Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4254 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian
| Message 25 of 67 09 November 2013 at 1:45pm | IP Logged |
vonPeterhof wrote:
Estonian: Have long wanted to get into Uralic languages. Always thought I would start with Finnish, since it's spoken near my hometown and has plenty of resources, but my mother went to Estonia last year and bought an Estonian self-study book as a souvenir for me, so it's been tempting me ever since. Besides, Estonia is about as close and actually interests me a little more.
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I would tell you to start with Finnish if you indeed are interested in both, and not because I'm Finnish. The thing is that after Finnish you would understand why Estonian is so irregular and at least in my case I know it would bother me a lot less. Such as things like "why is the genitive of "mees" mehe" because Estonian has lost a lot of word final sounds that make it seem impossible but knowing Finnish will help with the understanding of why they are as they are.
For example:
Finnish: "maja": N: "maja"; G: "majan"; P: "majaa"
Estonian: "maja": N: "maja"; G: "maja"; P: "maja"
Just a friendly piece of advice.
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Leurre Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5426 days ago 219 posts - 372 votes Speaks: French*, English*, Korean, Haitian Creole, SpanishC2 Studies: Japanese
| Message 26 of 67 09 November 2013 at 4:23pm | IP Logged |
Portuguese and Arabic.
Once Japanese and Italian are under control, maybe!
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Iwwersetzerin Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member Luxembourg Joined 5670 days ago 259 posts - 513 votes Speaks: French*, Luxembourgish*, GermanC2, EnglishC2, SpanishC2, DutchC1, ItalianC1 Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin
| Message 27 of 67 09 November 2013 at 6:20pm | IP Logged |
Catalan/Valencian: Barcelona and Valencia are two of my favorite cities on the planet and I'd like to spend a longer period of time in both. Thanks to Spanish and French, I can understand Catalan quite well, but would also like to speak it. I have Assimil Catalan with Spanish as base language.
Portuguese: I wanted to start it this year, but had to postpone, because I started a masters degree in law and am simply lacking time. I have Assimil, Teach Yourself, a grammar book and a few bilingual books.
Croatian: I went to Croatia a few years ago and loved the country. I was lucky to win Assimil Croatian last year when Assimil had a giveaway on Facebook.
Greek: no real reason to learn it, I simply find the language beautiful and like the fact that it has its own alphabet
Swedish or Norwegian: I'd love to learn a Scandinavian language, but can't decide between Swedish and Norwegian.
Icelandic: I've never been to Iceland, but both the country and the language fascinate me for some reason I don't know myself
Thai: my husband and I both love Thailand and would like to spend an extended period of time there.
Japanese: one of my best friends lives in Tokyo and I find the country absolutely fascinating. I have Assimil Japanese.
Nahuatl or Maya: my husband is Mexican, I spend a lot of time in Mexico and am very interested in Mexican culture and history, so learning an indigenous language is very tempting. I have a Maya-Spanish dictionary.
I notice a pattern: if I visit a country and like it a lot, I almost always become interested in the language.
Edited by Iwwersetzerin on 09 November 2013 at 6:23pm
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sabotai Senior Member United States Joined 5883 days ago 391 posts - 489 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Korean, French
| Message 28 of 67 09 November 2013 at 7:56pm | IP Logged |
Languages on my radar...
Latin, Ancient Greek and Egyptian Hieroglyphs - I'm a history buff. Being able to read all of the surviving historical documents (and walls) from the ancient kingdoms I have spent and still spend so much time reading about would be great.
Hindi and Bengali - I love their writing systems. I've already begun learning Bengali writing but I have no idea when I'll get to actually learning the language.
Irish - One of the lines of my family tree is Irish.
Scots and Scottish Gaelic- One of my ancestors was sent to the US as an indentured servant due to him being on the losing side of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715. He was from a rural area near Edinburgh. I have no idea if he spoke Scots or Scottish Gaelic. From what I've looked into, probably Scots (if it was just one instead of both), but I'm willing to bet some of his ancestors spoke Gaelic, so I'll throw both on my "on my radar" list.
Filling out the Germanic and Romance languages - German, Swedish, French, Italian and Spanish are ones that I will, 100%, get to some day. Any other language that would fill those language families out are "on my radar". I already have resources for Dutch and Catalan. I don't plan to go all out to fill out these two language families, because I am more interested overall in Asian languages (I'd say my goals for all of these languages save for French and German are to get them to a solid B1 - French and German are the ones I want to be at least B2).
Vietnamese, Thai, Tibetan and Cantonese - Maybe not even "on my radar" except for Thai. I've dabbled in Thai recently, but I have no idea if or when I'll give it a real go. The same for the other three. I plan to dabble in them a bit, but I don't know if I'll ever actually get to the "for real".
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I'm With Stupid Senior Member Vietnam Joined 4174 days ago 165 posts - 349 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Vietnamese
| Message 29 of 67 09 November 2013 at 8:27pm | IP Logged |
I have a job that I can do in most countries in the world, so what is on the radar in terms of language is what's on the radar in terms of where I'd be interested in living (which is basically anywhere in East Asia or Europe). Which means that minority languages of countries are probably not something I'm very interested in. I'm only interested in something I could theoretically use in my day-to-day life.
As I see my long-term future in Europe, I think a basis in the major European languages would be ideal (German, French and Spanish, initially). But in reality, I'm not looking past German right now. I've never learned a language to a high standard, so it's best to focus on this one before I start planning the next 20 years.
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leroc Senior Member United States Joined 4312 days ago 114 posts - 167 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German
| Message 30 of 67 09 November 2013 at 9:08pm | IP Logged |
Other then continuing to improve and eventually reach fluency with my Norwegian, I'm planning on taking a Double Major in Russian. Beyond that, I have no way of telling what language I'll learn.
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 31 of 67 09 November 2013 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
vonPeterhof wrote:
[...]Mandarin: The more I learn about and become fascinated with the Sinitic languages, the more I develop the kind of dismissive attitude towards Modern Standard Mandarin that Chung has towards Russian and Serpent towards French. |
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hahaha
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Indíritheach Senior Member United States Joined 4046 days ago 108 posts - 146 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Irish, French
| Message 32 of 67 09 November 2013 at 9:42pm | IP Logged |
French and German, and maybe Italian. Not sure yet. But French is definitely up next.
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