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Choosing a Slavic language | ||
Tags: Slavic Languages | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Antanas Tetraglot Groupie Lithuania Joined 4803 days ago 91 posts - 172 votes  Speaks: Lithuanian*, English, Russian, German Studies: FrenchB1, Spanish | Message 17 of 32 03 August 2014 at 9:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, I'm afraid that I have misjudged your intentions. I thought that you were driven by a wish to try something new for its own sake. If your reasons are mainly utilitarian then I don't know what to say. I'm not even sure if learning a Slavonic language is a good idea at all. All population of Mitteleuropa under 35 or so speaks English rather good. Anyone who wants success in his/her life learns English. I guess the same is the case in Belorussia, Russia, Ukraine or ex-Yugoslavia. If you plan to go there for business, excellent English may be a far more useful asset than a mediocre command of the local language. If you can also speak German, then it will be hard to find anyone who would not understand you at all. Of course, if you want to be a public servant, work as a waiter, a shopping assistant, etc., or mingle with local people then it's a different story. If you are not attracted by the "otherness" of those languages or admire their culture, achieving even a moderate level of fluency in a Slavonic language may turn out to be a very daunting task. For a native Italian speaker it would be far more difficult than learning Latin. Complex grammar, almost completely opaque vocabulary, - it's more like learning Ancient Greek. I don't want to discourage you but if it's all about career then maybe there is another more lucrative way to invest your time. On the other hand, I admire your discipline. If you are really that disciplined then you can learn any language. I'm a completely different kind of learner. Anyway, people are different. I'm not sure I could agree that knowing Polish or Russian or another Slavonic language would put you in a better position in the job market than knowing English/French/German trio. Unless it's a very specific one. Anyway, good luck with any language you decide to study. Edited by Antanas on 03 August 2014 at 9:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 18 of 32 03 August 2014 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
The truth stands in the middle :) I'm a software engineer and I work in an international environment. English is enough for day to day needs. Where I work, however, there are a lot of French people, so using French is important to establish a deeper relationship with those colleagues of mine (and it is very valuable nonetheless). I live in The Netherlands. Only in two occasions in two years I had to speak Dutch otherwise was impossible to communicate my point to the other person: one year ago to order a mango pudding in a vietnamese restaurant and today to explain to the first old lady who doesn't speak English that I met in my life that I don't speak Dutch (I didn't explain that I'm actually able to speak some, because in any case I was not understanding the question). By the way I'm making the effort because I want to integrate myself, being able to make Dutch friends and speak their language with them. You're right, I don't need to learn a Slavic language. I want indeed to do it because I want to admire their culture. Only, since I have limited time in the evening after having burned my brain writing software for at least 8 hours, I need to make a choice that maximise the return of investment. I cannot untie the language to the use I can make of it. It's that why I didn't succeeded in finding motivations in putting effort to learn Farsi or Icelandic, even being absolutely in love with the sound of the language for the first and the love for the beautiful country for the second. I'm a beginner, learning Spanish is a more pragmatic idea than learning Malayalam, even if it is much more boring :) Culture, multimedia, people, amount of resources are my parameters. Open to a different linguistic family than romance and Germanic is a way to expand my horizons. For me it is not about money. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gollum87 Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 3928 days ago 31 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: Italian | Message 19 of 32 17 August 2014 at 10:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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If I were you, I would choose Russian...
It is the biggest Slavic language, and if you ask me, the most melodic one.. It is the language of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, etc.. and if you learn the language, it will help you learn any other Slavic language more easily, or understand another one.. Serbo-Croatian, Czech and Polish are spoken only in their own countries, and it is not case with Russian.. 3 persons have 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 20 of 32 17 August 2014 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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But usefulness is dependent on more things than x million speakers. If so, we'd all be
studying Chinese and Spanish, not English and French. Here's the thing; usefulness is dependent not only on the macro-level environment but also at the micro-level. I personally have found good use for Romanian (what? But nobody speaks it outside of Romania! In Moldova, but how many people do you know that remember that country and Russian is also widespread there) precisely because taking on a niche language you are passionate about gives you an individual skill nobody else has. You can stand out strongly by picking an unexpected language - everything will go through you because you are the only one people know who can translate. Picking Serbian can be very useful in environments where knowing Serbian is the relevant skill to have. Much more than Russian or Arabic. Keep in mind that 10 million, or 5 million speakers is still a LOT of speakers and a LOT more people than you will ever meet in a lifetime. Having even a couple hundred thousand speakers is more than enough (Icelandic). And many languages with tons of speakers, but limited resources, remain unpopular (Bengali, Indonesian). So my advice is - pick the language you personally have the strongest connection to, and learn that to a good level. I have not once in my life made a decision to learn a language because of the number of speakers, it doesn't even figure among my list of criteria. As long as there is enough chance to practice (maybe trying to learn a language with 10 speakers might be a bit hard) and as long as you have sufficient resources, you can learn any language you want and MAKE it work for you. This includes less popular languages such as Romanian. 20 million speakers is more than enough for anybody and you will never run out of people to talk to (besides that you only need a bunch. I thus won't recommend a specific language. I personally love Russian and would enjoy knowing Serbo-Croatian or Czech, but if the Slavic language you have a relationship with is Sorbian, learn Sorbian. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4379 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 21 of 32 18 August 2014 at 12:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
I agree with Tarvos , if you a have a specific reason to learn a language , go for that no matter the numbers of speakers and its assumed usefulness (that can be relative as well ). Nevertheless , if you do not have any particular connection , I would go for Russian for the simple reason that there are lots and lots of reasources available ,take on radio echomoskvi for instance, it is a real treasure for russian learners in my opinion . I am not sure if something like that is available for other slavic languages as well . anyhow , in my view , the potential lack of resources is not something to underestimate . Edited by albysky on 18 August 2014 at 1:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gollum87 Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 3928 days ago 31 posts - 46 votes Speaks: Serbian*, English Studies: Italian | Message 22 of 32 19 August 2014 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, if he (or anybody else) have a reason, then he should choose that language.. But if
he simply wants to learn a Slavic language, I suggest Russian.. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4038 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 23 of 32 20 August 2014 at 12:13am | IP Logged | |||||
And you're also right. You also mention Romanian, that is a language for which I feel quite a connection since a few years (but always postponed because I had more urgent things to do). That is, the urgency thing spoils my priority queue. At the beginning of the year I started studying Persian and Chinese, then French claimed big space, like Dutch and English. And once I finished with French, Dutch and English, I know that German and Spanish are a more results/commitment higher ratio than Persian and Chinese because - Persian tends to be not really useful in Northern Europe. And it is quite difficult to read, I'm less afraid of a difficult grammar than having difficulties with reading. - Chinese along with Japanese is the more difficult language in the world to write and read, requiring a life commitment (to a person, me, that is very bad with long term commitments - If I can't measure it, I can't do it). And said that, I feel a strong connection with Persian, Spanish, Greek, Turkish and Romanian. The first because the language is amazingly beautiful to hear (like Swedish). The others because I feel their cultures near to mine (and I can access very easily to their communities), and the food very good :) But in case of Spanish it is an easy choice. Tons of resources and people (and very beautiful girls - I know, I'm showing all my Italianity in this post :D). I admire you for Romanian. I met some Romanian people, all nice people. And the language is very fascinating, half romance and half slavic :) How can you choose between languages if you have some that are amazingly beautiful, some very useful for your career, some are so well represented in your city, come have amazing cultures behind them and some others you don't really know but you feel connected. It is just so difficult to put order in this mess :) I would like to allocate an entire year to study Persian, but this means an entire year in which I'm not studying German. Also I'm starting to think that starting a Slavic language is not doable until the 2016 or even 2017 (I have two languages - French and Dutch - to bring at the level of my English and English to bring at a high level during this time). I feel like a advanced beginner/lower intermediate in language learning :D I will consider anyway what you told me. It is just difficult to me that I work full time to allocate time for a "pragmatically unsafe choice" language. It is also even more difficult to study a "pragmatically safe choice" language when you don't really feel like to do it and you don't enjoy the process. What did I do when I was teenager and I was plenty of time :D :D Coming back to Russian vs Polish vs the other slavic languages. Russian and Polish still overcome the others. Because of the resources. Resources are my nightmare in Icelandic, for example. For resources (not learning only, I mean in general, literature and multimedia) I guess Russian wins without questioning.... 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 24 of 32 20 August 2014 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||
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I never plan languages intensively for over a year. If I'm going to study intensively,
it's for about 3-4 months and then you can see the results later on. Sometimes I keep on chugging at a lower pace, like for Greek or Hebrew; sometimes, I just try speaking altogether in related languages to my known ones (Portuguese, Spanish); but sometimes I just drop them altogether to return to them at a later time (Breton, Icelandic, nowadays also Hebrew). Getting really good at French or at English by the way, is a totally different skill set and it's a whole new list of requirements that you can't tackle in the same way that you start studying them. I speak French, like you have studied it, but my French learning right now is not based on input anymore or grammar rules. I am beyond the stage where that really works unless revising a particularly tough grammar point (je ne le lui ai pas dit). You need to change your approach once you get to a reasonable level, and this change of approach is mostly characterised by being minutious and accurate with details. I really would use tutors at this stage, because you're beyond the moment where you can blunder around and make lots of mistakes indiscriminately; that works when you're a beginner and you need to get into the flow of speaking and learning the lay of the land, but when you gotta iron all of that out, get someone to help you and ram the correct forms into you. Once you get a bit good, try and conserve some good spelling habits (I for example had to learn the French tense conjugations at school and I rarely if ever make mistakes with the conjugation, apart from sometimes not choosing the correct tense). Benny Lewis once gave me a piece of advice about hiring tutors and I will thank him eternally for it: when you study a language, you need two types of tutors: - in the beginning, one who is very nice and gives you ego boosts and raises your confidence so you dare to speak more. Here the goal is to be corrected at times but more to get into the FLOW of speaking; you improve quickly by doing quickly. You want them to be friendly and to chat to you and you pay them for giving you loads of new vocabulary that you can use in your daily life. - When you want to get good; get the most critical teacher you can find. Ones that love to cross out things with red pen and be RUTHLESS in their commentary. The best university teachers, I find, are the ones that have mastered this skill and perfected it to an art. My favourite university teacher was so incredibly good at this that you want things to be corrected by her - it implies you will learn. Here ambition is the keyword. The other thing is that time limits us from having this really good level in all of our languages. In my case, there are three languages in which these skills are the ones that I want and need: Dutch, English and French. In my other languages, getting to B2 is good enough for now (unless I change my mind about some of them, which is possible if I live in the country etc. etc.). The next thing is that when you move up a rung in French or German or other major languages the standardized tests that they have for these languages come into play as an incentive for you to use. The last thing is that you can maintain languages using much less time and study a new one as your main occupation; I have been doing this French thing for months next to the side of one or two other languages that I was improving beside them, always ones where I started from scratch. Right now that is Mandarin. Edited by tarvos on 20 August 2014 at 10:36am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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