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Me and my web of languages | ||
Tags: United Kingdom (UK) | Language Teaching | Latin | Introduction | Italian | English | German | French | Spanish | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Members profiles |  | |
 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3886 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 3 12 February 2014 at 12:41am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll talk more about the latter than the former, but you'll get at least some view of the former via my treatment of the latter:
My "core languages", that I speak either very well or at least fairly well: DE, EN, ES, FR, IT. I see this as a super-important group, because it is reasonable that anyone operating in Europe really ought to speak these languages. To this end, I currently teach these five languages, plus Latin. I have a very strong desire to add to this three languages, AR, RU, ZH. The reason for this is that the official UN languages are AR, EN, ES, FR, RU, ZH, so those are the remaining UN official languages in which I'm not yet proficient. They are languages spoken by remarkably many people, and so I'd feel silly to not be able to speak a language that so very many millions of other people can, never mind the inherent utility in speaking them. There's also a chic value to each of them, of course. I am thus studying these three languages presently. Some observations: AR: Right now my ability is only at a beginner level, having started quite recently indeed, and my resources involve Arabic as spoken in Saudia Arabia and Egypt. I see many reasons to learn each of the main dialects of Arabic, so I'm quite torn about narrowing it down, and I don't even have resources for some of my conceptually preferred dialects. For example, the Maghreb culture has a great charm for me, but I have no resources for its dialect presently. For the moment, I'm going with whatever I can find for any dialect that will help me get to a position where I understand enough about the language to make informed decisions about the progress to seek next. For now I don't mind terrible if I end up with a quasiunintelligible hodge-podge of dialects; I can fix that later. For now I just need to understand it as a language, in the sense of a decent overview. I've yet to visit any country where Arabic is a major language, but look forward to doing so. RU: Happy with my progress in Russian. For the moment, I speak bad Russian quite well ;) I've been focussing on pragmatism, utility, and comfort for the time being, and when my immediate needs in some other languages are satiated, I have a rather weighty book "A Comprehensive Course in Russian" that should iron out most of my grammatical mistakes. I've not spent much time in Russia, but while I was there, I found most strangers just dismissed my foreign nature and interacted with me in Russian in a bored fashion (this pleased me; I hate people detecting that I am English and switching to English if they're able), and most people who knew who I was (I was there for work reasons; I was managing an international company at the time and was looking to collaborate with our Russian counterpart) were delighted that I had the level I did in Russian, although they mostly spoke excellent English, and preferred to use this with me for the purposes of pragmatism when discussing work-related things. For minor social matters, it was pleasant to use Russian. I haven't yet tackled Russian literature (I don't think a RU translation of Harry Potter counts), but look forward to reading Dostoevsky in the original. ZH: Presently very poor ability. Have made glancing efforts for a long time, but this is the year where I will focus a bit and get my main fundamentals down, and next year is the year I'll nail it like it's never been nailed before. By "fundamentals", I mean that regards reading / writing, I have the full set of radicals understood, and I am currently working an Anki deck of the 3000 most common Hanzi, which I expect to know like second nature by the end of the year. Regards speaking / listening, I plan to actually be comfortable with the tonal nature of the language, which so far still feels alien to me. Then with these basic foundations laid in 2014, I plan to use that basis to actually learn Chinese properly, enjoying a good head start from my 2014-based efforts, in 2015. Other languages of particular interest: Scandinavian set: DA, IS, NO, SE. I learned some basic conversational Icelandic a good while ago, when I was visiting the country. After that, written Danish has seemed to me to chiefly be Icelandic with the grammar ripped out. That said, after watching a fair bit of "Nordic Noir" chiefly in Swedish, Swedish is now much easier to my ear than Danish. After eight or so hours of "Män som hatar kvinnor" et al (presented to anglophonic audiences as "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", thus completely missing the point), Swedish seemed very natural to me. As for the series "Bron|Broen" (The Bridge, a detective series in Swedish and Danish, centered around the bridge connecting the two countries and police departments collaborating to deal with cross-border crimes), as I commented recently to a multilingual Norwegian friend: "I must say, I was with the Swedes looking blank when Martin first addressed the group of Swedish cops. Often when they're talking, people will be talking quite clear Swedish, and he'll reply with something [that sounds to me] like "Gryeøaœiuɛaɔt. Jaeœthgh tieullth glœietieønt, Saga". While the Norwegians may have dibs on Metal (the genre of music), Danish is clearly built for... What kind of Metal is it? The one that's all "RØØØØDGHRØØØØURRR MEURDGHTH FLØØØØGHRRR". This said, next on my "to watch" list is "Forbrydelsen" (Presented to anglophonic audiences by the name of "The Killing"), another detective show, this time entirely Danish), and after I've watched what that has to offer, I expect Danish will be much friendlier to my ear. Anyway, all this to say that I can understand quite well Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, and written Danish, but cannot yet speak any of them beyond the basics. (Finnish can wait; it's not a priority to me, for the crime of being in a completely alien language group, of little utility, and no special draw to me at present). I'm working quite actively on my Norwegian, but nothing close to intensively, so it'll still take a while. Dead languages: I have a good ability in Latin (studied it at school from age 11 to 18 with an excellent teacher throughout, and I don't praise teachers lightly; most of my language teachers at school were poor; only one good one comes to mind besides him, and a lot of poor ones). I have a modest ability in Ancient/Classical Greek (had some informal lunchtime lessons at school; otherwise have studied on my own), and am seeking to improve it. I have a nice book and some respectable SRS software, and use them in tiny sessions daily, with no pressing time constraints to my overall learning journey therein. I'll get good with the "80% frequency" Anki deck I have for vocabulary, get good with the grammatical content of my book and its sequel (John Taylor's "Greek to GCSE", a modest yet respectable foundation, it seems), and take things from there. Chances are that'll be enough to keep me happy for the time being. Miscellaneous: I speak and understand some Japanese, Greek, Lithuanian, Turkish, and Dutch, but definitely nothing to brag about; quite basic. The sort of beginner level that I think of as "holiday level". Of those, I'd like especially to get my Japanese up to a respectable level, but neither this year nor next year. First, I want to have a strong and comfortable ability in my main languages, ie, have expanded my "core languages" to not be just DE, EN, ES, FR, IT (and Latin, FWIW) as they currently are, but rather AR, DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, RU, ZH (and Latin and Classical/Ancient Greek, for what they're worth). The Scandinavian languages I'm mostly learning for fun and while I'm sure I'll continue them with pleasure, and to a good level too, I don't think I'll consider them like the aforementioned languages, and I almost certainly won't offer to teach them unless someone asks specifically. After I feel properly comfortable with Russian, I'm sure I'll want to get to decent grips with the other Slavic languages. For now, I'll settle for that I can hear Ukrainian or Serbian in a TV show and think "That Russian sounds funny; oh well, at least I can still understand it". Similarly I can understand Portuguese pretty well, and when I went to Portugal, people were surprised when asking me for how long I had studied Portuguese, assuming at least some months, when I responded "three days" (the trick was, I already spoke the closely related romance languages of ES/FR/IT, so I just did a 13-hour Michel Thomas Method course and winged conversational PT from there) After I feel properly comfortable with Arabic, I'll want to expand to Persian/Parsi/Farsi/Darsi/Tajik etc. Also on the hit list will be Urdu / Hindi, continuing the Eastwards walk and the theme of languages that are secretly pretty much the same, with different orthography. Urdu is of particular interest to me since there are a LOT of Urdu speakers in my country and the number is growing rapidly. I have a similar reason to have Polish on my hit list, but, as I've suggested, plan to nail Russian first before worrying about other Slavic languages. With the same idea, I'm sure I'll get to Cantonese eventually, but let me nail Mandarin first. Anyway, happy to be around such a bunch as this website seems to contain, and here's hoping for a mutually beneficial experience. SHORT VERSION:
* I'm working particularly on my Arabic, Mandarin, and Russian, as I consider those very important languages, and due to starting it much sooner, have made rather more progress in the latter one than the former two. * I am very casually learning Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian, at least, of the Scandinavian languages. * I have some ability in some other languages, and will improve those when my higher priority languages are at a happier level. * I am pleased to meet you. Edited by DavidStyles on 12 February 2014 at 12:55am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5207 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 2 of 3 12 February 2014 at 1:36am | IP Logged | ||
Wow! Welcome to the forum, DavidStyles! You will be a valuable addition. Looking forward to learning more about your language-learning style and cultural adventures using your languages. I love your description of your Russian:
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5134 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 3 of 3 13 February 2014 at 4:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Impressive! I thought I was on the same page when you mentioned DE, FR, ES, IT. Then I read a bit more and realised that your level of ambition and experience put my meagre efforts to shame! It sounds like your life revolves very much around languages, which must be quite stimulating.
PS: I think that after 4 or 5 episodes of The Killing you will find your ear for Danish develops very rapidly. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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