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Does anyone read neighboring languages? | ||
Tags: Linguistic relationships | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5439 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes  Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 9 of 37 13 March 2010 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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There's a book by Bodmer, The Loom of Language, that compares the grammar and phonology for the Germanic and Romance families in order to give you a nodding acquaintance with French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, plus German, Dutch, Swedish and Danish. It's a bit outdated now, and was probably inaccurate in places even when written. But the basic premise is solid: If you learn about the languages as a family, you can get a foundation in several languages as easily as you can learn one well. Bodmer wrote it in the conviction that if only people could talk to each other more easily, maybe Europe would have peace.
The great thing about Bodmer is even if you don't use him to learn a language (I wouldn't), he's a great reference for making connections between languages. For example, ll in Spanish is usually cl or pl in French, chi or pi in Italian and ch or pl in Portuguese. So llover=pleuvoir=piovere=chover. And llave=clef=chiave=chave. Likewise, you can see the connection between llano, plaine, piano and plano, even if the meanings aren't exactly the same. I've been using what Bodmer taught me (plus what I subsequently learned in courses on the history of the French language and comparative Romance linguistics) to pick my way through texts I oughtn't have been able to read for years. This is generally news articles or articles on language these days, though in grad school I had to read way out of my depth for comparative literature, and for literary criticism (mostly German) that hadn't been translated into English or French. It's a nice skill to have, though it takes time from your core languages. So before you make too much of a habit of reading stuff in Dutch because you know German, you should decide whether your language goals are for really solid fluency in a few languages, or maximizing the number of languages in which you can enjoy reading, music, etc. For me with languages, the more the merrier. If it's the same for you, I recommend Bodmer, along with Routledge's books on the different language families, as a way to get the most out of your adventures outside your core languages. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5559 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 10 of 37 14 March 2010 at 3:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't actually read any books in languages closely related to ones I study, but I've done a fair bit of reading in Dutch, Italian and Portuguese on the Internet. All three are pretty transparent to me, partly because I like BartoG have investigated the historical phonetic shifts of the Germanic and Romance languages. I could probably read a book in any of those three languages (slowly) and understand a large majority of it, though I don't plan on doing this any time in the near future. I'd rather spend the time on building up my abilities in French, Spanish, German, Mandarin and Japanese. Though it would be an interesting experiment to do at some later point.
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| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5545 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 11 of 37 14 March 2010 at 4:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, Swedish isn't related to Finnish at all, but it is a neighbouring language and the second official language of the country. I actually had 0 prior interest in learning Swedish but seeing it all the time in Finland (everything is double-signed in both languages), hearing it in the media and amongst the few natives I encountered there, and discovering that the etymology of so many Finnish vocabulary words can be traced back to Swedish origin, I find myself being (extremely slightly) drawn to the language. If Swedish had a bigger role in Finland, I might learn it. The thing is I'm pretty sure I'll have to end up learning at least the basics of it anyway since I would like Finnish citizenship, so who knows. This mild attraction also helps me to better understand why Finns go gaga over English. It's all over the place and they hear it everyday, and while I am highly disappointed by the level of English in the country, I really do understand why it's become the "cool language" amongst the latest generation.
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| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5916 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 12 of 37 14 March 2010 at 5:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I can read very basic Dutch because I've learned some Afrikaans but I can't finish a blog post or newspaper article without checking a dictionary often so I don't read Dutch very much. Three times last year I tried, and failed to read French because I know some Spanish, but English was slightly more helpful for the few words I recognized.
EDIT: Corrected a punctuation error. Edited by mick33 on 15 March 2010 at 6:54am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5414 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 13 of 37 14 March 2010 at 5:37am | IP Logged | ||
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| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5395 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 14 of 37 14 March 2010 at 10:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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I do this all the time. When I'm on Wikipedia for example I check on the left for Slavic languages and sometimes I read the article in all of them. With some it is harder like Upper or Lower Sorbian or Slovenian, but if I know what the article is about I easily figure the meaning of words I have never before encountered in other Slavic languages, since many words are derived from roots that are common in all Slavic languages and this many times helps to figure out which are false friends right on the spot without consulting a dictionary.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7148 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 15 of 37 14 March 2010 at 10:49pm | IP Logged | ||
For a laugh, I've looked at the Scots version of articles on Wikipedia that I had retrieved and read first in English. I've done something similar (albeit not as frequently) with articles in various Slavonic languages/dialects/variants. I've pulled up Silesian or Kashubian versions of Polish articles, and other times have compared Serbian, Croatian, Serbo-Croatian or Bosnian versions of articles. In the case of articles in BCMS/Serbo-Croatian it's interesting and sometimes comical to see how the interpretations of the same phenomenon (e.g. existence and development of Serbo-Croatian) or historical events (e.g. Balkan wars of 1990s) can differ depending on the ethnic background or native "language" of the contributor who made the latest edit to an article or an article's sub-section. In these articles, switching from for example the Croatian version to the Serbian one yields only a trivial or largely imperceptible change in language but quite often a substantial change in content or its interpretation. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5395 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 16 of 37 15 March 2010 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is interesting how on Wikipedia there is a lack of uniformity between languages on the same articles. I once remember reading about rock studies in Macedonian. It was completely different than the article in English. I have learned to check Wiki articles in all the languages I can understand just to be sure. Many times they also complement each other.
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