Learn families not languages (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Learn families not languages
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24 messages over 3 pages: 1 2 3

tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 4038 days ago
905 posts - 1262 votes

Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

Message 17 of 24

23 April 2014 at 8:32am | IP Logged

@Henkkles, are you studying all the languages at a conversational level?
For example, I will probably study the languages at a conversational level only for
Dutch, German, Swedish and maybe another one if I move there while for the others the
passive knowledge can be just enough for me (who knows).
1 person has voted this message useful

Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4244 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes

Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

Message 18 of 24

23 April 2014 at 10:54am | IP Logged

tristano wrote:

I plan on getting to a conversational level in all living languages yes. I'll study the dead ones such as Old English, Old Norse, Old High German to the best reading comprehension I can.
1 person has voted this message useful

Solfrid Cristin
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2011 & 2012
Senior Member
Norway
Joined 5325 days ago
4143 posts - 8864 votes

Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian
Studies: Russian

Message 19 of 24

23 April 2014 at 12:27pm | IP Logged

Henkkles wrote:

Well there are materials for Icelandic and Faroese in all the Nordic languages as well as
German. There's more than enough stuff in English to get started with Icelandic as well. I am covering the
Germanic family as well, but I study them in North-West pairs, for example German-Icelandic, Dutch-
Faroese, etc.

Once my knowledge of Russian is strong enough, I should be able to quite easily branch out to the other East
Slavic languages, whence I would then go to the West Slavic and finally to the South Slavic languages. It'll
take me at least a year more of Russian study to get to a level that I'd feel confident enough to branch
outwards though. Or maybe I would study one language of each branch at a time, like Ukrainian-Polish-
BCSM, who knows really.

I would also like to learn the Romance family.

These are all just illusions of grandeur more than "plans" but given fertile circumstances it could happen. The
point in learning families is of course that learning closely related languages is always less of a hassle than
starting completely anew, and one could argue that you'd "deserve" to get something easy after learning the
laborous first language of a certain family ;) Also once you learn the first language of a family you don't only
learn a language, but you learn a lot about the family as well, and lot of this knowledge is transferrable to the
rest of the family.

We have nothing against illusions of grandeur. It is how most of us live :-)
4 persons have voted this message useful

Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7147 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes

20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish

Message 20 of 24

23 April 2014 at 6:05pm | IP Logged

FuroraCeltica wrote:

Someone once told me you shouldn't view target languages individually. Instead, you
should group your targets by language family and then learn the targets in each family.
Only then do you 'cross' into a new language family

Thoughts?

This only makes sense if you have sufficient philological interest and there are sufficient resources in at least a few of the group's languages. Otherwise the suggestion is as (un)wise as learning for example Turkish, Mandarin, Finnish, Guaraní, Swahili, Tamil and Romanian in any order as foreign languages. An equally (un)wise suggestion would be for me to drop Polish and Slovak and improve my competency in Estonian, Hungarian and Northern Saami before (re)studying the Slavonic languages.
1 person has voted this message useful

fnord
Triglot
Groupie
Switzerland
Joined 5024 days ago
71 posts - 124 votes

Speaks: German*, Swiss-German, English
Studies: Luxembourgish, Dutch

Message 21 of 24

23 April 2014 at 10:29pm | IP Logged

FuroraCeltica wrote:

Do as you please.

If tackling multiple languages feels rewarding to you, I don't see why you shouldn't approach them concurrently. After all, language learning is a lot about intrinsic motivation and persistence. Whatever helps you at that you
might try and incorporate into your learning. I'd guess it will often more than offset any "additional" challenges
and difficulties you encounter by learning multiple languages at the together.

Though, you should know best how your mind deals with potential mix-ups and confusion. Personally, I often
find contrasting differences and comparisons easier to memorize than singular facts / bits of information. E.g.,
"language A forms the plural by appending XY to the the noun stem, whereas (related) language B differs by
using..." might be easier than just memorizing "in A, form plural by appending XY to stem" individually
for multiple languages. Common memorization techniques often rely on association.

On the other hand, you might - for personal or professional reasons maybe - want/need to learn a single
language as good and/or as fast as you can, that is maximize your learning outcome in one
particular language. In this case, I would, by all means, set aside any related languages and instead stick to
and focus solely on your target language.
1 person has voted this message useful

Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4659 days ago
1199 posts - 2192 votes

Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

Message 22 of 24

23 April 2014 at 10:42pm | IP Logged

Learn families not languages is a bit extreme,
the best formula is to learn 2 languages from the same family (if possible):

English+another Germanic lang.
2 Romance langu.
2 Slavic lang.
2 Indo-aryan lang.
2 Dravidian lang
2 Amerind lang.
2 Mon–Khmer lang.,
2 Tai lang.,
2 Austronesian lang.,
2 Uralic lang.,
2 Semitic lang.,
2 Bantu lang.
2 Sino-Tibetan lang.
2 Turkic lang.,
2 Language isolates,
2 creoles

Edited by Medulin on 23 April 2014 at 10:48pm
1 person has voted this message useful

lichtrausch
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5951 days ago
525 posts - 1072 votes

Speaks: English*, German, Japanese
Studies: Korean, Mandarin

Message 23 of 24

24 April 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged

Medulin wrote:

the best formula is to learn 2 languages from the same family (if possible):

By what logic?
3 persons have voted this message useful

Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6694 days ago
9078 posts - 16473 votes

Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

Message 24 of 24

24 April 2014 at 2:53am | IP Logged

One more person here who can't see the logic. Some families have a lot of languages with a long and interesting history, lots of literature and culturally important works, lots of home pages and lots of learning materials - so you can easily find half a dozen suitable target languages. Others have just one language with those things, but maybe a couple of others with very limited resources, and some have just one language - like Korean or Basque (unless you plan to learn all its dialects one by one). So why make the number two something special?

5 persons have voted this message useful

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