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Propedeutic languages (+Dutch/Afrikaans) | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 17 30 January 2014 at 9:12am | IP Logged |
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Hi all!
I read extensively that exist languages that are propedeutic to the study of another language or languages of a specific family, for example Esperanto and Interlingua for the study of Romance languages. There are more examples, not only with constructed languages but also with natural ones? Second question: if I decided to stop studying Dutch and study Afrikaans to reach fluency, I waste my time and I ruin my Dutch or I can find myself after this path enriched in what are comprehension, reading, listening and speaking (with the necessary study of Dutch grammar and vocabulary) with the added value to know one more language? Sorry for the really naive question :) Thank you in advance! 1 person has 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 2 of 17 30 January 2014 at 9:51am | IP Logged |
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Several studies have indicated that you can learn a third language faster if you first learn Esperanto than if you head directly for the 'real' target language. The reason can only be that you learn how to study by trying it out on a reasonably easy language. And according to these studies you save so much time on the third language that it 'pays' the time you spend on Esperanto. OK, maybe. The problem with this argument is however that few students feel like postponing their main 'big' language, and Esperanto can't compete on usefulness with for instance English, Spanish or French.
The same argument can be brought forward with the idea about Afrikaans as a propedeutic language. Afrikaans certainly has a simpler morphology than Dutch, no doubt about that, but unless you are based in Southern Africa it will be much harder to find things to read and listen to and people to talk to, and even though there are millions of Afrikaans speakers in South Africa you will find that English totally dominates the media. Whether Afrikaans will ruin your Dutch is another matter. I doubt it, but few Europeans learn Afrikaans before Dutch so it is mostly a matter of guesswork based on my work with other language pairs, where I consistently have found that the risk of interference is more than compensated by the amount of vocabulary you get for free. Edited by Iversen on 30 January 2014 at 9:54am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4293 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 3 of 17 30 January 2014 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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I am not sure if that is a good idea, because if you already right now learn Dutch, and
are living in the Netherlands, the addition of Afrikaans, whilst similar has spelling and syntax that might confuse your Dutch, e.g. the usage of "wees" as the infinitive instead of "zijn". Also, it might cause the Afrikaans vocabulary to be confused with Dutch, and since you work in the Netherlands, they might be confused on why you might start to speak half Dutch half Afrikaans. 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 4 of 17 30 January 2014 at 10:06am | IP Logged |
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Studying Afrikaans will help your Dutch, except for the pronunciation.
The use of "wees" isn't a problem - Dutch uses "wezen" as an infinitive in colloquial language and it's understood by everyone. "Dat kan best wezen" (That could be, but...) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5850 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 17 30 January 2014 at 10:55am | IP Logged |
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The teachers told us at grammar school that our language Latin would be useful for us as a propedeutic language to learn the other school language French and other Romance languages later.
My exprecience is that a certain knowledge of Latin especially helps with learning Italian. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 30 January 2014 at 10:56am 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 6 of 17 30 January 2014 at 10:56am | IP Logged |
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I studied Latin and French concomitantly - that also helped.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5012 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 7 of 17 30 January 2014 at 12:51pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, Latin has been recommended to many of us. An English teacher of mine had studied only latin until he was 20 and than became polyglot. He claimed Latin had given him good base for is other languages.
The impact on romance languages is quite clear. And any of them will actually seem really easy after the experience with Latin :-D For Germanic and slavic languages, there will still be a lot of shared vocabulary and a lot of grammar working similarily. Sometimes, the analogies and similarities are even surprising, there are many of them. For others it can still work at least as the language on which you've learnt how to learn a language. However, I believe you still need to want to learn Latin in the first place. For anyone who doesn't want to, it is unnecessary postponing of a language they want and sometimes even too much unnecessary work. So, I think that you shouldn't make such an exchange if you have already been working on Dutch. What if the two start interfering? And do you wish to start using Dutch asap or do you wish to be awesome at it asap? However, if your plan is to learn both, it may be a totally different situation. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4050 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 8 of 17 30 January 2014 at 3:55pm | IP Logged |
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Thank you all! Let's see...
@Iversen, my idea is exactly what is claimed about conlangs, but transferred to Afrikaans. Being the grammar simple and regular, it allows me to focus on the content (vocabulary) without grammatical distractions. This is the idea (that can obviously be totally wrong). My main problem now is that the Dutch vocabulary is somewhat huge and the spoken language hard to get for me, just to not mention the problem every one has with Dutch speakers (everyone knows English and usually better than me). That's why, also if there aren't many Afrikaans speaker my point is to have a base to understand spoken language. My question was if it makes sense that if I understand Afrikaans first (is it faster, in theory. or not?) then I will understand Dutch more and have a good base before to go deeper into Dutch. @Cavesa, my idea is not to study them together. Is to stop studying Dutch for 6 month or 1 year, studying Afrikaans meanwhile and retake Dutch after. I feel like I can use Dutch only when I'll be awesome at it because the first word I don't get people start to speak English. Learn both is a nice addition... About Latin, If I understood correctly is a great school to learn grammars... but grammar is not my main problem in Dutch (I surely have to study it, but I'm not scaried about it). I feel that can be great to do if I have to study German or Russian... I'm not sure as propedeutic for Dutch. But in any case... I'm here to ask, because I don't have the answers :) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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