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Is this an unusual combo of languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3912 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 14 06 June 2014 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
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At present I am within a month (of study time, not an actual month) of the first level of fluency in french(this is my current target language). I'm sort of add and seem to need more than one of something to do, so my backup language is Mandarin, I'm also getting started on my next target language which is Russian. Is this an unusual assortment of languages for a polyglot? If you speak more than one foreign language what are your combinations?
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| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 14 06 June 2014 at 5:26am | IP Logged | ||
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In this part of the world we have immigrants from all over. Many of them came from places where
English is not common or widely spoken. When they get here, many of them would enrol in ESL classes and eventually become bilingual (fluent in their native language as well as English). We see people from places like Ethiopia, Somalia in Africa, China, Russia, Poland, etc. Learning a language because you move to a new country isn't the same as if you are learning it as a hobby. For interest you can choose which to get into but living somewhere you need to learn the local language for correspondence. You normally don't think of languages like Ethiopian & English as being odd because 1 is your mother-tongue you speak at home and the other is the local language. When it comes to learning Mandarin, I came across a singer "Emmanuel Uwechue" originally from Nigeria in W. Africa. He moved to China over 10 years ago and started his singing career only in English. And then he decided he could reach a larger audience in Mandarin. After spending 1 year learning half- dozen songs phonetically he became a star singing everything from folk, pop songs and melodies from Peking Operas. I don't think he finds it odd to go from his native language to English and then Mandarin. And then the singers of the Soler band Dino & Julio Acconci of Italian ancestry who were born in Macao and living in Hong Kong. Both are fluent in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Cantonese & Mandarin all at or close to the native level. Members of the original Abba band from the 1970s were also multilingual who sang in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish & Swedish. Singers tend to be flexible with languages whether they are from the same family or not. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 3 of 14 06 June 2014 at 7:23am | IP Logged | ||
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Why does it matter whether it's an unusual combination or not?
As far as the languages go, they're all seemingly very popular languages on this forum so I doubt it's an incredibly unusual combination "for a polyglot", but for your first three foreign languages it might be since that excludes almost everyone who isn't a native Anglophone (i.e. those who had to learn English as a first foreign language), for example. My own combination of foreign languages is as indicated on the left: English, French, and Breton (you may also want to count the two languages I studied at university but don't maintain, or the two languages I maintain but never studied — I don't, though). Not a very "unusual combo", but I don't care. I don't learn languages for glory. I started learning English because that's what was spoken on all the good children's TV shows (we had satellite), I started learning French because I loved holidaying in France when I was a child, and I started learning Breton because I now live in Brittany and it's the native language of most people in my village. I may choose to add Arabic, a very long-term love-interest, to that later, but right now I'm actually leaning more towards the much less impressive choice of Italian since I consume more Italian than Arabic media, know that it'd be easier to lose myself in the culture, and I'm more likely to travel frequently to Italy now that I live in France and don't excavate in the Middle East any more. So, why does it matter? 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| EnglishEagle Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4574 days ago 140 posts - 157 votes Studies: English*, German | Message 4 of 14 06 June 2014 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||
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I would say that is slightly unusual for some people but seems pretty normal. However, I am studying German and in
the future I hope to study Russian, Japanese/Mandarian/Korean, Arabic and Spanish. I personally don't think that it really matters what languages you study as long as you enjoy studying them. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| pesahson Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5727 days ago 448 posts - 840 votes Speaks: Polish*, English Studies: French, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 5 of 14 06 June 2014 at 9:19am | IP Logged | ||
Among people who are not language enthusiasts it will be an unusual mix of languages I think. But, to be fair, they're all major players with plenty of speakers and importance. But does it matter. The question you should be asking yourself is whether you have time and energy to start two demanding, from the perspective of a native English speaker, languages(Russian and Mandarin) at once. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5261 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 6 of 14 06 June 2014 at 2:14pm | IP Logged | ||
If I were on the threshold of basic fluency in French as my first foreign language, I wouldn't be satisfied with that, I'd want to take it higher. I'd want to fully explore it. Watch TV series. Read books. Go to France, Montreal and Guadeloupe. I'd want to be able to hold an effortless conversation with a native-speaker about any subject in which I may be interested. The language is more about the cultures and people who speak it to me. That's just the difference in learners and learning styles/objectives. Nothing wrong with wanting to take up Mandarin and or Russian after having reached basic fluency in French. Your French will advance much more slowly with the addition of two new, more difficult, languages. If you're alright with that, go for it. We all have different destinations we want to reach. Bonne chance. Edited by iguanamon on 06 June 2014 at 11:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 7 of 14 06 June 2014 at 2:26pm | IP Logged | ||
What is this based on? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 14 06 June 2014 at 5:04pm | IP Logged | ||
For people who revolve in the world of FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish), then your learning Russian and Mandarin could give the impression to them that you're going out on a limb linguistically. Other than that, I don't consider the combination unusual. I think that you should learn anything because you want to learn it and/or need it. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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