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Czech, Polish, Greek? case heavy langs | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 38 30 October 2013 at 10:44am | IP Logged | |||||
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I was thinking of adding Czech or Polish to my hit list for languages.
The main reason is because I think languages with free word order and lots of morphological case are really cool. Latin is on my hit list for this reason, and for its close connection with the most important learning language for me - Spanish. However, I can't help feeling that it is a bit pointless to learn a language that no one speaks, unless you are an enthusiastic classicist (I'm not), so I thought a Slavic language might be a good alternative to learning Latin. However, I'm not sure that mere interest in case systems is enough to sustain me through such a difficult task. My commitment to learning Spanish is sustained ultimately by a feeling of it being an important part of my identity (my mother's side of my family is Spanish). This doesn't apply to Czech or Polish. So I suppose my question is especially directed at learners of Czech or Polish who don't have Czech of Polish ancestry. Why did you start learning Czech/Polish? How has it enriched your life? What sustains you in your learning? What do you like about the languages and the associated cultures, literature, cinema etc.? If you've visited or lived in Poland or the Czech Republic, what do you like about those countries? Edited by samfrances on 30 October 2013 at 12:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 38 30 October 2013 at 12:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I've added Modern Greek to the list of possibilities, since it also has morphological case, and culturally Greece seems superficially similar to Spain (but that may be a perception based on inaccurate stereotypes that lump Mediterranean cultures together). Also, I like warm countries and Mediterranean food :). I'm not sure whether word order is as free in modern Greek as in Slavic languages, though.
Same question as in my original post. 1 person has 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 3 of 38 30 October 2013 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I do have a bit of Polish ancestry, and I'm also fascinated by the similarities with Russian. And I like the country a lot. There's fantastic literature (hehe, in both senses) and thanks to Euro-2012 the infrastructure is pretty good for Eastern Europe.
Why choose only out of these ones btw? Finnish and Hungarian have much more impressive case systems :P And apart from Bulgarian and Macedonian, all Slavic languages have cases. Also, you don't need to learn an "entire" language to see how they work. Read something about linguistics if that's what you are actually interested in. Find free resources for languages with cases and learn how they use them. Frankly speaking, I'd say it's better to just start multiple languages, compare them, learn enough to satisfy your curiosity... if any of them is your destiny, it will stick. If not, you'll learn a lot about cases :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 38 30 October 2013 at 3:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
I want to "learn", as opposed to "learn facts about", a language where a case system is used instead of word order. I want to see if I can do it, and I want to "experience" my mind working in a different way. Does that makes sense?
I suppose I want to walk before I can run. 15 / 18 cases! That's a bit ambitious for my first case-heavy language! :) Edited by samfrances on 30 October 2013 at 3:09pm 1 person has 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 5 of 38 30 October 2013 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Word order isn't totally irrelevant in languages with cases, just LESS relevant for
showing grammatical function in the sentence. Instead of denoting the syntactical function, it serves as an element of stress (and often does so even in languages that do not use case systems, where differing word orders are apt to render emphasis anyway, such as Breton). Even things like the lack of an article can be rendered in, say, Russian by using a certain word order over another. 15/18 cases is actually easier in my opinion. It's just tacking a preposition on to the end instead of writing it out before the word. I don't think that is that hard a concept to grasp - think of it as saying "car-in" instead of "in the car". Edited by tarvos on 30 October 2013 at 3:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4690 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 6 of 38 30 October 2013 at 3:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you are only interested in learning cases, I recommend learning Finnish or Hungarian. Their declension is very regular, so you will be able to concentrate on learning noun cases without having to sruggle with the convoluted Slavic morphology.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| samfrances Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4043 days ago 81 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 7 of 38 30 October 2013 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | |||||
Sorry, I wasn't clear. I meant languages where word order isn't the primary way of showing grammatical function, but where case plays this role.
I suppose, but this is only the case if a language has only one declension (I don't know how many Finnish or Hungarian has). If it has more, then its at the very least like having different postpositions for different groups of nouns. Plus postpositions for object, indirect object etc. I'm not saying that cases are a "difficult concept" exactly, but then e.g. Spanish verb conjugations aren't complex conceptually, but its still interesting, rewarding and sometimes challenging to get my brain using them properly. 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 8 of 38 30 October 2013 at 4:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Take Hungarian.
You'll get 18+ cases, and the word order is really screwy in that it's hard to nail it down beyond the rule that the element that you wish to focus on immediately precedes the verb. A lot of times I've had my grammatical utterances in Hungarian rearranged by native speakers on the grounds that their version "sounded better". If you're using Latin as a point of reference with its "noun classes" in declension (which I strongly discourage since you're trying to use a shortcut by looking at an Uralic language as if it were some wayward Indo-European one, but that's just me), then Hungarian has one declensional class. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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