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Yet another ’my next language’ thread :) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4036 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 32 27 January 2015 at 11:04am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone.
For this year I have some desired goals: master French and Spanish, improve a little bit my Dutch and add a couple of languages. In first instance I wanted to do Russian this year but having the goal of mastering two languages it's probably better to wait until I can dedicate enough time and study it intensively. Therefore I'm considering to start two new languages (the first one in April, the second one in October) which I don't have the goal to actually speak them, but only to understand them. I have some caveat for these two languages: - presence of an Assimil course - presence of interesting multimedia (podcasts, movies). Literature is a plus - not a romance one - not German - not Russian - not Mandarin - goal achievable whithin 1 year of non-intensive study (20 minutes of Assimil per day in the beginning, 45m to 1.5h everyday of podcasts in the second stage) I'll read all your proposals and I will think about it during the whole year :) Thank you in advance! Edited by tristano on 27 January 2015 at 11:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4628 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 2 of 32 27 January 2015 at 11:29am | IP Logged | ||
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If I understand you correctly you do not want to do Russian because of its level of difficulty and you don't have the time for it? In that case, that would probably exclude other Slavonic languages as well. As you also exclude Romance languages and German, why not consider a Scandinavian language? There are Assimil courses for all three, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, and there is plenty of material out there to listen to, movies to watch and books to read. The grammar is not overly complicated (comparable to Dutch), so you should be able to reach a decent level after a year of study. Obviously, if you are not motivated by a Scandinavian language you should think of something else.
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| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4036 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 3 of 32 27 January 2015 at 11:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi @Ogrim,
I like how Scandinavian languages sound! I want to compare different possibilities. Good to know that they have nice material! I'm excluding Russian not for the difficulty, but because it is a language that I want to learn how to produce it, not only understand it. I won't exclude the other slavonic because of the difficulty itself. (overly complicated spelling systems would be much worse than a highly structured grammar considering my goal.) Edited by tristano on 27 January 2015 at 11:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| nikolic993 Diglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 3769 days ago 106 posts - 205 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: Italian, Mandarin, Romanian, Persian | Message 4 of 32 27 January 2015 at 12:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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Learn Serbian, it fulfills your requirements, minus the interesting podcasts part. :D
After learning it you can easily transition into other Slavic languages. - presence of an Assimil course + - presence of interesting multimedia (podcasts, movies). Literature is a plus + - not a romance one + - not German + - not Russian + - not Mandarin + - goal achievable on 6 months to 1 year of non-intensive study (20 minutes of Assimil per day in the beginning, 1.30h everyday of podcasts in the second stage) +? - easy to read (and to pronounce since you're Italian) + Ogrim's suggestions also sound good. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6586 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 5 of 32 27 January 2015 at 12:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why not just learn to understand Russian? ;) You can activate it later, it will be much easier anyway when you understand what people are saying to you :)
Or any language you eventually want to speak, like German too. Maybe not Mandarin ;) Also, my recommendation to wait with the Romance languages was with the assumption that your next project will be massive and intensive. But if you want to chill out, honestly you can simply listen to native materials from the beginning, learn the pronunciation and start reading. Well, this would be a bit harder in Romanian, so maybe your choice wasn't wrong after all ;) But honestly, I kept putting off Italian so much because I didn't dare to start it until I was "ready". I started Esperanto, Yiddish and Belarusian and basically failed to make any significant progress in them. Then I became a football fan and Italian added itself naturally to my list, first as a passive-only language, later I started writing, reading, speaking gradually :) I could say/write surprisingly much when I finally tried. Of course I had the advantage of a B1 Portuguese, but I also found myself bored by the grammar and I was still in the process of finding ways to avoid traditional grammar books. Or I remember you being curious about Afrikaans. This could be a fun project as long as it doesn't make you drop Dutch. I don't know enough to be sure but I think it can help you with non-standard Dutch? And this bring with it some opportunities to practise your Dutch more. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4628 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 6 of 32 27 January 2015 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||
I'm sure you will get a lot of different advice, but just to develop on my suggestion. If you decide on a Scandinavian language I think I recommend you to go for Swedish. I know, not very patriotic of me, but the problem with Norwegian is that you will run into two written standards (bokmål and nynorsk) which by the way also have a number of variations within each of them, and there are a a lot of different dialects which are widely used on TV and radio. With regard to Danish, I think everyone agrees it has the most difficult pronunciation (and the pronunciation that differs the most from the written standard). With regard to Swedish, the written standard is clear and although Swedish also has dialects, my impression is that they are less used in "official" contexts like TV news etc. Besides, Sweden has a lot of intersting writers and they've made som good films over the years. Edited by Ogrim on 27 January 2015 at 2:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4510 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 7 of 32 27 January 2015 at 4:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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With regard to Scandinavian languages, it depends on what you want to do with them.
literature --> probably Swedish, but any of the 3 major Scandinavian written standards is fine. Swedish is easiest to get for free. movies/tv --> Danish, with a big gap to Swedish (forget Norwegian, it's a side dish) linguistic curiosity --> Norwegian Assimil --> Swedish > Danish > Norwegian (Bokmål) I agree that Danish has the most difficult pronunciation of the 3, but in the long run it's easier than understanding all the variations in Norway. The difficulty lies mainly in active language use, ie. pronouncing the words yourself. Understanding is manageable. Strong tendency to use standard or standard-near Danish. Edited by daegga on 27 January 2015 at 4:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mooby Senior Member Scotland Joined 6094 days ago 707 posts - 1220 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Polish | Message 8 of 32 27 January 2015 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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My only advice is, beware of relying exclusively on the deductive approach to making your decison. You can end up in a logical time-loop. Engage a bit of your heart. A bit of intuition. Which one excites you the most, however difficult / obscure? Do you have any personal connections / friends / passions associated with any of the possible candidates?
I'm not suggesting you suspend rationality altogether, but sometimes choices hinge on less rational factors, and these can provide the motivation to sustain your choice. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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