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Related Languages Simultaneously? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| trickypig Newbie United States Joined 5601 days ago 12 posts - 13 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Dutch, French | Message 1 of 19 13 October 2009 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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I was wondering if anyone had heard of any programs (books, audio, courses, anything) or even just research about learning several related languages simultaneously. Does anything like that exist?
Just to clarify, I mean learning multiple similar languages (For example, Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French) all at the same time. I do not mean simply studying all four at once, but an integrated course that would explain similarities, differences, common concepts, etc. It seems like an obvious idea, but perhaps also a bad one... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| gobbledigook Diglot Groupie Mexico Joined 5971 days ago 80 posts - 83 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Italian, Portuguese, French | Message 2 of 19 13 October 2009 at 9:40pm | IP Logged |
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I've been doing this and I believe this is possible to do. I've been studying Romance languages for quite some time and I think learning related languages at the same time really helps. It makes it easier to understand how a certain language is similar to another one, and then the differences become obvious and easier to differentiate which difference belongs to which of the languages of this "family".
I'm sure I didn't make any sense hahaha, but hopefully you'll get the idea. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| gdoyle1990 Groupie United States Joined 5623 days ago 52 posts - 60 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Serbian, Estonian | Message 3 of 19 14 October 2009 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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I haven't looked into it, but I know FSI has a course that teaches Portuguese by using the previous Spanish course and explaining how they are different and the new words you need. I thought it looked interesting and would be fun to do it with other languages.
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| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6705 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 4 of 19 14 October 2009 at 4:25am | IP Logged |
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I saw a book in a library years ago that put forth a program for a person to learn three Romance languages together (French, Spanish and I believe Italian). The introduction noted that the similarity of the languages would be a benefit to the learner because there is so much overlap, and you would just have to be careful to practice each on their own. I don't think the course had audio material, though, and I never used it, so I don't know how it would work out in practice.
I also know the book the Loom of Language put forth the idea of learning related European (Germanic and Romance) languages, but I don't remember if they promoted learning them at the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5570 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 19 14 October 2009 at 4:33am | IP Logged |
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I haven't personally come across any material like that, but I would be interested if
anybody had anything that explores the German-Dutch connection, as I plan to take up Dutch once I get my German to an advanced level. Anyways, if you are interested in using your knowledge of a second language to help you learn a related third language, you may consider purchasing a course for the third language intended for speakers of the second language. But that way you would have to learn one to a pretty decent level before starting the other. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 19 14 October 2009 at 9:45am | IP Logged |
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When I studied French in the 70s one of the professors made a crash course in the Romance languages as a group, i.e. those who attended it weren't supposed really to learn the langages in question. We got a course in recognizing sound differences due to historical sound shifts, we were told about the main pecularities of each language (such as the Portuguese 'infinitivo pessoal') and saw the inflection tables without any obligation to learn everything by heart. And finally we looked at the general history of the languages in the group.
I have not really seen any course like this since then, except that there are some thick books on a scientific level for the Romance, the Germanic, the Slavic and probably also other language families - these represent the books I have read in this category, but there are probably also similar books for other groups. However they are patently not written for people who are learning the languages in question, but for the erudites who want to see the similarities and the differences. Besides I have a few books that compare two related languages or dialects, for instance a little Spanish book that compares Castillian and Catalan and a Portuguese grammar (by Teyssier) that treats the European and the Brazilian versions side by side - both simple enough to be used by learners. Quite generally the tips and tricks we studied during the course I mentioned above are useful for people who know one or (preferably) a couple of languages in a certain group, but hasn't got the time or inclination to learn each and every one of them - which incidentally would be physically impossible if you also include the dialects (which in some cases can be just as hard to understand as other 'lingos'that are considered languages in their own right). Of course I still use such techniques myself, - I have for instance read homepages in Corsican, Sardinian, Romantsch and Aromanian for the sake of threads on this forum (and for my own amusement), but I don't have time or the necessary tools and exposure to learn them properly. But it must be stressed that there is a difference between learning just enough to understand a certain language or dialect and really learning it in order to write and speak it. When I decided to 'activate' my Swedish my background was almost 100% passive understanding of the language, but I still went through the usual steps of making wordlists, studying grammar from concrete examples (because I couldn't find a usable grammar book, not even in Swedish bookstores), reading intensively and so forth - the difference was just this everything went much faster. And the same thing must apply to any other study of a languge group: learning to decode the members of that group is not the same as acquiring an active competence, but it is an excellent preparation - and every time you do it you get access to one more 'small world'. Edited by Iversen on 14 October 2009 at 10:13am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6662 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 7 of 19 14 October 2009 at 2:51pm | IP Logged |
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When I was in college, our school offered a four-week course in Portuguese that was only open to students who had previously reached a certain level in Spanish.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5769 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 19 14 October 2009 at 3:23pm | IP Logged |
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In Germany universities, majoring in Scandinavian languages means that you have to learn at least two of them (usually one has to choose from Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) at the same time, one as major and the other as minor. There surely is information available on it.
But one has to keep in mind that those three languages are relatively easy for Germans, especially as you can expect the students to have learnt two or three other foreign languages in school. I doubt there are many people learning a language family completely unrelated to their own native language at once, unless they already have a lot of experience in language-learning. Oh, and I'm not here at all. Edited by Bao on 14 October 2009 at 3:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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