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Tackling Germanic languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 9 of 15 23 January 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thanks everyone! I'm still studying Icelandic every day and like it quite a bit, so I've decided to continue it. It's very close to *Old Norwegian (edit: Old Norse), so that's a plus.
Afrikaans would be very interesting. Your suggestions have me excited to look into that one, Dutch, or German after a bit more time with Icelandic! Each one has its own special attraction, for sure. Edited by Ygangerg on 24 January 2011 at 12:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6141 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 10 of 15 23 January 2011 at 10:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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I guess you've already made up your mind, but I just read on here that Professor Arguelles recommended that the optimum order for a native English speaker tackling the Germanic languages would be to start with German, and then to study Icelandic second. This is probably because they are the most difficult in the West and North Germanic groups respectively, and after those two the other Germanic languages would be much easier. I suppose from there you could study whatever interests you most.
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| Ygangerg Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5317 days ago 100 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French Studies: German | Message 11 of 15 23 January 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ah! Well that's almost enough to give me pause, but I think I'm going to stay my course. I look at it this way: with "exotic" languages that aren't related to mine at all, I wouldn't have the option of choosing the "closest" one, right? With Germanic languages, anything I choose will be relatively close to home in many respects.
That being said, German is looking like a very strong candidate for my next endeavor :) p.s. Ellasevia: do you still know where on the forum Prof. Arguelles mentioned this topic? p.p.s. Mithridates: thanks for the great link! Edited by Ygangerg on 23 January 2011 at 11:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6141 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 12 of 15 23 January 2011 at 11:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know where the Professor said this himself, but I found the reference to his comment on this page (message 18). Edited by ellasevia on 23 January 2011 at 11:32pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Mithridates Newbie Korea, South pagef30.com Joined 5675 days ago 21 posts - 36 votes | Message 13 of 15 24 January 2011 at 2:27am | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, I would stick with Icelandic. It's easy to move from that into another Germanic
language, not so easy the other way around. You might find some of these links to be interesting too (Disney movies with subtitles): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTDHjhMsGG0 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Lucky Charms Diglot Senior Member Japan lapacifica.net Joined 6948 days ago 752 posts - 1711 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: German, Spanish | Message 14 of 15 24 January 2011 at 4:34am | IP Logged | ||
This wasn't in a thread about the Germanic languages specifically, but about the path to becoming a polyglot in general: He said that French and German are must-have languages, and the ones he'd recommend starting out with, because so many materials for learning other languages are written in French and German. In a later thread (started after ProfA became inactive), a member was wondering why this would've been said about German, and what kind of language learning materials would be more readily available in German than in English or French. A few members in that thread confirmed that German has the greatest selection of materials for a learner of German dialects and Scandinavian languages (and if memory serves, Latin, Ancient Greek, and Central European languages as well). Actually, it was with this thread in mind that I recommended going with German first, and I heartily recommend it as your second choice after Icelandic! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6371 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 15 of 15 25 January 2011 at 7:54am | IP Logged | ||
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This is probably obvious to many people here but if you know English and German then
Dutch is so easy to learn. Dutch has similar grammar and words to German but is also similar to English in more ways than probably any other major language. Afrikaans is too because it developed out of Dutch. Edited by zerothinking on 25 January 2011 at 7:55am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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