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Learn families not languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6866 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 1 of 24 14 April 2014 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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Someone once told me you shouldn't view target languages individually. Instead, you
should group your targets by language family and then learn the targets in each family. Only then do you 'cross' into a new language family Thoughts? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 2 of 24 14 April 2014 at 7:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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This strikes me as about as sensible as the gardeners who say with absolute authority that if you have a
modern house you cannot grow historical roses, and that at least 25% of your tulips must be white. At every lecture I give on gardening I tell people that in their own garden they can make the rules themselves. Of course The Head Gardener may come in and mess up your carefully laid plans, but otherwise you are in charge. The same goes for languages. Your life, your rules. Now of course if learning languages is something you do, not because you like or need a particular language, but because you collect languages like other people collect stamps, then your source has a point, but most of us do not learn languages like we buy eggs, in dozens. 12 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5229 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 3 of 24 14 April 2014 at 8:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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So the idea would be, I take it, that if one wants to learn languages A, B, C, D, and E and A, B, C, and D are in the same family, one should learn A, B, C, D before moving onto E or E before moving onto A, B, C, and D.
Why would you think that true? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 4 of 24 14 April 2014 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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Prof Argüelles approaches families as a whole, but he definitely didn't say this. He always stresses the importance of interest, even with languages outside of the big three (German/Spanish/French).
In fact I would say that the opposite is more common. Not everyone is ready to learn Spanish and Portuguese at the same time, but a Romance language + German is a very common combination. Many aim to learn their first Romance language to fluency before adding more, but then diminishing returns may come into play, or they simply want to learn more than one language. Learning an unrelated or less closely related language can be less intimidating, that's also a way to learn to switch between languages more easily. I'm all for learning related languages, but if you're worried about interference (here's a good thread about it), maybe it's easier to wait and study something else. One of the best decisions in my whole life was starting to learn Finnish before I was "done" with German. Ignore what people tell you and listen to your heart :-) Edited by Serpent on 14 April 2014 at 10:30pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 5 of 24 15 April 2014 at 12:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't really deny that I go for language families - after all I have learned most Romance and most Germanic languages, and right now I'm taking on the Slavic languages. But it must be something that comes gradually. You can't really draw comparisons between the first language in a family and the rest - because you haven't learnt them yet. With two there are some time gains that justify taking on one more, and then you can just as well continue until you run out of languages with decent learning materials. And that's how you end up with basically a whole family. And then you can just as well take on the next family of languages. It's just like eating candy from a big bag, except that each mouthful takes longer time.
I know that some learners try to learn all languages as if they were isolates, and it's fine that they do so because otherwise nobody would learn the really quaint and isolated languages. But it must cost more time to learn the vocabulary and grammar of each language from scratch than it is to build on things you already have learnt, like the 'family learners' do. Edited by Iversen on 15 April 2014 at 12:39am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 6 of 24 15 April 2014 at 1:21am | IP Logged | ||
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It seems doable, if not advisable, if you are mostly just interested in passive skills. But it seems like a recipe for utter confusion if you have a significant interest in active skills. I mean, how on earth could someone keep all the Romance verb conjugations straight without somehow delineating the Romance languages in your mind?
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4048 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 7 of 24 15 April 2014 at 1:40am | IP Logged | ||
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Hi, studying a family of languages instead a single
language at a time can give you a huge boost in getting understanding in multiple languages. But if you want to study let's say only Spanish and you don't like for example Italian French and Romanian, which is the point to include them in your schedule? Is it not better to save the time you spend on it to improve your Spanish more quickly? All depends by your goals. Also keep in mind that it is really difficult to activate more closely related languages at the same time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6866 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 8 of 24 21 April 2014 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | ||
I would say learn one language in that family at a time 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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