Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5309 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 9 of 36 23 July 2010 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
@ Romanist
I will put our discussion aside for a moment (or for good if it turns out unnecessary anymore - by mutual agreement :)
I've made a deeper enquiry into the matter and...
...this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovianski
http://steen.free.fr/slovianski/index.html
http://slovianski.wikia.com/wiki/Glovna_stronica
SLOVIANSKI is better than Slovio in pretty much all possible aspects!
Compared to it, when reading Slovio it feels like reading someone's half-assed attempt at speaking some Slavic language.
Slovianski doesn't have the 90% Russian-originating vocabulary that Slovio has and its grammar actually feels like a Slavic grammar, for a change! After having read more texts in Slovio, it turned out that my understanding varied between 100% and as little as only 20% of the vocabulary, whereas with Slovianski it is higher and more constant regardless of the type of text I'm reading.
Edited by Derian on 23 July 2010 at 5:00pm
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Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian
| Message 10 of 36 23 July 2010 at 5:46pm | IP Logged |
Many thanks for these links, Derian.
(Slovianski looks like a very interesting constructed Slavic language too - albeit one with a much more complex grammar than Slovio!)
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Derian Triglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5309 days ago 227 posts - 464 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Czech, French, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 11 of 36 23 July 2010 at 6:14pm | IP Logged |
Romanist wrote:
albeit one with a much more complex grammar than Slovio! |
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Yeah, because that grammar is really Slavic :-) which makes it easier for us Slavs, and makes it more valuable for non-Slavic learners.
Now, if we come back to your original question, but swap Slovio for Slovianski, then I would say: Yes, it would help you learn Russian.
Although still, learning Russian by learning Russian would be the faster way.
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 12 of 36 23 July 2010 at 6:35pm | IP Logged |
Slovianski looks a lot like a simplified cross between Slovak, BCMS/Serbo-Croatian and Russian to me. Fun language to read though and it does appear to have a less Russocentric lexical stock than Slovio.
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aarontp Groupie United States Joined 5268 days ago 94 posts - 139 votes
| Message 13 of 36 24 July 2010 at 2:29am | IP Logged |
You know studying Russian will help you learn Russian. You certainly don't
know studying Slovio will get you even as far as you would have gotten had you
started earlier with Russian. Sounds like an easy decision to me. If it's really a
confidence builder you are after; why not try an easier language? Otherwise, I don't see
the point.
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Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian
| Message 14 of 36 24 July 2010 at 1:12pm | IP Logged |
aarontp wrote:
You know studying Russian will help you learn Russian. You certainly don't know studying Slovio will get you even as far as you would have gotten had you started earlier with Russian. Sounds like an easy decision to me. |
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That seems to be a fair argument. (Actually I am tending towards the view that learners would, in fact, be better to start with their 'real' target Slavic languages...)
aarontp wrote:
If it's really a confidence builder you are after; why not try an easier language? Otherwise, I don't see the point. |
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Umm...that's kind of missing the point, isn't it? The idea/theory behind learning Slovio first is that learners might then enjoy greater transparency of a 'real' Slavic language. Any increase in their confidence would be secondary to this, I think.
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jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6910 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map
| Message 15 of 36 24 July 2010 at 1:19pm | IP Logged |
One of the common arguments for Esperanto is that it enables you to learn new languages more easily. More rarely, people learn Latin for the same reason.
I wouldn't learn Slovio because it would make Russian a lot easier (how can I possibly be sure of that?) but rather because it's another language under the belt, it helps in learning other languages (directly via shared vocabulary/grammar or indirectly according to the theory that it gets easier to learn a new one after you've learned a third/fourth/fifth/etc.)
That being said, I probably wouldn't spend any time on Slovio.
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aarontp Groupie United States Joined 5268 days ago 94 posts - 139 votes
| Message 16 of 36 25 July 2010 at 12:03am | IP Logged |
Romanist wrote:
Umm...that's kind of missing the point, isn't it? The idea/theory behind learning
Slovio first is that learners might then enjoy greater transparency of a 'real'
Slavic language. Any increase in their confidence would be secondary to this, I
think. |
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No, because learning Slavio strikes me as procrastination. If you're going to put off
learning Russian; you might as well learn a natural language in the interim that you
may derive some enjoyment from rather than an artificial language that may be of little
independent value to you. That being said, I can't for the life of me understand the
motivation for learning Esperanto either. Even if it provides some benefit for
learning additional languages, it seems like everyone who learns it already knows
several languages; and I wonder how much utility Esperanto would be to someone at that
point. I've got nothing against learning it for those who are interested, but I'm
skeptical of the value of learning any artificial language purely as a tool for
learning future languages.
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