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How common is your language combination? | ||
Tags: Number of Languages | Usefulness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 25 of 59 11 January 2013 at 1:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you look at the profile of Solfrid Cristina and mine, you could think that the combination English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian and Greek was perfectly normal for Norwegians :-) Seriously though, I don't think a combination of English and one or two Romance languages + German is that rare, at least not in Northern Europe. However, I am a bit wary of telling people that I am now studying both Russian and Greek. I mentioned it to one friend whose immediate comment was: Why, are you converting to the Orthodox Church? (He is very interested in religions...)
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| Chris Ford Groupie United States Joined 4744 days ago 65 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese | Message 26 of 59 11 January 2013 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the majority of Americans who study Portuguese probably already have some background in either Spanish or Italian, so even though Portuguese is an uncommonly taught language, the combo of Spanish+Portuguese is actually more common than just learning Portuguese on its own. :)
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5101 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 27 of 59 12 January 2013 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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An English speaking American who studies French is almost as common as it gets. My combo is probably only second to English/Spanish. When I study German it will be a bit less common but only because I will actually be able to converse in three languages, as opposed to the usual testimonies.
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| kaptengröt Tetraglot Groupie Sweden Joined 4339 days ago 92 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Swedish, Faroese, Icelandic Studies: Japanese | Message 28 of 59 12 January 2013 at 3:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I am an American, but attempting to learn a Nordic language (or any foreign language) seems to be extremely common if you have heritage ties to the countries (which many Americans do for Nordics, especially in certain areas where there were mass-immigrations) - that, being forced to do one of the mainstream-in-America ones (Spanish, French, German, American Sign Language - depending on where you live, high schools also offer Chinese or Japanese) for the required two years in high school, or learning Spanish due to "Hispanics taking over America" seems to be the only reason why most Americans even try to learn another language. Although I don't have any heritage ties to these countries either so I am a bit unusual. Not to mention I think it is unusual for an American to actually stick with learning until a point where they get really good at any foreign language.
In America I would not count Japanese as a more minor language-learning-language, not anymore with ex. the anime, manga, videogame, and general Japanese-business boom along with areas with lots of Japanese immigrants (where I lived there were tons of shops with nothing in English and everything in Japanese instead, and you couldn't get a job if you weren't fluent in Japanese - other shops were the same with Mandarin). People who have nothing to do with anime are taking Japanese for business reasons all the time. (By the way, I am also going to learn Japanese starting after the next half-year, because it was always my dream since I was a kid thanks to anime haha!) I think if you know one language it is not so uncommon to learn a related one. In my case, Icelandic for example is already so small, why not add to its usefulness by learning the related Faroese - that way my "tiny, useless, insignificant" Icelandic is a little more useful since I can now understand two insignificant, related languages : P And I think many (possibly even most) Icelandic learners learn a Scandinavian one before learning Icelandic, since Scandinavian is sort of like a much easier version of Icelandic with a little shared vocabulary. I think deep in my heart I feel like languages are really tiny if they are not on the same scale as ex. English and Chinese so I want to learn related ones too to make mine feel bigger... Maybe other people also feel the same way and that is why it is common to learn related ones. When I tell Americans I study Icelandic I get one of three reactions: "People live in Iceland?!" or "Iceland has its own language?!", or occasionally "You will just learn any language, huh?" When I tell Scandinavians I am learning Icelandic, they just go something like "tungur knivur jeg-ur!". Edited by kaptengröt on 12 January 2013 at 3:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 29 of 59 12 January 2013 at 12:33pm | IP Logged | ||
and in some cases it's far more common for the people from this or that country to learn Russian than vice versa, especially with the Slavic languages like Polish and Croatian. Also true about Romanian and maybe Danish and Dutch. Also, apart from English, German and maybe Spanish, you can take any three languages on my list and it will be an uncommon combination :) it's simply unusual to be learning so many unpopular languages ;P edit: like for example, I was delighted when I got to know someone else who's learning both Finnish and Portuguese AND loves Portuguese more than Spanish. Edited by Serpent on 12 January 2013 at 1:09pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 30 of 59 12 January 2013 at 9:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Breton and Hebrew? Russian and Swedish? I have some pretty odd combinations, but since I
always have been the odd one out nobody should be surprised. My parents think my obsession with Russian is a bit weird, though. French and German are so mainstream in the Netherlands it hurts. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4666 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 31 of 59 12 January 2013 at 10:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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French is super-common. I plan to tackle Norwegian and German eventually, but those are hardly unusual, either.
But if I'm still up for a new language after those three, I may have to go after Indonesian, which I guess would go a little further toward putting me in the "oddball" camp. :-) Edited by tastyonions on 12 January 2013 at 10:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wv girl Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5240 days ago 174 posts - 330 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Spanish | Message 32 of 59 13 January 2013 at 1:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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My combination is as common as dirt ... an English speaker who has French & Spanish. The few expressions I know
in Hindi are too rude to be of much use, and my brief dabbling in Italian doesn't add much spice either. The only thing slightly "exotic" I did was a teeny bit of Greek when I was dreaming of a summer getaway. But I'm content being "ordinary." I love what my studies have brought me. And as common as my combos are, they're still more interesting than English alone. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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