Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 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 105 of 200 27 June 2009 at 12:58am | IP Logged |
You have raised the question of learning Catalan, and with a good background in Spanish it would certainly be worth doing. The big question is whether it would take too much time and focus from your Spanish, which according to your language profile isn't at too high a level yet. The thing that should make it easy to learn Catalan is the large number of words it shares with Spanish in just slightly altered form. French is also a useful background, but not nearly to the same extent. So to be quite frank I think that you should postpone learning Catalan until your Spanish is at at least the upper intermediate og maybe even basic fluency level, - that will make it much easier also to learn Catalan.
For a person with reasonable skills in Spanish (=Castilian) Catalan is not a big problem. There are some grammatical differences, but provided that you can get enough written and spoken texts you should be able to learn it fairly quickly by using your knowledge of Spanish - if not, it will take longer than Spanish because your chances of hearing and seeing it accidentally are so much smaller. You can fairly easily hear it through internet TV and podcasts, but getting to talk Catalan is not easy outside Catalunya (not even in places like Valencia or the Balearic Islands). In contrast Spanish magazines and books are fairly easy to find in France, and music in Spanish is also relatively easy to find.
Living in France is certainly an asset when it comes to learning Catalan beause you can get down to Catalunya fairly cheaply, either by budget flights or TGV. And this is to be recommended alone for the possibility of stocking up on books and magazines.
Edited by Iversen on 27 June 2009 at 10:36am
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tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6680 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian
| Message 106 of 200 27 June 2009 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
[commenting more than usually to make up for #lal abstinence]
I think your progress is way too rapid, you should be made to study a non-Romance, non-Germanic language! :P But honestly, Catalan sounds like a boring choice, it's up there drinking coffee with Esperanto. Go for something exciting instead.
And how could I miss you tried Turkish?
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ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 107 of 200 29 June 2009 at 11:25am | IP Logged |
Thanks for your feedback guys.
Especially Iversen: I've got a couple of resources already, some simple books, and the internet is my friend. Dunno if I'll make a start on it yet, next year, or ever I'm just tossing up options.
Tricours: No way to make up for it. What would your something exciting be? You missed it, because you don't love me enough. It was also last year, probably before #lal.
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tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6680 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian
| Message 108 of 200 29 June 2009 at 3:31pm | IP Logged |
You have mentioned Russian several times, and that's an exciting language!
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ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 109 of 200 29 June 2009 at 4:53pm | IP Logged |
This is true.
Also: One lang8 post in Spanish done today; with link to pretty pictures I took all by myself.
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reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6449 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German
| Message 110 of 200 29 June 2009 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
Cool log. Ang guess what, everyone on this page also has a blog! Aren't we cool or what? :) Thanks for reminding me about lang8 and ubu... boo... busuu. I will be embarrassing myself there soon in German. Trickster is trying to motivate you to study Russian? Abandoning German is not very annihilator-like. Doing both sounds better. I like the idea of Catalan (sort of) but I wouldn't think of doing it before actually learning Spanish. Japanese - heck yeah but it'll have to wait (at least for me). I have to first earn the right to study something else by improving German and French.
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ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 111 of 200 29 June 2009 at 5:50pm | IP Logged |
Reineke,
Thanks, and thanks for reading. Yes you are, you're all cool.
I won't be abandoning German this TAC season. I'll see it out, and then re-evaluate what I think of it for next year. I just want a language to play with when I get bored with the others really. I would like to see Spanish through to advanced fluency at least, but German I'm a bit less enthusiastic about. And I don't have any real key motivational factors for any other languages other than 'it takes my fancy' so we'll see where I end up.
Thom.
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ExtraLean Triglot Senior Member France languagelearners.myf Joined 5996 days ago 897 posts - 880 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: German
| Message 112 of 200 30 June 2009 at 6:10pm | IP Logged |
Readers Mine,
Today I did a couple of lang8 posts. One in German which was crap, and one in French which I think isn't too bad.
I decided to use my DALF C1/C2 book a bit more after talking to dmg on #learnanylanguage, so it's kind of an adaptation of an excercise in that, where one had to synthasize two different articles and what not. Anyway, it had me thinking a bit more, and writing with a purpose. That might be an additional goal for July.
Anywho, that's about it.
Thom.
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