LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian
| Message 25 of 94 26 August 2011 at 4:55pm | IP Logged |
I've never been able to resist German. I can read, listen to, speak German near enough
all day while managing never to quite tire of it. I've been promising myself for years
that I would one day study Greek. My books are all ready, my degree is now over, and
September, the time I promised myself I would start Greek seriously, is almost upon me :]
Jack
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Phantom Kat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5062 days ago 160 posts - 253 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Finnish
| Message 26 of 94 26 August 2011 at 5:53pm | IP Logged |
Finnish has grown on me this past year. Sometimes when I don't open my books for a while, I wonder what I plan to get out of this language since I probably won't get a chance to speak it to someone anytime in the near future. It also won't useful for learning any other languages that aren't agglutinative or in the Uralic family. Then I study more grammar, listen to more songs, and all doubts are cast from my mind. The unique grammar, the crispiness of pronunciation, the rhythmic tempo that's caused by the regular stress. It just makes me smile at all that I learned so far.
Also, somehow, French keeps sneaking back into my life. It was the first language I ever studied, and even after dismissing it for years, I am going to start studying it.
- Kat
Edited by Phantom Kat on 26 August 2011 at 5:54pm
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Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5590 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 27 of 94 26 August 2011 at 7:55pm | IP Logged |
I've studied Spanish for years and for a long time I really disliked the language. But now, I've really gotten into old Spanish poetry and latin american authors. Reading's a tad addicting now...
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jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5033 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese
| Message 28 of 94 26 August 2011 at 8:07pm | IP Logged |
Phantom Kat wrote:
It also won't useful for learning any other languages that aren't agglutinative or in the Uralic family. |
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Kat, I have found Finnish very useful in my study of Japanese. For example, teh question particles are nearly the same, and the partitive case is what I think of when (correctly) using the -ga particle/syntax marker.
No, they aren't directly related, but it's still helpful.
And I'm happy to find someone out there passionate about Finnish like me. :)
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KonoMachi Triglot Newbie IsraelRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4838 days ago 8 posts - 10 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English, Esperanto Studies: French, Japanese
| Message 29 of 94 26 August 2011 at 9:09pm | IP Logged |
That would be Japanese of course.
Its vowels are so pure and soft, its syntax is interesting and fun to learn...
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Phantom Kat Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5062 days ago 160 posts - 253 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Finnish
| Message 30 of 94 27 August 2011 at 8:17am | IP Logged |
jdmoncada wrote:
Phantom Kat wrote:
It also won't useful for learning any other languages that aren't agglutinative or in the Uralic family. |
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Kat, I have found Finnish very useful in my study of Japanese. For example, teh question particles are nearly the same, and the partitive case is what I think of when (correctly) using the -ga particle/syntax marker.
No, they aren't directly related, but it's still helpful.
And I'm happy to find someone out there passionate about Finnish like me. :) |
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Really? That's great because I really want to learn Japanese one day. Throughout the years it's grown on me, yet it always seemed like an intimidating language to learn without being extremely prepared. Thanks for the tip! You make me want to dive into some Japanese grammar.
And yes, more people should be passionate about Finnish. It's a language like no other, in my opinion.
- Kat
Edited by Phantom Kat on 27 August 2011 at 8:17am
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koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5867 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French
| Message 31 of 94 30 August 2011 at 2:53am | IP Logged |
I have always had a big passion for unusual languages. I started studying Hungarian using some good resources I had (Teach Yourself and Assimil) and then I couldn't stop it anymore. I just fell in love with the language completely and even though I knew that it might not be so useful in the future, I just kept studying it. Now I use it daily as I have many acquaintances from Hungary and watch hungarian media.
Another language that I'm struggling to resist is Welsh. I guess I didn't start it yet because of the lack of resources and I don't know anyone from Wales either, but it's one of the languages that fascinates me the most. Written it looks like random typing and spoken it's very rough and hard on the ears. Somehow that attracts me a lot.
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therumsgone Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6536 days ago 93 posts - 105 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 32 of 94 30 August 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
That's the way I feel about French. I wanted to take it in high school, but my parents refused to let me (I grew up
in Southern California, so I think it was fair of them to insist that I study Spanish). But I just fell in love with
French culture: the food, the literature, the music, the cinema. Maybe it's because some of the ideas fit well with
my own values (quality over quantity, that sort of thing) and it might just be my sense of humor. Sometimes I
joke that I'm secretly French, although that's probably stretching it.
For whatever reason, things that would annoy me if I were studying a different language amuse me in French. I
love the fact that French has a literary tense. I spend a lot of time learn filler words and idioms because they
genuinely fascinate me. I even love the way the words run together, although sometimes it drives me crazy.
Other languages that I'm fairly obsessed with, but trying to resist until I've moved to basic fluency in French, are
Japanese and Russian. I'm lucky in that I have close friends who are native speakers of these languages. My goal
is to get to a C2 level in French, but I'm not that ambitious for any other language (I'd be very happy with B2
Japanese and Russian, when I get to them).
With Spanish, learning was fun but it never felt like a compulsion. I guess that's why my Spanish has gotten fairly
stagnant, which is a problem that I should remedy, but haven't yet.
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