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What to do when you can’t choose? | ||
Tags: Wanderlust | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Jeffers Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4899 days ago 2151 posts - 3960 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German | Message 17 of 23 30 November 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
Brilliant post, Cavesa. And she's right, you don't have much choice but to work hard at German and Mandarin. You've signed up for a French course, so I would put that in the second tier of priority. Especially since you've already had some contact with French, and Assimil courses in French are great for a large number of languages. I have an additional idea which will help you keep your interest in the other languages alive, but also force you to stick to the priority languages: get a resource or two in each of the languages you are interested in, but buy them in German if possible. If you can't get a German resource, get one in French. The purpose is that you will allow yourself to use them when your German/French is good enough. You can flick through them all you like, and you might get a sense of some of the important features of the language. But until your German/French gets to a high level, don't work through them formally.
Yes, sorry, I'm guilty of referring to both Cavesa and Serpent as he. To be fair, REM is the name of a rock group made up of men. If you google Cavesa, you get pictures of caves and cars (I'm not into either, but they seem masculine). And Serpent... well wasn't Slytherin a man? On the other hand, I've also referred to Elexi as she, and I think actually Elexi is a he (but anything ending in a long "ee" sound is feminine in Hindi, so....) Edited by Jeffers on 30 November 2014 at 7:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 18 of 23 30 November 2014 at 7:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cavesa was my first character in my most beloved pc game ;-) And I got the name from a
name generator on the game's website. I left her for a mage though. Oh, and thanks, Jeffers :-) It is very true German and French will open much wider options when it comes to learning material. French comes not only with Assimil and German comes with valuable resources for languages Germans are "more likely" to learn than English natives. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 19 of 23 30 November 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
As far as the word "serpent" goes, it's a masculine noun in many languages, so that's bound to influence a person's way of thinking. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Rem Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3747 days ago 66 posts - 96 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French | Message 20 of 23 30 November 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don’t know why people tend to automatically assume that the person typing is a man
until told otherwise, but it is common, especially when playing online games. Play a male character and you’re assumed to be a bloke...Play a female character and you’re assumed to be a bloke playing a female character. lol I think I’ve finally made a decision for my languages. I’m going with... German Mandarin French Czech I’m going to leave Italian and Spanish for now, until I have a more solid grasp of French and I definitely think that Thai would be too much work alongside Mandarin (especially as I’m still in the beginner stages). The tones are confusing enough without having to worry about getting them muddled with another set from a different language. o.O German and Mandarin will obviously be my main focus, with French 3rd and Czech 4th. If it gets too hectic I’ll drop Czech for a while, but I’m going to give it a shot with all 4 to begin with. The good news here is that it looks like Assimil have a Czech course with a German base, so maybe I can look into using that later on. :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nieng Zhonghan Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Antarctica Joined 3661 days ago 108 posts - 315 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese*, Spanish, Galician Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, Armenian, Mongolian Studies: Old English, Russian, English, German, Korean, Mandarin | Message 21 of 23 01 December 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think you did the right thing for not studying Mandarin and Thai at same time,
assuming that you have no previous experience in any other tonal languages. It is not that Thai is that difficult, but it is better to reach a decent level in Mandarin first. As for Czech, a great book that helped me a lot is called “an essential grammar” that you may find in Amazon UK or any other bookstore. Pay attention into the Czech morphology (word formation, for instance, prefixes and suffixes); it is not as scary as I was told. Since you wrote that you like grammar, that book might be a good one for starters. In case you have Czech books at your university’s library, take a look at it first. You may also find interesting the czechclass101 series. It is not the best among the 101 series, but it has been useful in the past. Anyway, good luck! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Slayertplsko Heptaglot Newbie Slovakia Joined 4823 days ago 24 posts - 29 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, FrenchB2, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish | Message 22 of 23 01 December 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'll certainly remember your sex from now on. :) 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 23 of 23 01 December 2014 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's feminine in Portuguese and Spanish :-) But I didn't know that when choosing it. And in Russian it's zmeja, which is also feminine - I believe it has cognates in pretty much all Slavic languages. (And more importantly you'll see my obviously female name and photo if you check my profile - that's true about many other members too. Well, this assumes someone is cis-gender.) TBH I actually tend to assume that everyone whose username ends in -a is female. Like ellasevia, kujichagulia or daegga too... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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