Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Why not Spanish as essential?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
115 messages over 15 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 14 15 Next >>
Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 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 105 of 115
15 March 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged 
Also, all eligible Americans are likely to know it already.
1 person has voted this message useful



Medulin
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Croatia
Joined 4668 days ago

1199 posts - 2192 votes 
Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali

 
 Message 106 of 115
15 March 2014 at 1:09pm | IP Logged 
For Dravidian languages, the most important languages are German, Russian and English.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 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 107 of 115
15 March 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged 
One issue with Russian is that it will take much longer to learn to a level at which you can use it for learning other languages.
1 person has voted this message useful



daristani
Senior Member
United States
Joined 7144 days ago

752 posts - 1661 votes 
Studies: Uzbek

 
 Message 108 of 115
15 March 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged 
An anecdote, copied from a blog entry by a Slovak linguist, that, with rather striking wording in the punchline, well illustrates the importance of German:

---------------------------

On Monday at Steiner's, I picked up a biography of Ján Stanislav, one of the greatest Slovak linguists of the 20th century. When I finally got to reading it earlier today, I stumbled across an anecdote from Stanislav's student years. It perfectly illustrates languagehat's observations on the influence of German learning on Russian intelectual history and shows that's it's not just the Russians who owe German scholars a great deal:

    Keď raz študent povedal Milošovi Weingartovi, že nevie dobre po nemecky - dostal nemeckú knihu do referátu - profesor povedal: "Němčina jest najdůležitejší [sic] slovanský jazyk" a boli sme odzbrojení ...

    When on one occasion, one of the students told Miloš Weingart that his German wasn't so good - he had just been assigned a book in German - the professor said: "German is the most important Slavic language" and there was no more excuse for us.
7 persons have voted this message useful



ericblair
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4711 days ago

480 posts - 700 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 109 of 115
15 March 2014 at 9:01pm | IP Logged 
James29 wrote:
Interesting responses.

The examples of Middle Egyptian and Old Norse are fine, but there are certainly
numerous examples of obscure languages in South America (and likely some in Spain) that
the learner would be better off with Spanish.

In fact, I am sure there would be many examples of obscure languages people could think
up that would be difficult to learn with English, French, German and Spanish. Finding
the exceptions is not really the point.

The point is that with English and #2 someone already has 98% of the ground covered.
Why stress out about #3 when the choice will only get you to 98.4%?

If someone knows they want to learn Old Norse or Middle Egyptian, sure, go for German.
If they know they want native South American languages, sure, go for Spanish. But,
objectively and mathematically, if you have English and #2, it should not make much of
a difference at all which your #3 is.


Just to make sure I don't misunderstand your point, do you see as #2 in this as being
any
of Spanish, French, German, etc....or did you have a specific one in mind?

Edited by ericblair on 15 March 2014 at 9:07pm

1 person has voted this message useful



James29
Diglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5375 days ago

1265 posts - 2113 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: French

 
 Message 110 of 115
15 March 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged 
I am saying that if someone has English and French OR English and German their third language won't really matter much in terms of learning resources. With the first two they will have more than enough. Anyone who has the first two is going to have gazillions of resources.

Someone who has English and French (or English and German) is going to be able to have 98% of the non-obscure languages at their disposal.


2 persons have voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 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 111 of 115
16 March 2014 at 12:58pm | IP Logged 
It's not about having *any* resources, it's about the highest quality ones. If you only speak English, you have access to maybe 40% of the best language learning resources out there. With French OR German, let's say 60%. With French AND German, 80%. With French, German, Spanish and Russian it's probably 90%.

(Which means that with my German, Spanish and Russian but no French I probably have access to about 70%)

Edited by Serpent on 16 March 2014 at 1:02pm

3 persons have voted this message useful



PeterMollenburg
Senior Member
AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5476 days ago

821 posts - 1273 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: FrenchB1

 
 Message 112 of 115
31 March 2014 at 10:32am | IP Logged 
culebrilla wrote:


The trouble with learning French to use Assimil is that you have to learn a language in a *foreign* language.
I'm not convinced that this is a very smart idea if you want to learn a topic well.

Once they got past learning grammar and could use native materials THEN I could see it working, using
French to continue practicing your foreign language. But not when actually *learning* the basics.


One program comes to mind here that makes me disagree. French in Action. All grammar explanations within
the workbook are entirely in French from Lesson 5 onwards. This is no way a hinderance to acquiring new
language and understanding the grammatical concepts that are introduced. Okay so it's not exactly learning
L3 via L2 but rather L2 via L2. However one may or may not even be at an A1 or A2 level perhaps when the
course switches to the medium of French for grammatical explanations. In studying L3 via L2 however it is a
likely assumption that the author(s) have assumed that the learner is fluent (B2 or above) in the language of
instruction so perhaps mentioning FIA is unfair in that the author(s) assume that the learner's level of French
at that point is rather rudimentary. However how complex can the instructions be in an Assimil course to learn
L3 via French? If one has a B2 level of French I would believe without much doubt at all that it would not be a
hinderance. In fact if one's aim is to become a polyglot, the more this kind of activity can be done the better. If
that is not one's aim, I still don't see much of an issue with it either.

However I do understand what are you saying and can completely understand your points. Everyone is
different. Some of us will deliberately go for the easiest/safest method of instruction, particularly if our main
goal is the best possible result as opposed to an opportunity to learn something/a lot in a foreign language.
Others will (including myself) read the language of instruction on a set up manual for a new piece of
furniture/device in a foreign language before (if required) reverting to our mother tongue. If I were to study
something at university again I would much prefer to not do it in English (my mother tongue) but rather
another European language even if it meant the possibility of success was significantly reduced. I think that
can
depend very much on our values- ie is it more important for us (for whatever reason) to succeed in the
subject matter presented, or is is more important to us (if we have the liberty to do so) to succeed in
developing our foreign language skills in that same subject matter.

Forgive me if any of this has already been covered, i'm yet to read to the end of this thread.

I know i'm off topic here again also. I've learned something here tho. I hadn't thought too much about which
languages were valuable for learning others in terms of the availability of materials in those languages.
Despite Dutch not being up there (for obvious reasons) as one of the top languages to learn in order to
expand one's options for learning more languages (which I would like to do), I still love the language :) Mind
you I am studying French and feel quietly confident after having read how useful it is for learning other
languages- i just recently purchased my first L3 course in L2 (a Dutch course in French) as the course looks
good and I'm curious about trying this whole L3 via L2 thing out (i'm not starved for resources in English).
How
cool are languages!

Edited by PeterMollenburg on 31 March 2014 at 11:20am



3 persons have voted this message useful



This discussion contains 115 messages over 15 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.3594 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.