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What is on your radar? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 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 49 of 67 10 November 2013 at 10:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I just want to be able to read all languages in Europe (including the dead ones) and to be able to understand, write and speak as many as possible of them - plus a couple of exotic languages. I want to keep my wishes simple and realistic...
Right now I only have plans concerning a couple of old languages within the Germanic family (Old English, Old Saxon, Old Hight German and Gothic), and within the(pre)Romance family I just want to become better at Latin - the other Italic languages are too poorly documented to catch my interest, and I can't see any compelling reason to learn to speak Aromanian or any of the Romantsch languages. Within the Hellenic languages I definitely have a project in mind concerning the row of Ancient Greeks (from Homeric over Attic Greek to Koiné), but only passively. Albanian is scheduled and I already have collected some relevant books. Within the Slavic languages I'm lagging behind schedule with spoken Russian, but I should be able to learn to read and write a few Slavic languages within the next couple of years - and maybe even learn to speak them, because I can actually get programs in Polish and several Southern Slavic languages from my cable TV provider, unlike Russian - it is just a money question (and I hate the thought that I should pay for something which is free on Astra). I have no specific plans concerning the Baltic languages (Latvian and Lithuan), but they are waiting silently within the circle where I pick my upcoming projects - maybe a quick peek sometime in the future. The problem with Hungarian and Finnish is just to choose which one to study first - but I doubt that it will happen i 2014. Estonian would also be fun, but not the small Ugrian languages. And then there is the weird loner Basque, where I already have collected some relevant study materials - but just not the time to study them. Outside Europe I have my radar set on Bahasa Melayu and maybe also Tagalog, and then I have had a penchant for Georgian since my visits there - for some reason Armenian doesn't attract my to the same degree. But I haven't got time to learn any of these right now. And the rest of the 6-7000 languages in the world might be interesting to know at a theoretical level, but I doubt that I ever will find time to learn any of them. Except maybe... Edited by Iversen on 10 November 2013 at 11:33pm 11 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| AML Senior Member United States Joined 6826 days ago 323 posts - 426 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: Modern Hebrew, German, Spanish | Message 50 of 67 11 November 2013 at 1:47am | IP Logged | ||
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I'd love to know the major Middle Eastern languages:
Hebrew (modern) Arabic (Levantine, specifically) Persian/Farsi Turkish Most people don't realize what an *amazing* place the Middle East is. Having lived there a couple years, I miss it a lot. The best food. Nice people. To conquer the languages of this region would be my dream. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Largactyl Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4489 days ago 18 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Icelandic, Hungarian, Irish, Old English | Message 51 of 67 11 November 2013 at 8:17am | IP Logged | ||
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I've at least touched on every language I ever plan on learning, except for maybe the older versions of them. My complete list would be:
German, Icelandic, Irish, Hungarian, Old English, Old Icelandic/Old Norse, Old Irish. I guess there are a couple I may take a look at in the somewhat distant future, like maybe another more common North Germanic language such as Norwegian or Swedish. I also "borrowed" an older Teach Yourself Serbo-Croat book from my paternal grandmother (her father's parents were from Montenegro) but haven't really looked at it at all. Overall though, I'm not as interested in languages in general as many people on here seem to be, only in these particular languages. Of course there's no telling how different that list will be in five or ten years... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chokofingrz Pentaglot Senior Member England Joined 5190 days ago 241 posts - 430 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Japanese, Catalan, Luxembourgish | Message 52 of 67 11 November 2013 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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Apart from all the obvious ones, the most non-useful languages I hope to one day have time to dabble in are Occitan, Catalan and Piedmontese. Yes, when I'm old and my brain is defunct, I could retire to the Mediterranean and blissfully sunbathe while confusing romance vocabularies for my last decade.
3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| oziohume Bilingual Hexaglot Newbie Belgium Joined 4739 days ago 30 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan, Italian, French, German Studies: Dutch | Message 53 of 67 11 November 2013 at 4:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since I'm able to remember, I always wanted to speak eight specific languages, namely:
Spanish, English, German, French, Catalan, Italian, Russian and Portuguese. However in time it has been made clear that I couldn't stick with just these ones. I intend to start with Dutch/Norwegian/Swedish next year, and I suppose if my life keeps changing I will continue to add new languages to the list. This is all probably because I see languages as my love for a country and I'm not the kind of person that loves only one thing/person. That said, I see myself falling in love with any European language, especially the Romance and Germanic ones. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5220 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 54 of 67 11 November 2013 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I will be retiring and moving to Spain soon though I've been telling myself this since 2007 (but in 2007 the destination was Italy)!
Somewhat like Iversen I'd like to be able to hold day to day conversations in all the languages of Europe (B1 or higher say): officially the EU use Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish plus I'd like to add Arabic & Russian 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Donaldshimoda Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4091 days ago 47 posts - 72 votes Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: German, Russian | Message 55 of 67 12 November 2013 at 1:29am | IP Logged | ||
I'd love to hear that. Can't think anything weirdest than a russian speaking "napoletan" :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 newyorkeric Diglot Moderator Singapore Joined 6380 days ago 1598 posts - 2174 votes Speaks: English*, Italian Studies: Mandarin, Malay Personal Language Map | Message 56 of 67 12 November 2013 at 2:32am | IP Logged | ||
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Asking a bunch of language learners what is on their hit list...this thread may go on forever.
3 persons have voted this message useful |
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