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Languages you can read based on others? | ||
Tags: Linguistic relationships | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5211 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 17 of 46 25 April 2012 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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Having (previously) studied Russian intensively did help with getting to basic Polish to a certain extent but reading Polish meant learning extra graphemes and pronunciation. I am still not a rapid reader but can cope with the FSI FAST Polish.
I can have a decent stab at Greek notices & signs. I had decent schoolboy French (UK A level) which helped a little when I had a flat share with an Italian girl and what I learned there helped ease my Spanish entry and that gets me a bit of Portuguese and with a bit of TY from a book I found in a charity shop I have some Catalan. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6901 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 18 of 46 26 April 2012 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||
I can't speak Norwegian or Danish but can read both languages better than many others I've studied "for real". Dutch is possible thanks to my German, Portuguese thanks to my Spanish... that's about it. I haven't tried Galician/Catalan/Occitan/Ido. When I had a go at Scots Gaelic in the nineties, I found my knowledge of Irish really helpful, but I wouldn't call that "reading". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5122 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 19 of 46 26 April 2012 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
If you can read Portuguese and Spanish, you should have no trouble with Galician. Catalan, in my opinion, is more difficult for a Spanish speaker than Galician is. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5445 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 20 of 46 26 April 2012 at 9:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I agree. For someone who knows Spanish, Galician is easier than Portuguese.
I find that I can read Occitan based on my knowledge of Catalan, at least if it is written in the "classical orthography". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6264 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 21 of 46 18 May 2012 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have engaged in some study of Dutch, and know some of the basic vocabulary from that, but I can read it more or less largely because of its resemblance to German. The spoken language is harder than the written, and German is less useful as a crutch with that.
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| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4851 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 22 of 46 18 May 2012 at 11:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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As a native Slavic speaker, I think I'm able to say something ;)
With my C2 (I hope so!) Polish and B1 (hope so too) Bulgarian, I can pretty much understand Russian and even read novels without very specific and specialistic vocabulary. Texts in newspapers aren't also a big deal. The same applies to Czech, Slovak and Macedonian (with Croatian is a bit worse, but somehow I would cope). Ukrainian - well, it's like that: if I focus - I understand A LOT. Haven't tried much with Belarusian, but I guess it would be only a little bit harder than reading in Ukrainian. I guess the biggest problems I have with Slovene. My situation is a little bit different because, as a student of Slavic philology, I have at least minimal exposure for all of them - maybe except Belarusian. I have a book in Sorbian in my room, so maybe I should try to read it ;) P.S. I'd like to hear from someone who knows both Danish/Norwegian and Icelandic, how good is (s)he in understanding Faroese. Edited by prz_ on 19 May 2012 at 12:10am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4836 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 23 of 46 18 May 2012 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Well, I 'only' know Swedish and Icelandic to an intermediate level, but I can say this: Thanks to its conservative orthography, written Faroese is quite transparent to me, if the language is not too specialized or complicated. One has to cope with some unknown words and some grammatical pecularities, but one can nevertheless get the gist. Spoken Faroese, on the other hand, is a complete different cup of tea. Due to its isolated location and some sound shifts, the language has developed in its own way and is not mutually intelligible with other Scandinavian languages. In fact, if Faroese didn't have its conservative orthography, it would be hard to recognize as a Scandinavian language at first sight. For example, the possessive pronoun mín ('my') looks very similar to its cognates in the other Scandinavian languages, but it is pronounced [mʊiːn]. Where Icelandic has nýjum (dat. of 'new'), it is nýggjum in Faroese. They look similar, but the Icelandic word is pronounced ['niːjʏm] while the Faroese one sounds like ['nʊdʒːʊn]. Last example: the neuter personal and demonstrative pronoun tað ('it', 'that'). It looks similar to Icelandic það, but it sounds like [tɛa], while its Icelandic equivalent is pronounced [θaːð]. Or take maður ('man'). In Icelandic, it's ['maðʏr̥] while in Faroese it's ['mɛavʊɹ]. Nevertheless, Faroese grammar is very close to Icelandic. The differences to Danish are even bigger, despite the Danish colonial reign and the Danish influence on the Faroes. Does this answer your question? Edited by Josquin on 19 May 2012 at 3:27pm 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4851 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 24 of 46 19 May 2012 at 12:07am | IP Logged | ||
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I think that - yes. Thanks a lot.
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