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| Bismuth Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 4341 days ago 30 posts - 46 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Icelandic, Spanish | Message 1 of 4 27 December 2012 at 1:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Just wanted to leave you some warm greetings here. My name is Daniel, almost 19 years old, born in St. Petersburg and grew up in Germany. Naturally speaking russian and German fluently.. though I have to say that my English is far better than my russian, as I only use a very little pool of vocabulary while talking to my parents (and other relatives).. I've never bothered to learn russian or actually write it, but when your parents speak to you in another language, I guess it will just come to you by itself. I'm able to read simple russian and also have decent conversation as I noticed when I was hold an entire day in a police station in moscow.. stupid story, but this way at least I figured out that my russian is well enough without any further learning.. That's what I thought about doing, because it's compelling to be able to read russian at a high level as I'm stunned by the work of Leo Tolstoi.. no way I could read his books at my current level, but I think it would just bother the hell out of me to learn a language I'm already speaking at a basic level my entire life.
Well, similiar to russian, I didn't had to do anything for my English.. it just came to me by itself as I love music, movies, the internet and travelling.. never been to the US or UK, but spent 5 weeks in Australia and New Zealand and also travelled for about 7 weeks through some european countries by myself doing couchsurfing, hiking, hitchhiking, etc.. My English improved a lot after this experience of speaking English in my everyday life for quite a time. The only language I had to do something for, is Latin.. finished my final Latin exam last year, but as I never spoke it, I guess it doesn't count as one of my languages, right ? Though I must say it's such an awesome help for me while learning Spanish, because that's what I do right now. Just started about 2 weeks ago and I find it pretty easy to learn vocabs and grammar.. The partner of my aunt is chilean and told me that he was impressed by my pronunciation and my knowledge after just 2 weeks.. he said he believes I could get to have conversation in Spanish in about 2 months.. he is a polyglot also speaking English, french, Italian and portuguese, so I hope he knows what he is talking about.. I'm going to South America next year in order to travel and to get some experience. Confident that I will master Spanish by the time then. Must say that I'm a little crazed about languages atm.. Wanting to learn japanese for quite a few years now, but never did it because I knew it was just because of me being a huge fan of animes and mangas.. didn't want to start learning japanese just like one of those fanboys or fangirls, who don't know what they doing.. still don't have the 'feeling' that it's time to do that, but I'm expecting to do it after obtaining a fluent level in Spanish. A language that is driving me much crazier right now is icelandic.. met 2 icelanders in estonia and just can't get out of my head how beautiful this language is. I even watch icelandic videos on youtube for fun, because the mere listening to icelandic is pure entertainment for me.. I want to learn it pretty bad.. but as I don't want it to hamper my Spanish and I have a lot of 'fear' about this ridiculously difficult language, I couldn't go on and buy this selflearner I already found for myself, so far.. I still can't decide whether I should just start doing it or not.. Plus I must say that I'm actually in my finals right now.. writting my last exams in january.. so annoyed by that. I should normaly focus on geography, maths and chemistry rather than on languages, but I think I just can't do it.. lucky that my oral exam will be in English, which is going to be a walk in the park. When I'm finally finished with school I will be able to put more effort in my Spanish.. can't wait for that.. What do you think about learning icelandic beside of Spanish ? Should I risk it ? Greetings! Daniel 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6693 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 2 of 4 27 December 2012 at 9:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Welcome to the forum.
Icelandic isn't ridiculously difficult, but you will discover that the resources aren't nearly as plentiful as they are in Spanish, and you will have much less opportunity to use it. Funnily enough your German background will help you because there are things in Icelandic like 4 cases and a subjunctive which won't bother you, whereas Anglophone learners may be in for a minor surprise. I can't say whether you should learn Icelandic or not, but you shouldn't do here and now it if it means that your Spanish project gets sidetracked. Edited by Iversen on 27 December 2012 at 2:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6587 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 4 27 December 2012 at 10:38am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi and welcome!
Just my two cents, it's better not to start a new language during an 'uncertain' stage in life. Start when the rest of your life is settled and more or less routine. As for your Russian, formal study will indeed be boring at your level, but you can learn to read books by reading books:) Start with something less difficult than Tolstoy and eventually you'll be able to read his works as well. Reading is exactly where native speakers get their vocabulary from. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bismuth Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 4341 days ago 30 posts - 46 votes Speaks: German*, English, Russian Studies: Icelandic, Spanish | Message 4 of 4 27 December 2012 at 4:17pm | IP Logged | ||
Though I'm not in an 'uncertain' stage in life, I see your point. I mean I'm very confident that I will get through the exams.. I already got 40% of my points pre-exams and the points in exams are worth four times than the points I got pre-exams.. I seriously can't see what I should fear. But I must say I just decided to wait a little bit, indeed.. I think I will have a much better feeling when I know I can allow myself giving 100% to that. There is a German idiom to that: "Gut Ding will Weile haben." ,) I think I will just take it slowly then. I mean soon I'm going to have all time in the world, right ? ,) btw: I really enjoy this forum so far! Greetings! EDIT: we'll see about my russian.. as I said I can only read in a very slow way.. most of the times I'm surprised how some words are actually spelled, because we pronounce them quite differently. It's very weird to be so good and at the same time so bad in your mother tongue. I want to work on that sometime.. Though I must say russian is not one of my favorite languages.. Of course it has it's own beauty, but I really don't fancy it all to much. Edited by Bismuth on 27 December 2012 at 5:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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