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What language did you find easiest? | ||
Tags: Easiness | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 57 of 66 12 February 2015 at 10:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, of course the synergy depends on which languages you're learning and whether you need/want to speak asap.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 58 of 66 12 February 2015 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
I have found that wanting to speak is never enough. Needing to speak and forcing yourself into situations where you are reliant on your oral knowledge of a certain language is what forces you ahead in production. There is synergy in terms of cognates, but that's mostly because you're just learning related languages; a lot of mathematical concepts carry over to physics in the same way. But the really big difference is in the fact that your learning is more efficient because you know what works for you. I, for example, don't do a lot of review and memorization because it's not something that causes me headaches. I don't remember everything, and I will miss words, but on average I miss much less than other people so I repeat things much less. I do have to write characters out more often to remember them just because the strokes are more complex, but in principle even now I don't see characters as combinations of individual strokes but as groups of strokes that I put together (and I remember those radicals or group thingies very often). I have bigger problems with articulating properly, learning to deduce the tones (I'm okay at it, but I could be better), being precise when I say something (I'm very good at bluffing and saying things in a roundabout way, because it's a useful coping strategy). But I already know all of these things because they repeat and come up often in my learning. So I am aware of these small differences and I can act off of them. This is what gives me an edge - it allows me to manipulate subtleties others find hard, because they're not used to seeing these subtleties in such detail and paying attention to context. Very often I may slightly misuse a structure because I don't know some more proper word, but the meaning is clear and they understand what my intention was. Learning languages can be a basic game at first, but once you get that down it's a subtleties game and those subtleties you learn to manipulate by seeing them in practice and using them in context. That's why I also find oral communication so important, because a book can only convey this human interaction to a limited extent, but the actual interaction cannot truly be simulated. The real message is: have a plan. It doesn't have to be a plan to conquer the world, but have a plan of action how you intend to tackle something even if it's in a vague way. By all means IMPROVE the strategy later, but develop one and develop it fast. And if you're in an immersion situation, double the importance of your plan. And once it's automatic, check that it's working often. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 59 of 66 12 February 2015 at 12:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not just about cognates, at least lexical ones. If you prefer to have a silent period, much of the grammar will come naturally too, at least in a related language. I assume you weren't referring to the "grammatical cognates".
And a "want" can be strong enough to get you to put yourself into uncomfortable situations. I tend to feel that resorting to English is shameful, and that's enough to keep struggling. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 60 of 66 12 February 2015 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | |||||
Yeah, but I'm learning Mandarin. Spanish and Portuguese may have less issues in this context... but language doesn't involve pixie dust. You need to do the legwork at some point, plain and simple, even if it's not explicit.
That's all good and well for you, but 99% of people don't turn that shame into something active. And they're the ones that need to change their mentality - it's not you I'm doubting. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6600 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 61 of 66 12 February 2015 at 3:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Well, we were speaking about polyglots. My original statement about synergy depending on the languages and on the need/want to speak still applies :) It doesn't seem like we disagree much if at all.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4710 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 62 of 66 13 February 2015 at 3:09am | IP Logged | |||||
We fundamentally disagree on the point where this process is magical and "natural". Edited by tarvos on 13 February 2015 at 3:13am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Stolan Senior Member United States Joined 4035 days ago 274 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Thai, Lowland Scots Studies: Arabic (classical), Cantonese | Message 63 of 66 13 February 2015 at 6:36am | IP Logged | |||||
The Chinese writing system is so confusing in the formation via radical and phonetic compounds that I have no clue how people collectively decide on what a new character should look like, heck, the scene in Hero mentions 20 different ways to write on character in 200 BC. Anyway, on Mandarin, despite having fewer tones and other phonemes, it is harder on my mouth. It leaves things sort of sore as if I stretched my muscles unnaturally. Basically, its almost as painful to me but not as much as forcing myself speaking with a strong British accent. Cantonese feels more comfortable, it has a very American like feel, words are just muttered with just enough energy to produce a sound the way us Americans speak English, it's also a bit more nasal too. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6585 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 64 of 66 13 February 2015 at 9:48am | IP Logged | |||||
The king in Hero is Qin Shi-Huang. He's famous for uniting China by conquest and standardising the writing system by burying scholars and burning books. So in that case, there's nothing "collective" about it. And when the Communist Party decided to simplify the writing system it was also a top-down approach. In the places where traditional characters are used, there's still a lot of variation, like 裡 vs. 裏.
Mandarin absolutely has a lot more sounds that are difficult for English speakers to produce, like differentiating between s, x, sh or c, q, j. Pretty much all of the Cantonese phonemes exist in English (except maybe the stop consonants), though the tonal system is of course a lot more complex. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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