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Are some languages better to learn first? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| 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 17 of 43 03 February 2014 at 7:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The most common specific questions are whether Dutch (or something Scandinavian) makes sense before German, and whether Polish will make Russian easier. In the first case (hah), you won't escape from the German cases and genders anyway, and unless you actually love a different Germanic language, best just go ahead and start with German. As for the Slavic pair, both languages have many sounds that English doesn't contain. Polish uses digraphs while Russian uses a different alphabet. I've heard more than once about a learner of Russian who was just fascinated by the alphabet and then learned it quickly and got bored, not having enough interest in the language itself. Cyrillics are not different enough for learning an entire language first, although if you're a language geek, by all means find out how Polish, Czech and Croatian denote the sounds while sticking to the Latin alphabet. Not to cause any offence, but our lovely Cristina is the only person who's said after long-term study that Cyrillics are still harder than the Latin alphabet used by Polish, and she's got dyslexia. Yet she's still determined to learn Russian first. (Of course if you actually like Polish/find Russian too mainstream, learn Polish! It has an advantage of many Latin/Romance/German loan words too, though you'll only notice them if it's not your first foreign language :)))) On a more subjective level, Finnish and Portuguese look more neat than Estonian and Spanish. It's easier to go from folha to hoja, osso to hueso, yksitoista to üksteist, kylässäkäynti to külaskäik than the opposite. (and a lot of Estonian endings are the same as in colloquial Finnish) But of course if jäääär looks cooler to you than jää-ääri, learn Estonian ;) Edited by Serpent on 03 February 2014 at 7:19am 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 18 of 43 03 February 2014 at 10:24am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Hm. I actually think it is my masochistic side that governs that choice :-) Learning Russian still feels like running full speed head first into a brick wall. Repeatedly. The thing is that over time I have grown to love both the people and the language so much, that I could not possibly imagine giving it up. Russian is my Mount Everest, my Kilimanjaro, my marathon and my labour of love. Even Polish was easy compared to Russian. After a few evening classes I could begin to communicate in Poland. It took years before I was able to do the same in Russian. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4379 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 19 of 43 03 February 2014 at 10:47am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yes , i also think that the cyrillic alphabet is often underestimated . One thing is being able to read some
word here and there , another one reading relatively fluently without strain . Steve kaufmann also says that reading in russian is still harder than reading in czech although he has done much more russian than czech . 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4702 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 20 of 43 03 February 2014 at 4:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I am surprised to hear that, albysky. I was able to read, if not understand, Russian
very well after less than a year of study. In terms of knowing all the vocabulary, I had a ways to go, of course. But the act of reading a sentence or paragraph as a cohesive whole was not ever that challenging. 1 person has 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 21 of 43 03 February 2014 at 5:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Having studied so many languages using modified a Latinic script has left me able to process languages in that script more quickly than another script. I can read aloud a Turkish text with slightly less hesitation than a Serbian one in Cyrillic even though I know BCMS/SC much better than Turkish but the opposite case occurs when confronted by the same Turkish text but a Serbian one in Latinic. That is my stronger background in BCMS/SC and inherent bias toward Latinic script combine to make me more at ease reading aloud that Serbian text in Latinic than the Turkish one.
All of this is true despite the fact that when I worked through TY Serbian and Beginner's Serbian last year, I wrote down all of my answers to the exercises in Serbian Cyrillic regardless of the script used in the relevant text or instructions, and am at ease in writing Cyrillic cursive (plowing through Ukrainian over the last year and a half has also increased my comfort with Cyrillic). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4698 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 22 of 43 03 February 2014 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree. But the thing about Esperanto is that it introduces grammar forcibly so that a user of a new language is forced to learn those terms. I don't know Finnish well enough to judge, I'll leave you to it (but the languages I mentioned plus Latin were my school languages). The choice for Russian was then based on the fact it's a challenge, though if I had chosen Finnish I don't think I'd given up either.
Dutch has gender so you will have to learn that (the cases not so much unless you are interested in Dutch from the Golden Age). But it does lubricate a little bit. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4656 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 23 of 43 03 February 2014 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Man that sounds beautiful. Every time I listen to Portuguese it pushes me a bit closer to my "all the Romance languages" idea. 2 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 24 of 43 04 February 2014 at 8:12am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I know that Dutch has gender, and so do the Scandinavian languages, but I hear much less complaints about that than of der/die/das. Apart from someone who's determined to make Norwegian seem as difficult as Mandarin.
Basically, learning a language with an easier grammar first will not help you escape the more difficult grammar of a related language. I suppose the main factors, apart from interest, are resources and which methods you use. If they are like mine, yours or for example iguanamon's, learning the grammar from *interesting* examples can be great. But going through traditional textbooks will be extremely boring if you already understand much of the vocab and just need the grammar. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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