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How languages help you on for the next | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5117 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 41 of 47 01 December 2010 at 3:26am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't learned a second language yet, so it's hard for me to say what languages help me learn other ones. However, I took French class in elementary school and junior high, and then forgot it after, but now that I'm studying Esperanto that French sure helps with the vocabulary. I can't speak French at all but when learning the days of week, for example, in Esperanto, it certainly helps that they're almost identical to French. Also, I was listening to Radio Verda (understanding almost nothing) and heard the word "fromagxo", and I knew they were talking about cheese!
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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 42 of 47 02 December 2010 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
This is actually a perfect example of one language helping you on with the next. I most certainly do not master all the languages I have mentioned as helping me with the next language!!! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Delodephius Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Yugoslavia Joined 5405 days ago 342 posts - 501 votes Speaks: Slovak*, Serbo-Croatian*, EnglishC1, Czech Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 43 of 47 02 December 2010 at 10:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I didn't study any language properly. Being a native speaker of Slovak and Serbian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovaks_in_Vojvodina) I was able to grasp Russian very quickly, despite the fact that my two previous languages interfered because of similarity. However, after four years of Russian in Grammar School I also found out that my understanding of other Slavic languages has improved immensely and I now can read any text (particularly scientific literature due to higher level of international and inter-Slavic words introduced during the popularity of Pan-Slavism in the 19th and early 20th century). I bought myself a 7000 page long Polish-Serbian dictionary only to realize I don't need it.
Knowledge of Slavic languages has helped me a lot with Latin in school. First of all I had no problem with cases, something that most Western European dread the most. In fact for me it is easier to understand a language which has a highly fusional Indo-European grammar. When I mused with Sanskrit and Ancient Greek I had very little trouble translating. I learned English when I was a child. It was a long process not a short term event. I started in kindergarten but I was not able to communicate until I finished Grammar School. I only seriously started to speak English a year or two ago. However, I started to write in English when I was 16, now I'm 22. Knowledge of English has helped me only twice, and that was when I tried to decipher some German phrases (despite the fact that almost everyone on my mother's side knows German, some more some less, nobody ever taught me and my brother). The other time was when I tried to understand Hindi and thanks to English I managed to understand some of that language's grammar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5036 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 44 of 47 20 November 2011 at 5:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a really interesting thread, and thanks to Chung for listing it on a different thread. I'd like to put my story in to the bunch.
SPANISH: Age 14. This is my heritage language because my dad's side of the family are Mexicans, but I had to learn it in high school as most American students do. I don't remember thinking it was very hard, and things like conjugations didn't throw me even though they were a new concept to explicitly think about. I think part of my ease with grammar is that the teacher for my Spanish class was the same teacher who taught me English the period before. Of course, I have always enjoyed the grammar of my own language, and every new language I learn reinforces that. RUSSIAN: Age 17. In my last year of high school I decided to learn Russian when I started at a school that offered it. The same school had Spanish, too, but instead of going to a more advanced level, I wanted to try the new language. Spanish helped me know what it was like to read a phonetic language, as Russian does, and other basic language things such as verb conjugations and grammatical gender. Russian itself helped me learn to read things that were not in a Latin script and not be scared of it. Russian also taught me about using a case system. I had gone back to formal study of Spanish before doing self-study in... HUNGARIAN: Age 20 (I think...). I started this when I had applied to be a university exchange student. I did the whole lot of Teach Yourself, and I found a speaker near me with whom I could sing folk songs and practice conversation. It was quite fun. From Hungarian I learned the concepts of of vowel harmony and agglutination, which really helped me with... FINNISH: Age 21. I didn't get my placement to the Hungarian university, but I was accepted to a Finnish university instead. I put the breaks on Hungarian, which I really liked at the time, and completely reset everything with Finnish, which I found really strange sounding at the time in comparison to Hungarian. (At the present time, my opinion is very different. I have lost all interest in pursuing Hungarian, and I think Finnish is one of the best languages ever.) From Finnish I gained patience with the case system, and I wondered if I would find the same in Russian easier if I tried it again after Finnish. I don't yet know the answer to that, but cases don't scare me any more. Also, I learned new ways to think in a language and gain concepts. Finnish is the mark of my highest achievement so far, though that is perhaps still modest. Spanish helped me with Finnish quite a lot as there are a few idioms that are the same. (Such as “I have thirst” instead of “I am thirsty.”) GERMAN: Age 23. After I left Finland, I spent a summer in Germany. I had known the language passively through art songs and its similarities to English. After being around it, I decided to learn it and went about that by taking a beginner's class at the university once I got back to the USA. I will admit I don't have a perfect grasp on the grammatical genders, but I find German a very lovely language, completely charming for itself. One feature of the language I enjoy is how word parts can be put together to form new words and ideas. It seems easier in German somehow. For example, “fahren” as a part of “radfahren” “rodelfahren” and many other kinds of “fahren”. German also taught me about specific and sometimes strict word order, which was relatively new since my other languages had a flexible though similar word order. JAPANESE: Age 36. I'm 37 now, and I started Japanese in January. In exactly 2 weeks from today I will take the JLPT N5. When I bumped into Japanese, I wasn't looking for a new language at all. I wanted to take what I already had and maintain it if not grow it more. Instead, I discovered Japanese and found its grammar to be completely charming. I really enjoy the simple elegance of the language and how it does what it does. So what from my other languages has gotten me here? Spanish taught me how to pronounce pure vowels. Russian prepared me to read something in a different script. Finnish prepared me for vowels and concepts. There are many times a Japanese idea will remind me of something Finnish. German helped me with word order. For example, the fact that Japanese sentences end with a verb is rather like a German dependent clause that ends with a verb, and that was something I already knew how to do. And an aside to all of this is that mentally my non-native languages seem to play with each other but not with English too much, and most of my new languages are always seen through the filter of Spanish which was the first foreign language I learned. Thanks for letting me share. It's been a wondrous journey I've much enjoyed. I don't intend on picking up any more languages because I think I already have enough to maintain or improve. Though from time to time I start a flirtation with French thinking I should finally meet that language... Edited by jdmoncada on 20 November 2011 at 5:45pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| jellyfish Triglot Groupie Japan Joined 4787 days ago 50 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English, German*, Japanese Studies: Thai, Persian, Russian | Message 45 of 47 15 December 2011 at 5:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, lots of really interesting language-journey semi-novels here! Mind if I add my own story?
The languages I've picked for myself so far really don't do very much for each other; I seem to frequently find myself attracted to languages from completely different families to the ones I've already had a closer look at... but I do think it's been a good exercise in wrapping my head around fully unfamiliar grammar concepts. My native language is German, though my Dad is British - according to him, I never wanted to hear or speak any English when I was a kid; but somehow I just suddenly picked it up at some stage in my early teens, and have been pretty much natively fluent with a natural-sounding British accent (so they say) for most of the time since then (living in the UK for three years must've given it the final touch...) Had to learn French at school for a total of six years (and did another one voluntarily a bit later), and I'm not sure exactly how fruitless that was. When I watch French films, I notice that I do actually know about 60% of the words, but I can't produce much in the way of coherent sentences, and would never claim I "know" French. Did a year of Latin and didn't enjoy it very much, not going to go there again... tried Italian for a bit, too, and eventually decided the Romance languages just aren't my cup of tea. The first time I fell in love with a language was around the age of ten or twelve, I think, and it was Japanese. There was a subtitled Japanese film on the telly, and I remember being pretty astonished and intrigued by those alien sounds. I attempted learning it by myself multiple times between the age of 12 and 16; my parents gave me a Japanese self-study pack for Christmas when I was 13, but I really had no idea what I was doing, so it went nowhere until I eventually decided to just study it at university quite a few years later, together with linguistics (despite the rather low second-language-acquisition success rate up to that point, I'd realised that I do really like languages and languagey things.) And now I'm in third year of my Japanese & Linguistics degree, living in Japan until next August, reached "upper intermediate" level, allegedly, and can speak, read and write it pretty well. And it's still fun, even though Japan itself will never be one of my favourite countries. During the past couple of years I also developed a bit of an obsession with foreign scripts, and have taught myself to read and write Korean and Thai, just for the hell of it - cannot speak either of them at all, and although I would like to learn Thai at some point (not Korean though), it's not very high up on my list. I just like the look of them, and at least it was quite useful for finding the right trains and buses in Thailand and Korea... Started studying Russian since coming to Japan, mostly on my own, although I do have a 90-min conversation class (conducted in Russian and Japanese) every week. This was mostly inspired by travelling around Central Asia. I'll be back in the 'stans at some point, and this time I'll be able to communicate... I'm really, really loving Russian in any case, and am determined to keep it up. And the newest addition to the languages I'm making friends with is Persian. Again, it was travelling that made me want to learn it - went to Iran in the summer, unexpectedly fell in love with it hard and fast, made great friends there and will be back as soon as I can! Still a total beginner, although it only took me about 4 days to internalise the script (and it's so much fun to write). Still need vowel markers for reading, but that just seems to be a matter of vocabulary... Also taking a Mongolian-centred course in comparative linguistics here, but that's not really a language acquisition course and is probably doing more for my Japanese listening comprehension than anything else. Although I must admit there is something highly satisfying in attacking a Mongolian text with a huge 5-kilo Mongolian-Japanese dictionary... Haven't got any particular plans for the future, but travelling seems to give me the language bug like it gives others gastrointestinal diseases... going to Malaysia soon, and will probably come back with a Malay infection... we'll see :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| bart_anderson Hexaglot Newbie United States Joined 5802 days ago 2 posts - 6 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Swedish, Portuguese, Latin | Message 46 of 47 12 March 2012 at 11:08am | IP Logged | ||
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The motivations that drive me seem to be different from those of other people on the forum. I'm much more motivated by the culture (literature, history, traditions) than by the language itself ... though I've come to enjoy that too.
I was exposed to French in 5th grade (age 10). In 8th grade (age 13), I took a great class in Basic Principles of Language, which intrigued me with its portrayal of patterns among languages. However I hated the Spanish class I took that year, because the Audio Lingual Method was so frustrating to me. Next year I switched to German which was taught with the good old fashioned method, drawing heavily on grammar. I loved the vigor of the German language, and the grammar approach made a lot more sense to me. I continued with German for three and a half years, got good grades, but never reached the point where reading was easy for me. The early exposure to French and Spanish opened me up to the pleasures of foreign language, but it was the methodical approach to German that gave me the concepts that made it possible to learn languages later on. During college, I was too busy hitch-hiking, getting married and having adventures to study languages. At age 24, I felt very alienated from American culture, and decided that I wanted to immerse myself in Italian, and maybe move there. I read dual-language poetry books, took adult classes, worked through grammar workbooks, and used cheap records (Convers-a-Phone). I got to a basic reading knowledge. Then I decided to study Spanish and French, since they were so close to Italian -- three for the price of one. Soon I became entranced with those cultures too. I was supporting myself by working as a janitor in a winery. When I could, I would sneak into the janitor's closets and study. I was poor, and could not imagine going to Italy, so when someone told me about cheap Spanish immersion classes in Guatemala, I jumped at the chance. I worked through all the Spanish grammar books I could, so that when I got to the class, it was pure pleasure. I didn't have the trouble with learning the basics that many of the other students had. A few years later I went to France and Italy to study in inexpensive immersion classes. I loved reading in the literature and talking French or Italian with the people I met. The memories are very personal -- being a servant for a 90-year-old French countess, who enjoyed telling me her version of French history. Talking to a fresh Italian teenager, daughter of a factory worker, about her dreams to be an architect. Asking my French aunt what "connerie" meant. By then, I had the bug, and I bought textbooks and interlinear translations for Latin and Greek. Before I got too far with them, I fell into a well paying profession -- computers. Instead of learning cases and vocabulary, it was software and hardware. Are computer languages foreign languages? I approached them during these years with the same enthusiasm: BASIC, Pascal, C, Unix scripts, etc. After retiring early, I was wandering around the library looking for something to read. I happened to pick up a book of Maigret stories in French by Simenon. To my surprise, I could read it. That whetted my appetite for more, and I threw myself into dozens of Simenon novels, Dumas's easy-to-read adventure stories, and any popular novels I could find. By this time, I had become good at using contextual clues to decipher the meaning of a text. When I reached a certain level in French, I turned to novels in Spanish. I began with old detective stories like Perry Mason that had been translated into Spanish. The turning point was when I read the Harry Potter series in Spanish. At his point, I had worked out the method for achieving reading fluency. I went back to German and gave that a try. That was much harder than French, Spanish and Italian. But the contextual method still works. I'm now reading the Wallender series by Henning Mankell translated in German -- just the right level for me. I flirted with Chinese and Hebrew, but set those aside for languages that had a quicker payoff. I've done several months of Latin and recently started on the Scandinavian languages and Portuguese. I don't have any trouble switching from reading one language to another. It would be a different story, of course, if I were trying to speak or write in the language. But for right now, reading is my goal and it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to have piles of cardboard boxes full of books in foreign languages, waiting to be read. I have an irrational fear that all the languages will begin to clog up my brain, but just the reverse seems to happen. The languages seem to get easier. I'm able to see more connections (e.g., French-English cognates, German vocabulary in the Scandinavian languages). The book "Polyglot" by the late Hungarian translator Kató Lomb has been an inspiration to me, with her verve and enthusiasm for learning languages. I especially liked her method of reading detective stories to improve reading proficiency. http://tesl-ej.org/ej45/tesl-ej.ej45.fr1.pdf 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5180 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 47 of 47 17 March 2012 at 10:05pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks to the loanwords learning one language can help you with others.
but when talking about using target language to learn another one, English I belive has the biggest collection of books to offer. However, there are still some language virgin lands, where you need to learn local language in order to learn your ultimate target language. There are not many books for languages spoken in Russia, or China. I think French gives advantage as well, there are some books on Francofone Africa languages, for example "parlons " series (though, I don't htink they limit themselves to French colonies, they have some other rare languages, like Karakalpak). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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