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Buy one get one... half off? | ||
Tags: Transparency | Linguistic relationships | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4904 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 12 20 November 2011 at 1:20pm | IP Logged | ||
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We always hear about the similarities, potential for transfer or even supposed degrees of mutual intelligibility in sister languages; but what are the realities? at what degree does learning German to a proficient level allow for a far easier experience with Dutch?
what about Spanish (for fun let's even say Latin or Interlingua) to, let's say Portugese? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6583 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 2 of 12 20 November 2011 at 1:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, learning Cantonese while knowing Mandarin gave me a 80-90% discount. The languages are very similar,
and a lot of it is just learning new pronunciations for characters you already know. Ironically, this hindered me a lot in the beginning, since I found it incredibly boring to study, even though I love the language to death. It wasn't until I was able to start using the language that I could get some good progress. I've had the same problem with Spanish and Esperanto. I've tried to learn them several times and I fail miserably every time. I feel like I'm just learning new ways of pronouncing the same words and it's just not very exciting. I might have to give up on learning them and tackle something harder, that can keep my interest. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5263 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 12 20 November 2011 at 2:52pm | IP Logged | ||
Like Ari, I find a lot of learning Portuguese calls for learning new pronunciations of similar words. This can be boring at times but is absolutely critical to speaking the language. Also, I have to learn a lot of new idioms. If you speak Spanish and then start learning Portuguese, you soon discover that Portuguese is a separate language. The grammatical similarity is helpful, but the vocabulary similarity is a sword that cuts both ways. Sometimes, when I don't know a word in Portuguese, I am actually afraid to use the Spanish word because, well, I may be right the majority of the time but those times that I'll be dead wrong happen often enough to give me some trepidation. I started off in a higher level in Portuguese than if I had started without knowing Spanish. I started by reading Mozambican author, Mia Couto in Portuguese, and was able to enjoy it without having formally studied the language but I didn't get the same level of enjoyment that I get from reading in Spanish or English. It took a lot more effort. Now, after four months of study, my enjoyment of reading and listening in Portuguese is nearer to my level of enjoyment in English and Spanish, but I still have a way to go. Portuguese isn't just Spanish that is pronounced differently. Portuguese is a language that uses many different constructions (in Spanish: things are "pleasing to you"-me gustan las flores- in Portuguese "you like of things"- gosto das flores) While many of the same words exist in both languages, many times a common Spanish word will be archaic, little used or only literary in Portuguese. The other pitfall is language interference both ways which one must be on the lookout for in order to avoid speaking "portunhol". K-Mart language discount shoppers beware, you can't get something for nothing! Even at a discount, there's still a price to be paid. You still have to work at it, just like you would any other language even though you're getting it for 2/3 off the retail price. Edited by iguanamon on 20 November 2011 at 3:05pm 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 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 4 of 12 20 November 2011 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latin and Esperanto were a good base for my Portuguese :) The downside is that I now see its (and other modern Romance languages') verb system as screwed up versions of the elegant Latin one, and I just CAN'T make myself study all those insane exceptions. On the other hand, it's opened my eyes to the AJATT-style natural learning and the joys of it.
Also, I'm really glad Portuguese was my first modern Romance language. Especially Spanish would make so much less sense without it, it's like with Finnish and Estonian, Karelian. In some ways, Finnish and Portuguese changed the least in their respective groups. BTW as for "me gusta", I find the "a mi me gusta" thing just MADDENING. Sounds so uneducated to me, with my Latin and Portuguese background :))) Makes me feel good to realize just how many ancestors of modern Spanish speakers were reproached for saying it this way and called uneducated before this finally became correct and standard:) 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| 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 5 of 12 20 November 2011 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Remember that seizing the "discount" comes with a cost. Interference from the "stronger" language can affect use or understanding of the "weaker" language.
See the following for relevant discussion: Best order to learn the Slavic languages Can I learn 2 languages and a forced 3rd? Czech through Russian Discount on German? German, Dutch, Swedish, etc. Germanic family learning sequence Germanic language learning sequence How languages help you on for the next Learn 'Slovio' first as help to Russian? Learning sequence - Czech, Polish, Hungarian Portuguese & Spanish Dilemma Portuguese and the Spanish "discount" Related languages, "discounts" and mixing To Portuguese and Spanish speakers Romance Language Family Learning Sequence Romance Language Learning Sequence Simultaneous Study of 3 Romance Languages Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence Which Germanic languages, in which order 14 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| fomalhaut Groupie United States Joined 4904 days ago 80 posts - 101 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 6 of 12 20 November 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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that's a great set of links, super thanks
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4667 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 7 of 12 16 February 2012 at 1:52pm | IP Logged | ||
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With Thai and Khmer, it's quite easy to learn one if you know the other well, even though they are in different families (Tai-Kadai and Mon-Khmer). Thai borrowed a lot from Khmer, they both have a lot of Indic vocabulary, and generally there's a weird sort of parallelism that must be due to the contact situation over the centuries. It really makes you question the saliency of "genetic" relationships between languages outside of the European context.
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