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Twenty Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| jeeb Groupie Joined 5161 days ago 49 posts - 80 votes  | Message 57 of 117 19 November 2010 at 3:15am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
I think you misunderstand what I wrote. I said French number system is complicated. Chinese number system is built on the number of 10 and all you need to remember is 14 characters - the character of 1-9, zero, thousand, ten thousand, million, ten million, billion. Chinese number system is taken from the Arab. Someone even created a ranking for the difficulty of number system in the World. French is in the top 20. http://www.sf.airnet.ne.jp/~ts/language/number.html Well, I understand. Chinese has many languages and the like of Hakka is less known to the World. Hakka is even easier than Mandarin. Hakka has four tones and is quite monosyllabic, that means you can express things in much shorter sentences. Also, it has more relationship with the East Asian and South East Asian languages But I admit it's harder to find Hakka stuff. I'm not going to convince you to learn any Chinese languages. Edited by jeeb on 19 November 2010 at 3:20am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 58 of 117 19 November 2010 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
My, my, so many responses to what I thought would be just another forgotten thread. I feel that I should comment on some of the more interesting (in my opinion) posts and perhaps further explain my initial post. Here goes:
It's only a distraction if you read it. That logic could obviously be applied to the rest of the forum, or indeed any other annoying thing (for example, working, eating, washing, sleeping, etc) which can most cruelly distract us from our studying.
That's more like it!
That's the fun part!
That was one of the points I was trying to get across in my original post.
See comment immediately above this one and further comments at the end.
Did I get it right? You're partially correct, though, it was slightly tongue in cheek but also something else (see below).
I didn't think that the other list went barren, just that it had strayed from it's original premise.
Good luck indeed!
No offence taken and thanks!
I strongly agree. In this case, you could possibly say that it's not getting to the destination but the journey that's important. I also agreed with a great deal of Iversen's first post, but quoting (and replying to) such a hefty amount of text would result in this particular post being even longer and more boring than it already is. Let me finish off by trying to clarify what I meant to say when I wrote the initial post: I noticed that, when I tried to whittle down all 6000+ languages of the world into the ten languages I would most definitely like to learn, it proved to be easier than trying to limit myself to twenty, thirty, forty or even more. In other words, the greater the freedom of choice, the harder I found it to limit myself. I simply wondered if other members had encountered these same difficulties. That's all. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| darkwhispersdal Senior Member Wales Joined 6041 days ago 294 posts - 363 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Ancient Greek, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, Latin | Message 59 of 117 20 November 2010 at 12:07am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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One can dream
Spanish Russian Mandarin Japanese Vietnamese Turkish French German Thai Korean Hindi Portuguese Cantonese Bengali Urdu No way I could get fluency in these but a comfortable grasp for reading Latin Ancient Greek 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| caracao Triglot Groupie France Joined 5121 days ago 53 posts - 84 votes Speaks: French*, English, Italian Studies: German | Message 60 of 117 20 November 2010 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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My own list, not entirely conviced
1 French mother tongue 2 English proficient 3 Italian working on it 4 German gotta open books, used to have a basic fluency 5 Spanish cause you gotta to, although I'm really not a fan of that language, don't ask me why 6 Catalan That language I really love, don't ask me why 7 Japanese, a dream I have, just started to learn the kanji, I'll learn the spoken language afterwards, it's a new method. 8 Portuguese from Brazil Beautiful language, provided you don't pronounce it the portuguse way 9 Arabic Ok it's a deal, but which arabic? lol 10 Russian beautiful language 11 Modern Greek interesting 12 Ancient Greek cause you gotta be masochist. 13 Latin of course 14 Hungarian Beautiful and very logic language, and very easy also, unlike the popular belief. 15 Dutch Provided I don't have to go in Flanders, it can be an interesting language. I'm joking it's the ugliest language on earth, but it's so ugly it's funny. And can't say the flemish are open-minded with french speakers! 16 Chinese Interesting yet very difficult to pronounce. 17 Norwegian 18 Swedish 19 Danish a very difficult language, particularly the spoken language, it has little to do with the written language. 20 Free spot. Probably Czech. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7016 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 61 of 117 21 November 2010 at 12:05am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I've just remembered that I didn't include Latin or Ancient Greek in my original list, neither did I include Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Slovenian, Basque, Finnish or Hungarian.
Like I said, harder to stick to twenty than ten (for me, anyway). Edited by patuco on 21 November 2010 at 12:05am 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6780 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 62 of 117 23 November 2010 at 6:36pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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OK, better understood now :)
No, seriously, the topic has its interest. It is about designing a life-long linguistic plan, which was asked about and covered in connection with Prof. Argüelles' views in the past I remember, surely there are many other threads on the topic; personally I find some of his assumptious, like you have to study something from Celtic family, hard to swallow; but is good to know. Here is about this amazing 20 mark, which is interesting because clearly the learner here, if not joking, is planning to enter the hall of fame of hyperpolyglots and be mentioned in Wikipedia's lists of idem :) Well, that is a factor of motivation in itself, that in some cases could be enough, I dont deny it. It has the minus of unforeseability of psychological and life changes, but has the plus of focusing and boosting motivation, preventing diversions into “oh I saw a book on Albanian for only 10 bucks and thought, why not”, with consequent waste of time in the end. As a linguist, I do wonder what would I say if someone come to me and say: “help me design an ambitious but attainable 20 lifelong linguistic plan”. In addition to my initial criteria, some of which I mentioned above, one way I find to make the insanity less insane is to plan not only on which languages you will tackle, but to what level one would take them. For that, I take the European Framework of Reference, and add one more level on top that I call C2 + , like this: -C2+:: that's where you put your native/s and languages that you love so much, spend so much time with, worry so much about dialects, slangs, complicated literature, etc, in a word, you go full throttle, that somehow they are even above... -C2: which is very high level, but knowledge of the standard suffices -C1: is high but less demanding -B2: is like English First Certificate, functional under favorable circumstances, satisfactory to some extend, you still can say “I know this language”, but within easy reach -B1: this would be more like Iversen in his lesser Latin languages, can read and hold some conversation but it wont take too much time (A level I discard as it doesnt amount to anything really, unless bare survival, but someone could use it for other kind of arrangement) So in a 20 plan, you put 4 languages in each of them. If I take again as reference Patuco's list, and most of the others are not different, in fact we are not too much in disagreement. We add his solid base camp English-Spanish for the 20 list, naturally: so this: French Portug uese Italia n Catalan German Dutch � � ; Danish Swedish Russian Polish Mandarin Cantonese Japanese Korean Arabic Hebrew Hindi Swahili Xhosa Zulu Could become this: (I assume, for the sake of exemplification, Russian and Mchinese as his other two stars), and as I said, in my opinion the four great non-Western cannot be negotiable with Xhosa or something like that, my unreasonable opinion sorry C2 + C2 &nb sp;C1 B2 ; B1 English German ; Dutch Swedish ; Danish Spanish French ; Portug Italian&nbs p; Catalan Russian Polish ; Arabic ; MChinese Japanese &n bsp; Hindi &nb sp; So there are there four slots you have to fill with some from these others you seem infatuated with: Cantonese, Korean, Hebrew, Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu, and later you said Latin, Ancient Greek, Serbo-Croat, Slovenian, Basque , Finnish, Hungarian. It is a long complex discussion, of course, but frankly as I said, if I were you and barred special personal circumstances, I would take these: Korean, Serbo-Croat, Latin and Agreek, to be arranged like this: PATUCO'S LIFELONG LINGUISTIC PLAN C2 + C2 &nb sp;C1 B2 ; B1 English German ; Dutch Swedish ; Danish Spanish French ; Portuguese Italian Catalan Russian Polish ; Serbo-Croat Latin& nbsp; AGreek MChinese Japanese &n bsp; Arabic Hindi&nb sp; Korean This way horizontally you profit from family relationships, vertically you tilt to the ambitious left major world languages from which you will undoubtedly derive personal, professional, intelectual benefits no matter which psychological and vital changes you undergo every 7 years (all cells in the body are new, and so psychological structures, but in my experience, major languages carry on with you, no matter what, because you can pursue your interests IN them), while pushing minority, non-spoken classical and tough Korean to more humble, but realistic and equally satisfactory, levels of command, to the right. In other plans, other can do the same with their minority ones. Minority Germanic, Latin and Slavonic might seem in contradiction with my initial assumptions, but no so in terms of being profiting from the family lines and being in own cultural area (less tough). So you got Germanic family on top, then Latin, then Slavonic and classic (that is a well-rounded Western man we might say) and then at the botton 5 tough, solid, mammoth non-Western languages, which together will fry your brain but being who they are, not your motivation. We have to understand that this works systemically, organically, I mean, it is very good to say I am gonna learn Zulu, but you have to know that difficulties mean time, and time is something all the others will be demanding like hungry children food. This is like having many children, or women. We have to make sure the two phases of our languages life (studying them, and “living” them), have vital resourses to prosper, and that means adequate learning materials in the first, and exposure and use opportunities in a non-study context in the second. This way we turn a delusional musing into an encouraging incredibly tough, but not impossible to attain (and so motivation-boosting) ideal, the thrill of knowing one is doing something remarkable, probably to be part of an elite of 100 people in the world or so, but without throwing your whole life into it This is the most I can do to help in your insanity. :) Freaks. (Sorry about the tables, no way I can do it right here $%&?, it is 5 colums with 4 languages each, obviously) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 63 of 117 23 November 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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You could do one thing more: avoid calling other language learners freaks and referring to their presumed insanity and delusions. Life can be lived in many ways, and spending it - partly - on language learning is neither more insane nor more indicative of delusions than playing soccer, climbing mountains or building a company. And 20 languages is not unrealistic, just hard to achieve.
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| Juаn Senior Member Colombia Joined 5346 days ago 727 posts - 1830 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 64 of 117 23 November 2010 at 11:40pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I think sigiloso touches on a very important point: language relationship. It is not the same to learn Japanese as your second language being a native Spanish speaker than learning Korean afterwards. The latter will come at a great discount. This would make learning your first handful of languages much harder than the next batch. If you take a sufficiently long run so that you allow that first round of languages to firmly set in, you could very reasonably achieve twenty or thirty languages within a lifetime.
Take for example this starting point: A Romance language A Germanic language A Slavic language A Turkic language A Semitic language An Indo-Iranian language An Indo-Aryan language A Dravidian language An Austronesian language A Sinitic language Japanese or Korean Most people here are fluent in at least 2 of those branches. Let's say achieving fluency in the rest takes someone 5 hours a day for 15 years, and that they start at age 25. That would place our happy subject at age 40 with 11 languages already under her belt, poised to then take on a number of other languages with relative ease and many years ahead of her life. From this, reaching 20 or 30 languages would be entirely attainable. No question such a quest would require great dedication and discipline, but who else but someone committed enough, passionate enough and capable enough would undertake it? 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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