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What is a non-mainstream language for you | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4825 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 41 of 71 17 August 2012 at 11:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ok, I'd draw this distinction:
Classic mainstream languages---> English, French, German, Spanish. New mainstream languages---> Mandarin & Arabic. "Semi-mainstream" languages---> Portuguese, Russian, Japanese (probably Italian but since I live in Italy, I can't really judge). 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5170 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 42 of 71 19 August 2012 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you would compare foreign languages to a kingdom, then in Poland we have a King - English, Queen - German, then there are king's advisors: French, Italian, Spanish and Russian (who once was a king, and still posessed great influence on people who remember his reign).
Generally you don't have any problem with finding textbooks for those langs, there is variety of them: 'writing letters in French', 'Italian Verbs' and things like this. For the other langs there is not so much choice, but generally you can find some textbook. A lot of teens are interested into Japanese due to Manga and stuff, so maybe Japanese is quite popular too, but there are not as many books on it as there are for the 'advisors'. I often went to bookstores to see what they have, and you can find some books on langs like: Turkish, Persian, Arabic and even Tibetan. but we are still worse than German I think, when I was in Munchen city in a bookstore there were things to learn Somali, Thai etc. We don't have anything to learn Thai in Poland. There are some books for Vietnamese however. A Polish publishing company 'Dialog' has often some textbooks for rarely studied langs. Generally people will be impressed if you know anything different than the big tree: English, German and Russian. and if you are young, Russian can be unexpected too, I think. Few pople know Spanish French and Italian. There is interest in Scandinavia too, a daughter of local shop owner learn Norwegian. We have 7 neighbours as a country, but very few people study Lithuanian or Czech. Maybe its different in Eastern Poland. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| atama warui Triglot Senior Member Japan Joined 4693 days ago 594 posts - 985 votes Speaks: German*, English, Japanese | Message 43 of 71 19 August 2012 at 1:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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While "learning Japanese" might be considered mainstream, anyone who made it past the beginner stages isn't. The quitting rate of the language is pretty high.
I bet the same is true for Mandarin, the new FOTM language. All those learners with high hopes may make it seem like mainstream, when it really isn't - unless you count all those A1 magicians in with their amazing, heavenly abilities at a vocab size that's barely enough to order a coffee, ask for the toilet or state "This is a pen!". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tiagocunha Diglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4854 days ago 24 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English Studies: French | Message 44 of 71 20 August 2012 at 11:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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In my brazillian point of view:
Classical Mainstream -> English, Spanish Semi Mainstream -> Italian, French,German, Japanese(Brazil have the largest japanese community outside Japan) New Mainstream-> Mandarin Anything outside of this group can be view as very weird. Probably I can consider another category: Regional Mainstream ->Guarani(Paraguayan border) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4631 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 45 of 71 20 August 2012 at 5:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have been on the Forum for a few months now and it has struck me how some "non-mainstream" languages seem to be more popular than others amongst members here. For instance, Korean, Finnish and even Georgian seem to have quite a number of eager learners. On the other hand, it seems that some of the "smaller" Indo-European languages which do not belong to any of the major language families (Romance, Germanic and Slavic) are very much non-mainstream even here at HTLAL. I am thinking of Armenian, Modern Greek, Albanian, Lithuanian and Latvian. When a friend of mine spotted my Armenian language course (bought before a trip to Yerevan a couple of years ago) he really thought I had gone crazy: I mean, who can learn that alphabet :) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4660 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 46 of 71 20 August 2012 at 8:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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From Croatian point of view:
mainstream: English, German, Italian (90% of commerce done with Austria, Germany and Italy, 80 % of tourists coming from these countries too) new mainstream: Spanish (due to in-numerous Mexican soap operas and many Spanish tourists) semi-mainstream: French, Russian (they were popular in the 1960ies, but in decline now) non mainstream: all other languages (people will look weird at you if you tell them you're learning this language) Edited by Medulin on 20 August 2012 at 8:20pm 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 47 of 71 20 August 2012 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yes, only "the big four" are mainstream here in Norway: English, German, French, Spanish. I don't think Spanish would have been considered mainstream 20 or 25 years ago. As you say, everything else is weird, although Italian, and maybe Portuguese and Russian, are semi-mainstream. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5326 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 48 of 71 20 August 2012 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
Spanish was not considered mainstream 20 or 25 years ago, I taught Spanish at the time and it was considered very exotic indeed. Today it is the most common language after English at my daughter's school. Based on the reactions I get I would not say Russian is even semi-mainstream, but I suppose that is different if you live further North, closer to the Russian border. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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