but in general. I'd love to read your experiences. As I said, my main goal it's not to collect advice (although it will be welcomed) but to feel I am not alone in this :-)
Bye for now!