rmel Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4238 days ago 20 posts - 24 votes Studies: French, Russian
| Message 1 of 6 20 September 2016 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
I am interested in comparative linguistics in relation to language learning. Michel Thomas, Maragita Madrigal
and Paul Noble draw on similarities in a bid to help with language learning. Are there any other individuals
who take this approach? Also would be interested in looking at how romance and Germanic languages
influenced English e.g. In terms of farm animals Germanic language relates to the actual animal whereas the
romance (French roots) relate to the contents of your plate. Are there any other examples where
romance/Germanic languages have provided vocabulary for specific areas or examples of shared
vocabulary?
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 2 of 6 30 September 2016 at 4:50pm | IP Logged |
You can try the book "The Seven Sieves", it teaches one to read the seven major Romance languages.
There are also language-specific books, like Spanish vocabulary: an etymological approach.
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Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5317 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English
| Message 3 of 6 30 September 2016 at 6:46pm | IP Logged |
rmel wrote:
Also would be interested in looking at how romance and Germanic languages
influenced English |
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You might want to check out the History of English podcast iTunes RSS.
If you have iTunes, also check out the Structure of English Words (course notes).
BTW, this site is pretty much dead, you'll get more and better answers at language-learners.org.
Edited by Doitsujin on 30 September 2016 at 6:46pm
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Antimanner Pentaglot Newbie Denmark Joined 5344 days ago 12 posts - 16 votes Speaks: Danish*, Latin, Sanskrit, English, Ancient Greek Studies: French, Russian, Lithuanian
| Message 4 of 6 11 October 2016 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
As a graduate student in comparative, indoeuropean linguistics i wouldn't recommend you to spend too much time on diachronics when learning a new language. It takes years of intense practice to really make good use of the comparative method, and the payoff isn't that great, if your goal is to speak, write and understand a language better.
Edited by Antimanner on 11 October 2016 at 5:30pm
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Aquila123 Tetraglot Senior Member Norway mydeltapi.com Joined 5303 days ago 201 posts - 262 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Italian, Spanish Studies: Finnish, Russian
| Message 5 of 6 22 November 2016 at 9:15pm | IP Logged |
If you want to learn more than one Romance language, beginning with Latin, and then learning the correspondances between Latin phonems and those of the others can be useful The romance languages often have two versions of the same word, one with the regular sound shift from Latin, and one with the original Latin stem that has been lent back from Latin, often with a slightly different and more abstract meaning. An example from Italian:
frigidus (cold) - freddo (cold physically) / frigido (emotionally cold) Also much of the flection can be predicted this way.
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6594 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 6 of 6 24 November 2016 at 9:31am | IP Logged |
Antimanner wrote:
As a graduate student in comparative, indoeuropean linguistics i wouldn't recommend you to spend too much time on diachronics when learning a new language. It takes years of intense practice to really make good use of the comparative method, and the payoff isn't that great, if your goal is to speak, write and understand a language better. |
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As a fellow linguist, I agree that it's not worth it just for one language or for trying to see the connections between the different Indo-European branches. However it's not a bad idea if you want to learn multiple Romance languages (at least 3-4), or if you already have an interest in Latin, Old Norse/Icelandic, Old Church Slavonic, etc. It's also great if you want to learn several languages from the same Sprachbund.
However it's much more useful for comprehension than production.
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