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Understudied European languages | ||
Tags: European Languages | Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5058 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes  Speaks: Russian* | Message 33 of 85 22 January 2012 at 7:39am | IP Logged | ||
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Celtic languages are overstudied, especially Irish. It is a mandatory subject in Ireland
and popular beyond the country. Welsh is widely studied in Wales. Scottish Gaelic receives less attention, only Breton suffers. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Rajsinhasan Diglot Newbie Joined 4700 days ago 24 posts - 34 votes Speaks: English*, Creole (English) Studies: Portuguese | Message 34 of 85 26 January 2012 at 7:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Dutch is really understudied for a European language of a culture with a colonial past
especially. Even Italian outshines Dutch in terms of number of learners in its former colonies and beyond. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 35 of 85 26 January 2012 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | ||
There seem to be several contributing factors to this, not the least is the Dutch attitude to their own language. 1. They are constantly amazed that anyone would be "wasting their time" learning Dutch, especially if the learner already knows English. 2. Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) provides no language learning. I asked them twice if they would consider at least some parallel news text and audio. They said no. That is not their mandate. They really should look at Deutsche Welle as an excellent model. 3. Public TV broadcasters have, for quite some time, had the mandate to provide sub-titles on their TV programs. Some are OK but many including the news, are very poor, inaccurate and very badly synchronised. Internet broadcasts are even worse or completely lacking of sub-titles. 4. Even the transcripts of the audio/video from the Dutch Parliament are inaccurate, and can be very different from what the speaker actually said. 5. International Dutch language TV (BVN) which comes from The Netherlands and Belgium is one bright light because it is available almost everywhere via satellite TV, but with no sub-titles and no language learning programs. This service could be a great service to former colonies, and Dutch communities and language learners around the world. 6. Dutch language teaching in The Netherlands is big business and very expensive, and thus inaccessible to many. 7. Dutch-language books and audio books are very hard to get outside Europe and some bookstores won't even ship abroad. Big international bookstores have very little or nothing to offer in Dutch-language books. 8. Yes. There is now lots of good Dutch language learning material on the Internet for the intermediate/advanced learner. But there is a big lack of beginner/entry level material, especially parallel audio and text, and quality, free or inexpensive courses. I truly believe that The Netherlands and Flanders/Belgium governments could easily and inexpensively do a whole lot more to promote the Dutch language. They seem to be doing a bit more recently to address the problem of immigrants not being able to learn Dutch. But they are doing very little to promote Dutch around the world. They seem to be happy just to use English and neglect Dutch. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| showtime17 Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Slovakia gainweightjournal.co Joined 6086 days ago 154 posts - 210 votes Speaks: Russian, English*, Czech*, Slovak*, French, Spanish Studies: Ukrainian, Polish, Dutch | Message 36 of 85 28 August 2013 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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Actually the Flemish government is doing a lot to promote the study of Dutch, at least in Belgium. I take a pretty cheap Dutch course in Brussels.
Contrary to some previous posts, I think Italian is actually overstudied, at least based on the size of the country and the fact that it is spoken in only one country. For example in most bookstores, the Italian language section is bigger than almost any other section and usually the same size as the Spanish section. For understudied languages in Europe, it is probably the Slavic group that is less studied than for example Romance or Germanic languages. For the Slavic group, it is Russian that is the main language studied by people, distantly followed by Polish and Czech. For the Romance group, it is Romanian that is understudied and for the Germanic group, it is probably the Scandinavian languages that are most understudied. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 37 of 85 28 August 2013 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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I actually don't think Italian is overstudied. Sure, it is "only" one country but an awesome and highly populated one. I am actually trying to convince my family to learn Italian because many of our holidays are there and they know no foreign language (and truth be told, most Italians don't speak anything else than Italian). If you consider the huge masses of tourists attired by history, sea, the Alpes and so on, popularity of Italian food abroad (including lots of export), the influence Italy has on some branches of industry such as cars or design, fashion, many heritage learners in the US etc., Italian is not overstudied at all, in my opinion.
I think the only understudied Slavic language is Polish. It is the only large slavic EU language, with lots of export (actually, they could keep their bad quality food out of our markets), awesome literature, beautiful cities and rising economy. Yet too few people learn Polish, even in the neighbouring countries. That is a shame. Czech is a minor, not important language. Sure, it could have more learners, like Dutch, if it had more support. And the Czech attitude trouble is not only "why would anyone learn such a worthless language" but unfortunately often the "our language is the most difficult european language" nonsense as well. Until both these stains aren't gone and until the Czech Republic becomes a more important country (which is quite unlikely in the next dozen years or so considering the situation), there will be no reason for larger public to learn. Actually, we already get quite a lot of attention and learners of our language. If you visit any language exchange site, you will notice many Russians and Ukrainians dreaming of immigration and some American (and to much lesser extent German) heritage learners. Yes, the Slavic group gets much less attention than the two other large ones. And it should have more if all it took was number of natives. Unfortunately there is still the stigma of "Eastern Europe", even for central european countries and even for those moving here or to Poland, it is very easy to just stay in their language bubbles. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Fuenf_Katzen Diglot Senior Member United States notjustajd.wordpress Joined 4371 days ago 337 posts - 476 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Polish, Ukrainian, Afrikaans | Message 38 of 85 28 August 2013 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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For the Romance group, I would definitely say Romanian is understudied followed by Portuguese. It's not uncommon for me to meet someone who has the Spanish/French/Italian combination, but Portuguese is normally added last, and Romanian is usually nowhere to be found.
I would say in general the Slavic branch isn't studied very well except for Russian and perhaps Polish--but even with Polish, a lot of universities are cutting their programs. I've noticed lately though that B/C/S is starting to become popular, but that might be due to the general heritage in my area--I'm not sure if it's actually representative of Slavic language learners. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5011 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 39 of 85 28 August 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is likely due to the heritage. Half the Czech Republic goes to Croatia every year, including people I personally know, and I haven't met a single learner of Croatian. Actually the Croatian tourist areas are learning Czech. We even have an immigrant minority from the area but still, the language is at the bottom of popularity.
The thing is that pure number of speakers doesn't mean that much. Romanian or Croatian aren't studied much because they aren't seen as languages of economic value, the countries don't export that much culture and aren't the main immigrant destinations. They is very similar to Czech. But It is true that Portuguese is understudied. Portugal and Brazil make a huge amount of speakers. There are some well known writers (such as Coelho), there are tourist destinations, Brazil is a huge economy etc. I think Portuguese could get many more learners if it was more supported. Or rather if the support and marketing was making more sense. A funny example: In Prague, there are organisations representing most european countries and their languages. They usually organize cultural events and language courses and they usually have a public library. There is a French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Scandinavian, Polish, Slovak library and surely a few others. But guess what. Not only the Portuguese institution doesn't have a library, it still does have the "courage" to present their language courses on a book fair (without any books, haha) and with personnel who cannot convince most czechs since the poor intern just doesn't speak any czech. The Portuguese stand was empty while most other foreign ones were crowded. If the Portuguese waste money without thought everywhere they try to present themselves (and get the advantages coming from being well known and counted with), no wonder Portuguese is mostly viewed as the less important sister to Spanish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7158 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 40 of 85 28 August 2013 at 10:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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This table should allow one to begin guessing which languages in Europe are understudied. One's on the right track if the answer doesn't contain English, French, German or Spanish.
English and 3 out of 4 of the FIGS get a big piece of the action, for better or worse. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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