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Language Families: First and foremost | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 17 of 23 18 November 2014 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would like it was possible to double like your post @Expugnator. I find it quite
inspiring. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Luso Hexaglot Senior Member Portugal Joined 6060 days ago 819 posts - 1812 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, French, EnglishC2, GermanB1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Sanskrit, Arabic (classical) | Message 18 of 23 18 November 2014 at 4:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
I did it for you, tristano. Actually, it's not "like", but rather "find useful". Oh, the social networks... To be frank, I did the same (choose an easy one) with Italian: up until now, it has been a walk in the park. The number of words which are the same in Portuguese and Italian is staggering. The only difference is that I've got my hands full with the difficult ones (Arabic and Sanskrit). I know I have a good chance at mastering them eventually, but it will take both time and dedication. Which, by the way, are two fields where Expugnator is excellent. Knowing when not to go for a new language is as important (or more) than choosing one. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 23 18 November 2014 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you want to learn several languages and you know which ones, there's an argument for starting with a few easy ones. Language learning ability tends to increase with an increased number of languages learned, though the returns diminish after a few languages. But If you can choose between learning a difficult language from the start or doing a difficult language after acquiring two easier onees, I'd say all else being equal go for the easier ones first.
Of course often all esle is not equal and once language is of more immediate use/interest. In that case, follow your passion. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 20 of 23 18 November 2014 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I had planned to alternate between studying hard and easy languages, so I started on
Spanish after becoming proficient in Japanese. But Spanish was so damn boring compared to Japanese! So I put it aside and instead moved on to Mandarin. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4253 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 21 of 23 18 November 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
I'm slightly confused if anyone was actually asking about Malayalam or if that was just picked at random as an example, but CIIL has a pretty gigantic Malayalam course, 903 pages and 24 cassettes of 90 minutes in length. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 22 of 23 19 November 2014 at 11:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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My only non-Indoeuropean language so far is Bahasa Indonesia, and the strange thing is that it reminds me more about English than Irish or Polish do. It has the same blurry division lines between wordclasses, an even more rudimenary morphology and a fairly straightforward (and permissive) word order. But I do recognize that there are a few minor differences: the spelling of Indoneian is logical, whereas that of English is a mess. The verbs don't show tempus, but you can use adverbials if necessary. And the connector "yang" is used both with something like subordinate clauses and things that definitely aren't clauses. But by and large I didn't feel like I was on another planet when I began to study Bahasa Indonesia. I did when I first saw Irish.
3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 23 of 23 24 November 2014 at 11:05pm | IP Logged | |||||
It was indeed a random example :) but nice to know :D 1 person has voted this message useful |
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