|
 |
Learn a language: related or unrelated? | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 41 of 44 03 May 2011 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
|
I usually choose related languages, except for Finnish. Afrikaans and Swedish occupy the middle linguistic ground between English and German, while Spanish and Italian share much vocabulary and grammar with each other and there are clear links with Germanic languages as well. The minor variations on a theme are intriguing, it's amazing how even slight changes in phonetics, vocabulary and grammar can seem to constitute a different language.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sabrina VG Pentaglot Senior Member Belgium Joined 5212 days ago 37 posts - 41 votes Speaks: Dutch, Flemish*, English, German, French Studies: Swedish, Welsh | Message 42 of 44 04 May 2011 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
|
Personally, I tend to chose to study the languages of the cultures I'm interested in. For example, I'm very interested in the whole Viking Era and Scandinavia as a whole, so it makes sense I would study Danish as well as Swedish and Norwegian, even though those 3 languages are very much related.
Is this making things easy on myself? I guess some people would say it is, but it's the only way learning languages is going to function for me. I don't want to start studying the language of a culture that does nothing for me, just because that language is unrelated to my own or to languages I already speak. Having said that, I also have Japanese, Welsh and Swahili on my language hit list, so those are definitely unrelated! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5961 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 43 of 44 04 May 2011 at 4:18pm | IP Logged |
|
All four of the big East Asian languages are unrelated to each other so I was kind of
stuck studying unrelated languages. However I will soon start studying Spanish and then maybe Portuguese so that will be quite a change for me. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| koba Heptaglot Senior Member AustriaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5869 days ago 118 posts - 201 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, French | Message 44 of 44 05 May 2011 at 2:00am | IP Logged |
|
For me at least, it depends. I tend to choose to study unrelated languages because it's a whole new experience and I like that feeling. However, if I'm studying a language related to a foreign language I learned, then I usually find it very fun and interesting. So, considering my native language is Portuguese, studying a very related language like Spanish isn't that fun for me, whereas Dutch, after having learned German, is. I enjoy it just as much and the same counts for the German dialects, it's like exploring a language further.
Something that I notice though is that the feeling of "new" and a bit of the excitement seem to disappear in every language after you reach a level between an intermediate/advanced level. Even if you still are far from being fluent, you know to a large extent how the language works and it just feels different somehow. All those different structures and grammar that were once very exotic seem to become normal as you get used to them. Not trying to say that language learning gets less interesting from that point, far from it. For me it's great to be able to finally get into contact and have a proper conversation with natives and from that point I can start learning more about the people, their culture and their country. Still, when I get to that point, I can't just, say, dwell on the language syntax for my amusement, because somehow I'm already used to it and it's not so exciting in that aspect. So after that I have to start looking for other kinds of entertainment, that is, music, TV shows, tales, the news in that language or whatever interests me. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
