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European Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| caters Newbie United States Joined 3906 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: French | Message 1 of 24 09 March 2014 at 7:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Here is a list of the european languages:
Albanian Armenian Lithuanian Samogitian Latvian Latgalian New Curonian Welsh Cornish Breton Irish Scottish Gaelic Manx Modern Scots German Dutch Danish Norwegian Swedish Elfdalian Övdalian Faroese Icelandic Greek Spanish French Portuguese Catalan Italian Latin Romanian Romansh and so on and so forth How should I learn these languages as for words and phrases? Also Some I know a little of. These are the ones: Latin Spanish French Italian Greek(only know the alphabet though) German Should I learn those first and then more difficult languages? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5590 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes  | Message 2 of 24 09 March 2014 at 9:47am | IP Logged | ||
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You are lucky: Elfdalian and Övdalian are the same language, your list becomes an item shorter; so you can go a bit more for a short (s)troll through other languages.
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| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4459 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 3 of 24 09 March 2014 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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If it's a geographical list, he's missing languages such as Basque, Finnish, Hungarian, etc. so the list gets longer.
If he's talking about indo-european languages, he's missing Iranian languages (Persian, Ossetian, Balochi, etc.), Slavic languages such (Polish, Russian, Croatian, etc.), and Indo-Aryan ones. And that's even longer. @Caters, assuming that indeed, you'd like to learn all the indoeuropean languages, let's say to a basic level of fluency, I would take one or two for each family group which helps with the others. For instance Spanish for the romance family (you'll be able to practice in the States and it will be easier to learn name genders), and Farsi for the Iranian (more people, more sources, little diaspora in US). German by itself, I don't really think you need it for Scandinavian ones, coming from English. And for Slavic ones, Polish it's ok for starters for Western-Slavic (again, more people and more sources, and a big diaspora in US), but I don't think it really helps for other groups (Southern or Eastern). I don't think Latin is useful. Edited by drygramul on 09 March 2014 at 12:36pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| caters Newbie United States Joined 3906 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: French | Message 4 of 24 09 March 2014 at 10:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latin is useful in science because in science latin is used all the time in naming things and stuff.
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| caters Newbie United States Joined 3906 days ago 6 posts - 6 votes Studies: French | Message 5 of 24 09 March 2014 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
If you look both of them up on wikipedia you will notice that there is a distinction 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3932 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 6 of 24 09 March 2014 at 11:11pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, it's a useful key to the modern Romance languages for one who does not already have another key (such as Italian in your case). Does Latin add something that wouldn't be gained by learning, say, Spanish or Italian first? Well, Latin is certainly the lynchpin, but learning it first is probably not the most time-efficient way. It's a very "grammar-heavy" language, and in the time it takes to get good in Latin, one probably could have picked up Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese all three to a respectable level. However! Because Latin is so grammar-heavy, and is one of the two giants of classical language education in the West, students of Latin will learn a lot about language overall, and thus will later be better students of whatever other languages they may study. I had Latin lessons at school from the age of 11 onwards, and I learned things in Latin years before I met them in English lessons, and even years before meeting them in other modern language lessons, such as French, which I had started at the same time as Latin. Add to this that it can be quite pleasant in and of itself (and fairly accessible at least as far as a good intermediate level due to such good courses as the "Cambridge Latin Course" books), and Latin may not be such a bad bet after all. If counseling an anglophonic monoglot as to what language to learn first, if there are not other important factors influencing the decision, I'd usually suggest Spanish, though, given that it's objectively quite easy (simple grammar, comparatively small vocabulary, phonetically straightforward) and also (which is where it wins out over Italian) very useful and widely spoken. That said, one of the benefits of learning Italian before Spanish (as I did) is that it sounds better to accidentally use an Italian word when speaking Spanish than it does to accidentally use a Spanish word when speaking Italian ;) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6588 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 7 of 24 10 March 2014 at 6:21am | IP Logged | ||
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| DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3932 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 8 of 24 10 March 2014 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
Well, I didn't apply the same standards exactly, did I? I said "in the time it takes to get good in Latin" (by which I mean for example reading unadapted Virgil, and writing fairly freely) whereas only required a level that's "quite respectable" (so let's say a basic fluency, maybe B2 or even B1) in the others. Also worthy of note is the choice of languages; three simple and closely related languages. Learn one, and the next becomes much easier. Learn two, and the third is super-easy. It's not like I suggested one could learn, say, Finnish+Icelandic+Arabic in a comparable time. But yes, of course I also exaggerated somewhat for emphasis - I hoped that was clear, but in case it wasn't, yes, there was an element of hyperbole. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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