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Choosing a Slavic language | ||
Tags: Slavic Languages | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5718 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 9 of 32 30 July 2014 at 4:27pm | IP Logged |
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If you don't have any strong feelings towards any Slavic language, like liking the sound of it, visiting the country, wanting to work there, etc.then I'd say go for the biggest one. It will help you if you want to learn another Slavic language so you can't loose with that.
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| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4037 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 10 of 32 02 August 2014 at 1:07am | IP Logged |
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good point...
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| Kartof Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5056 days ago 391 posts - 550 votes Speaks: English*, Bulgarian*, Spanish Studies: Danish | Message 11 of 32 02 August 2014 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
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On the flip side, especially since you live in Europe (and are an EU citizen presumably), maybe learning one of the smaller languages would serve you well since you'd easily be able to travel there, do business, access the culture, etc. Perhaps Polish would be the best balance between culture, proximity, size, and availability.
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| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4802 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 12 of 32 02 August 2014 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
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@Kartof
It's hard to call Polish "a smaller language". It's one of the biggest ones in the EU. Another thing to consider is that a Slavonic language spoken by a predominantly Catholic/Protestant population might be easier to learn for someone whose mother tongue is descendant of Latin or is heavily influenced by it. It has more Latin loanwords and historically relies less on Old Church Slavonic than those Slavonic languages that are (or used to be) spoken by predominantly Orthodox speakers. And, why not Croatian? Or Serbian. Learn it, and you will get another two languages almost for free. Assimil's Serbo-Croatian course is a pleasure to use. (I know, this language no more exists. But the book is still very useful to learn a great deal of BCS.) Edited by Antanas on 02 August 2014 at 6:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4037 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 13 of 32 03 August 2014 at 1:01am | IP Logged |
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@Antanas,
if I understood correctly he didn't say Polish is a little language. He talks about best balance. About Croatian, it arrives 4th in my list after Russian-Polish and Czech. Point is, it is a difficult choice. Briefly, to expand my point of view, it occurs a super quick recap of my language story. Part 1 - middle school, 3 years of French (middle school French is not very advanced) - high school, in theory 5 years of English. Practically, I was unable to speak and I never learnt the grammar. - university, I started to watch movies and tv series in English, so I learnt it (not perfectly) but without formal studies Part 2, from January 2014 - I did some Dutch already in 2013 but I stopped before to become A1. So I restarted it (and dropped it and restarted it again. Now I'm sticking with it and I start to see results. - I messed up without achieving anything with different languages. - I started to study and take courses with French again, with good success Part 3, after a bad burnout and 3 weeks of vacation to everything, I have a simple plan - "finish" what I started and plan the next. In the end, the results I had were simply because I continued to put effort regularly. And I need to fix holes in English and pass from B1 to B2 in French before to start another language. This long introduction is to say also: I'm doing these three languages because are all important for my career and my life, other than personal pleasure. All the other languages I dabbled with turned out to be a not very pragmatic choice. Now, Russian and Polish are two very good choices (even if I should do Spanish and German first, practically speaking). Croatian much less. I don't see a use for it, in this moment. That is also for every other Slavic language in my exclusion list. Russian and Polish, have also excellent literature and large multimedia base and are well represented in the expat community of the Dutch city where I leave since two years. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4378 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 14 of 32 03 August 2014 at 2:05pm | IP Logged |
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I would definetely go for russian . Being interested in this language myself , I have researched a lot and I
can confirm that the amount of good quality learning material and content is simply outstanding , especially on the internet . plus , it is the most spoken and it would not take you long to learn another slavic language e with a solid basis of Russian . 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4378 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 15 of 32 03 August 2014 at 2:06pm | IP Logged |
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Edited by albysky on 03 August 2014 at 2:07pm 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 16 of 32 03 August 2014 at 3:04pm | IP Logged |
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One good thing about Croatian is that most Slavic speakers understand it as well as Russian, but without the negative feelings that some have for Russian. And those from the neighbouring countries may understand it even better.
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