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How languages help you on for the next | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ubik Senior Member United States ubykh.wordpress.com/ Joined 5318 days ago 147 posts - 176 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish | Message 9 of 47 09 May 2010 at 11:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Im only in the beginning of my language adventure at 30 years old. Of course Ive always been in love with languages and Ive wanted to be a translator/interpreter since I was in the single-digits, but always being poor with no family to rely on and always getting into relationships where Im the supporter hasnt helped both financially and in regards to time. Anyways...
1. Three year of Latin in high school starting in freshman year ('95-'97) 2. 2 years of German starting in sophomore year (In German, Ws are Vs and in Latin Vs are Ws. I loved reciting this little tidbit as well as making it clear to everyone who asked "no I dont plan on being a doctor!") 3. Cut to today when Im finally a) not supporting a signifant other b) not spending every penny I make on DVDs, CDs, games or going out, and c) I have the full mental and emotional support of my significant other and Ive decided that I cant wait any longer to realize my dream of knowing every language I put my mind to. Ive now gone full steam ahead in my language learning. I will be going back to Latin as well as taking Arabic for the first time starting in a few weeks. In the meantime, I have picked up pretty much every book on languages and linguistics that I possibly can as well as language dictionaries and study guides, etc. In the past couple of weeks Ive already gotten the Arabic alphabet down, the script and how to connect the letters, the Semitic Root concept (which I find fascinating and I cant wait to apply it -- sad that the only other language that does this is Hebrew which I have no interest in learning) Even with the relatively small amount of German I learned in high school Ive never forgotten (Tropische Popagei LOL) it, and I use as much as I possibly can in my daily life (even if people give me funny looks). My plan for the immediate future is to take my Arabic classes. Im not sure how long Im going to take Latin seeing as I took three years of it and Im not planning on being fluent (no point really), but the more I reinforce this "skeleton key" language the easier other languages will become as well. ANd while Im taking my classes, Im going to self-study my German using Rosetta Stone, dictionary, and websites, movies, etc to immerse myself. After Arabic and German are complete, my plan is to take Farsi (and thats probably where I will end for a while for Semitic/Middle East languages), Portuguese, followed by Spanish, followed by Romanian (heavy Slavic influence), followed by Croatian (Slavic with Latin alphabet), then Serbian (same language with Cyrillic alphabet), and then finally Russian (which as it stands right now Im terrified to death of). At that point I might swing back around and get Polish in or Im thinking about trying something out in the Uralic family (Hungarian, Estonian, or Finnish) Somewhere in that whole mix I want to learn Bengali and I also want to learn Korean, but at this point I dont know where to fit them in... Edited by Ubik on 09 May 2010 at 11:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6005 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 10 of 47 12 May 2010 at 3:24am | IP Logged | ||
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My language learning history isn't really interesting enough to detail here, but I will comment that I was pleasantly surprised to find that the distinction between the Swedish "skj" and "rs" sounds was also an important distinction in Mandarin, so my accent was already pretty good soon after beginning.
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| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 47 12 May 2010 at 9:32am | IP Logged | ||
But the point here is not to have the most interesting language learning history, but to find out in which way people felt that their individual languages helped them on for the next language(s) they learned. So many people say you should learn Latin, becuase then it will be easier to learn the other Roman languages. I have always found that to be very strange. Why would I learn a dead language full of cases, in order to learn living languages without cases? I had to do some Latin at one point, and that was a total waste of time. I learned Spanish, which helped me learn French and Italian. That gave me three living languages in stead of two living and a dead one. Now if your interest is the history of languages, Latin can be great - but if you are like me, who just want to communicate, then learning another living language makes a lot more sense. I would be very much interested in hearing in which way your languages have helped you on with the next one! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5849 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 12 of 47 12 May 2010 at 9:48am | IP Logged | ||
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Yes, let me give you an answer to this precise question, Solfrid Crisitna.
I learned Latin as my second foreign language and at that young age (starting with 12)we had detailed grammar lessons, because Latin is a very grammar-structured language.This large dosis of grammar gave me the foundation for my further studies of languages. It helped me a lot with my Turkish much later in life. For the Romance vocabulary it was not so necessary to learn Latin first, I could have started with French or any other Romance language (the others weren't offered at my school). For learning Esperanto I profited from all my Romance languages. There is a reciprocal influence from my Romance languages towards Esperanto and from Esperanto towards my Romance languages. Especially my knowledge of Dutch (but also German and English) helps me now with learning Danish. If you profit from already learned languages to study new ones, this method is called "triangulation". It's a common method for polyglots to speed up their language learning. For me triangulation is more a side effect, because normally I have other motives to choose new languages, such as the availablity of speakers or language courses. But I will rely on this when I start learning Portuguese in the future. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 12 May 2010 at 1:08pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| noriyuki_nomura Bilingual Octoglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5342 days ago 304 posts - 465 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Japanese, FrenchC2, GermanC2, ItalianC1, SpanishB2, DutchB1 Studies: TurkishA1, Korean | Message 13 of 47 12 May 2010 at 10:12am | IP Logged | ||
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As for me, I found that, knowing English helps me to learn French and German, which in turn help me to learn Italian and Spanish.
Likewise for Chinese and Japanese. It helps me to learn Korean, since Japanese grammar is so similar to that of Korean, and Korean borrowed quite a good number of words from Chinese. However, I am having trouble with Russian, as it seems a pretty tough language, especially its pronounciation. Guess the German saying "Aller Anfang ist schwer" (all beginning is tough) rings so true...it really boils down to perseverance and diligence, and giving oneself abit of time to get used to the language... Edited by noriyuki_nomura on 12 May 2010 at 10:18am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 14 of 47 12 May 2010 at 10:22am | IP Logged | ||
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I've shared my ongoing language learning story before, but I had never given much thought to the order in which I began learning languages or whether or not this order I've stumbled into is beneficial.
But here is the updated version of my story of language learning. I think I've always been interested in Spanish but I didn't actually start trying to learn it until I was 12 when I took a Spanish class in 7th grade. The class seemed more like a brief introduction to Spanish culture with a little bit of vocabulary and so I actually learned very little. When I was 14 I started high school; one of the graduation requirements was that every student must take two years of foreign language classes and I chose Spanish. I still learned almost nothing, at least partly because the second year class was taught by a very poor teacher, but I did find out that since Spanish is a Romance language it is similar to French, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian and that all five languages are descended from Latin. After being frustrated by not learning much Spanish and completing the required two years in high school I ignored languages for 15 years; though I did wish I had put more effort into actually learning Spanish. During the summer of 2006, I decided to learn Afrikaans as a way to get more insight into South African history. I soon noticed that Afrikaans is very close to Dutch, which I tried to learn at the same time on the naïve assumption that I would be fluently speaking both languages by January 2007, especially since Afrikaans appears to have simplified Dutch grammar and spelling. I decided after about a month that I was getting confused studying two very similar languages, besides I was more interested in Afrikaans anyway, so I stopped actively learning Dutch. I sometimes wonder if Dutch would have been a better choice, but Afrikaans is still a good introduction to Germanic languages. I found this forum in September 2008 and at first I was just hoping to get advice on how to learn Afrikaans and Spanish more efficiently. I thought Afrikaans and Spanish would be more than enough languages for me, but after reading many threads about the experiences of others I also became curious about other languages, especially Finnish. I signed up for a college course in Spanish in January 2009 and this time I actually learned some Spanish though I think I write it much better than I speak it. I also began reading about how Finnish was difficult for speakers of Indo-European languages to learn; because of the largely different vocabulary, the use of more postpositions than prepositions and of course the dreaded 15 or so case endings that can be added to most words. Reading these things did not discourage me, they only made me more and more intrigued and by spring 2009 I had begun learning Finnish as well. Finnish is more agglutinative than the other languages I know and might be useful for helping me get accustomed to the idea of combining words and suffixes in otherwise unrelated languages like Japanese or Turkish, if I ever learn those languages. In the spring of 2009 I also discovered the music & languages thread here and found a link to a Swedish pop song which made want to learn Swedish, yet another Germanic language. Learning Swedish after having learnt Afrikaans and speaking English does seem easier as there are many similar words and grammatical concepts. I've noticed three strange things about my choice of languages: 1. I seem to be very interested in Germanic languages but so far I haven't actually learned High German yet. Since I've finally decided to attempt to learn a few languages well, I may or may not ever do so. I do think about learning Dutch again, since between 70-90% of Dutch and Afrikaans vocabulary is so alike and I can read some Dutch without much effort. 2. Spanish doesn't yet help me understand French as much as English does, but I only understand very few words of written French anyway, maybe 2% and virtually none of the spoken language. 3. Finnish is definitely fascinating, but aside from helping me learn the basic concepts of agglutination and vowel harmony, I'm not sure if Finnish is a good introduction to other Uralic languages. Hungarian and Finnish are the largest living Uralic languages but they diverged centuries ago and now share only minimal vocabulary. Estonian may be closer to Finnish but they share very few similarities when compared to Danish and Norwegian or Spanish and Portuguese. Many of the other Uralic languages are extinct or endangered and therefore difficult to learn but that doesn't matter to me right now, I just enjoy learning Finnish. Edited by mick33 on 13 May 2010 at 2:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5435 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 15 of 47 12 May 2010 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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This is my story:
ENGLISH: I began learning English at the age of 10 (elementary school). I continued studying it for eight years. Later in life I have had university education in English for a couple of years. FRENCH: When I was 8 I spent a month in France and learnt some vocabulary and pronunciation. I started studying it at the age of 12/13 and continued for six years. Also, I took a university course in European Union French, which contained information on terminology in the fields of economy and law, and debates about the institutions. SPANISH: I took classes in Spanish for three years in upper secondary school. I also studied it in Spain when I was 20. RUSSIAN: One year in upper secondary school. This was the most interesting and challenging one. I will probably take up studying it again within a couple of years. However, my goal is primarily to learn what I need for holidays or a short trip there. ITALIAN: Two years of full-time study at the university. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5336 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 16 of 47 12 May 2010 at 10:44am | IP Logged | ||
And in which way did you feel that the languages you allready know help you learning the next one? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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