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Why not Spanish as essential? | ||
Tags: Polyglot Academy | Language Importance | L3 via L2 | Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | Choosing a Language | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5375 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 97 of 115 15 March 2014 at 10:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I am not a polyglot and have no desire to be but I have been reading this thread curiously and am simply interested in the argument of some people that it is all about the language learning resources available in the third language.
If someone has French they have Assimil "With Ease" books for 50+ different languages at their disposal. If they have English they have Pimsleur for 50+ different languages and FSI for 44 different languages at their disposal. Of course there are numerous more resources in these two languages. Why do the learning resources of the third language matter so much? Can someone explain how/why adding German (instead of Spanish) resources to the overwhelming amount of resources available in French and English would make any difference? It seems like basic math makes the learning resources argument of the third language irrelevant. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 98 of 115 15 March 2014 at 10:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Perhaps all true. Professor Arguelles comes at language learning from a different perspective than most. He's more than a literature buff. He's a scholar. His primary goal is reading the great literature in "the original tongue". He seems to use oral production (speaking) as a necessary component in attaining his primary purpose. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| luke Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 7205 days ago 3133 posts - 4351 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, French | Message 99 of 115 15 March 2014 at 10:51am | IP Logged | |||||
That particular advice is really targeted at someone with the goals like his own. E.G., someone who wants to learn lots of languages in order to read and possibly discuss the "Great Books" with others on the same path. When looking at his ideas for an Institute of Polyliteracy and Polyglottery, German is one of the languages that will be the "common tongue" in the classroom.
Spanish does get first mention after his top 3. Edited by luke on 15 March 2014 at 10:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5532 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 100 of 115 15 March 2014 at 10:52am | IP Logged | |||||
Well, let's take Middle Egyptian as an example. - The best introductory grammars are in English, as far as I can tell. - There's an excellent Assimil course, but it's only available with a French base. - Several of the classic grammars are in French. - The standard, comprehensive dictionary of Egyptian is only available with a German base. The same for some of the best books on the hieratic and demotic scripts. - The academic literature is spread between English, French and German. Because of this, most graduate programs in Egyptology actually require a reading knowledge of French, German and English before they'll even consider admitting you. Yes, all three. And this is not uncommon: if you want to study any of the rarer Germanic languages, such as Old Norse, you'll often need to rely on German resources. Professor Arguelles looks at language learning from the perspective of a European academic interested in the study of languages. And in that situation, French and German are pretty much inescapable, especially for rarer languages with fewer resources. Edited by emk on 15 March 2014 at 11:02am 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4707 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 101 of 115 15 March 2014 at 10:59am | IP Logged | |||||
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Besides that the amount of good dictionaries Langenscheidt and Pons make are just worth
your time and effort. It's one reason I should probably improve my German. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5375 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 102 of 115 15 March 2014 at 11:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Interesting responses.
The examples of Middle Egyptian and Old Norse are fine, but there are certainly numerous examples of obscure languages in South America (and likely some in Spain) that the learner would be better off with Spanish. In fact, I am sure there would be many examples of obscure languages people could think up that would be difficult to learn with English, French, German and Spanish. Finding the exceptions is not really the point. The point is that with English and #2 someone already has 98% of the ground covered. Why stress out about #3 when the choice will only get you to 98.4%? If someone knows they want to learn Old Norse or Middle Egyptian, sure, go for German. If they know they want native South American languages, sure, go for Spanish. But, objectively and mathematically, if you have English and #2, it should not make much of a difference at all which your #3 is. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 103 of 115 15 March 2014 at 12:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The best (not monolingual) textbook I've seen for Finnish is German-based. Maybe that's to some extent a stereotype, but Germans have a reputation of being very thorough. Spanish is very useful for some specific languages (and Assimil Catalan is one of the Prof's fave courses), but I won't deny I'm jealous of what's accessible with a French base. For me it doesn't justify learning the language, but for many it's just one of the reasons.
Pimsleur and FSI are 2%, not 98%. Edited by Serpent on 15 March 2014 at 12:06pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4253 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 104 of 115 15 March 2014 at 12:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The two most important languages for Uralic languages are German and Russian. There isn't a Uralic language for which there are no resources in either. I understand Uralic studies are not very sexy but a knowledge of Spanish is of no use in academia in Europe, unless you're doing Romance studies, of course.
To wrap everything up, after this I'll (try to) "over n' out" of this thread. Is Spanish the best bet if you want to get employment in the United States? Quite likely. Is it your best bet if you want to pursue an academic career in humanities and arts? No. Edited by Henkkles on 16 March 2014 at 3:28pm 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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