ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6961 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2
| Message 1 of 31 07 April 2007 at 3:06pm | IP Logged |
As I stumble along through the highs and lows of language learning I often get to a point with my target language (currently russian) where I just can't seem to take it any more and I need a bit of a mental holiday. When I get to this point I like to keep up my enthusiasm for language studying in general by "dabbling" in another language for a week or so, just learning a few words and having fun getting my tongue around strange and unusual sounds.
I'm there now. And at the moment I seem to be drawn towards Icelandic and Greenlandic. I have had no exposure to these languages what so ever (particularly greenlandic which I had never heard of until a week or so ago) so the mystery has sucked me right in. They are both beautiful and fascinating countries that I will definately travel to in the not so distant future...so which would you recommend me dabbling in this time?
I'm interested to know if there are major similarities between the two languages (I would imagine the two countries share a similar history, correct me if i'm wrong!) and which of the two languages are considered to be more difficult from an english speakers perspective.
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Linguamor Decaglot Senior Member United States Joined 6620 days ago 469 posts - 599 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch
| Message 2 of 31 07 April 2007 at 3:38pm | IP Logged |
The languages of Iceland and Greenland are totally unrelated. Icelandic is a Scandinavian language. Greenlandic is related to Inuit. If you're looking for a language in the area that is relatively easy, I'd suggest Norwegian. Unlike Icelandic, which resembles the language of Norway as it was 1000 years ago, Norwegian is easy to learn. You might also consider Danish, which is an official language in Greenland.
Edited by Linguamor on 07 April 2007 at 3:43pm
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patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 7017 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map
| Message 4 of 31 07 April 2007 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
ymapazagain wrote:
...so which would you recommend me dabbling in this time? |
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As far as I know, it's difficult to obtain many resources for Icelandic, so for Greenlandic...
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MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6697 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian
| Message 5 of 31 07 April 2007 at 8:23pm | IP Logged |
Inuit is similar, though, and has an amount of resources available.
By the way, how hard is Inuit?
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ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6961 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2
| Message 7 of 31 08 April 2007 at 10:05am | IP Logged |
Linguamor wrote:
The languages of Iceland and Greenland are totally unrelated. |
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Haha, well...i've learned my lesson on making assumptions! I know quite a few places where i'd be able to find recources for icelandic, but simply for the curiosity factor I think i'm leaning towards greenlandic.
http://www.geocities.com/jerry_mccarthy_uk/grnintro1.htm
This is a good website for some basic grammar and vocab, and there's a link to a good dictionary as well. If anyone is able to find a link to some audio samples for pronunciation that would be fantastic!
So i'm off to pain my brain on some new and wonderful rules and vocab!
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ymapazagain Senior Member Australia myspace.com/amywiles Joined 6961 days ago 504 posts - 538 votes Speaks: English* Studies: SpanishB2
| Message 8 of 31 08 April 2007 at 10:08am | IP Logged |
Schaumgebremst wrote:
although Icelandic vikings were the first to inhabit the place except for the inuits. |
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That may have been where I got the idea from, I knew there was some viking history in both of the countries so my mind just put two and two together and unfortunately came up with 7...oops
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