|
 |
Crossing Language Family Borders | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5771 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 17 of 24 12 January 2011 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Spanish - Chavacano - Tagalog/Cebuano/Hiligaynon
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5929 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 18 of 24 13 January 2011 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
|
A few that I thought of are
English - Spanish - Aymara. One of my brothers actually met someone in Bolivia who did this. Spanish and Aymara aren't related, but there could be some Spanish loanwords. I probably could have replaced Aymara with Quechua or Guaraní. Afrikaans - Zulu or Xhosa and this could also be done the other way around; Zulu or Xhosa - Afrikaans. I think there are people in South Africa who have learned the languages in one of these orders. Italian - Maltese - Arabic. Maltese is in the same language family as Arabic but uses the Latin alphabet and is supposed to have quite a bit of vocabulary from Italian.
English - Vietnamese - Chinese. Yet again, I don't know if this would work. I do think it could be an interesting experiment. Vietnamese uses a form of the Latin alphabet but has tones and some shared vocabulary with Chinese. Edited by mick33 on 13 January 2011 at 10:30am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5357 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 19 of 24 13 January 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I have often thought about this very topic, since there are so many languages that I would love to learn or experiment with at some point. Is there a "perfect" order for maximizing the language studies?
As a native English speaker, I always felt that the following would be a good progression: English --> Dutch --> German --> other Germanic languages but also: English --> Dutch --> French --> Italian (or Spanish) --> Romanian --> Slavic tongues When I look at Dutch, in addition to the Germanic words, there are so many French words which seem to have retained an approximate pronunciation to that of the true French, unlike the English words of French stock. I would argue that any English speaker shouldn't have that much difficulty learning Dutch, and then since there are so many French cognates in both English and Dutch, French would be a lot easier to pick up. Of course Romanian is the obvious link between Romance and Slavic tongues. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jsun Groupie Joined 5090 days ago 62 posts - 129 votes | Message 20 of 24 14 January 2011 at 9:45am | IP Logged | ||
|
Chinese is just too board. Of course Thai and Japanese/Korean aren't Chinese. Don't be
confused. Tai-Kadai(such as Thai)- Cantonese - Hakka/Min(Amoy, Taiwanese, Teochew) - Japanese/Korean - Wu(Shanghaiese is the leading dialect)- Mandarin I start from Tai-Kadai and Cantonese . Cantonese is more related to Tai-Kadai than Mandarin in basic vocabulary (without these basics, Cantonese can't function). Here's a little table that I made some time ago. It is about connection between Cantonese and Tai Le, a close relative of Thai. 
Some Cantonese place names are of Tai-Kadai origin. (More in Guangxi due to proximity to Tai-Kadai speaking regions) For example, There's a place in Hong Kong called Pok Fu Lam 薄扶林. 
Scholar found that this is a Tai-Kadai name. Pok = pak ปาก in Thai (I randomly pick a Tai-Kadai language) = mouth Lam = nam น้าม in Thai = water (Cantonese messes up L/N) Therefore, Pok Fu Lam means "mouth water". The name is even in Tai-Kadai grammar. 
Pok Fu Lam in early 19th century. It was a waterfall, so "the mouth of water" was a proper description. Hakka and Min. Cantonese is somewhat intelligible with Hakka in slow speech, but not Min. Hakka and Min are famous for sounding similar to the Chinese readings for Korean hanzi and Japanese Kanji. Hakka and Korean (with Tibetan alphabe in red, as Korean alphabet was "inspired" from Tibetan). 
Hakka, Min and Japanese. Kanji/Chinese character 人 Japanese's on reading: jin, nin Hakka: ngin Min: jin 
People find rules to convert Hakka to Japanese's on reading. I found one thing interesting about Min and Japanese. Mr X in Japanese = X san In Min, you can also call X sian. Wu and Hakka Wu and Hakka somewhat look alike but Wu preserves a full set of voiced consonants. Hakka has lost voiced consonants but preserves p,t,k at the end. Nowadays Wu just retains a glottal stop. 
I don't think I need to talk about Mandarin as many people in here speak that. I am doing a project - adding Cantonese and Hakka into literary Chinese book that contains Mandarin pinyin only. I picked this book because it also contains Japanese and Korean. I am almost done with Cantonese and going to start Hakka.  Edited by jsun on 14 January 2011 at 9:59am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5354 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 21 of 24 14 January 2011 at 12:01pm | IP Logged | ||
My ultimate language ambition will be achieved using this pincer attack technique. My dream is to be able to understand all Slavic languages to a very high level and to be able to produce an active conversational level in all or most of them too. Right now I only know Czech but it should be easier now, having done the hard work with that language. So my plan is Russian next so as to start an attack from both sides on Ukrainian, Slovak (which I already understand), Belarussian, Polish etc. and then head down South and learn Serbo-Croat so as to establish a Southern front for my attack and then slowly pick off the others! I've also found English > Czech > Hungarian to be a helpful route into Hungarian. Edited by hribecek on 14 January 2011 at 12:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ReneeMona Diglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 5340 days ago 864 posts - 1274 votes Speaks: Dutch*, EnglishC2 Studies: French | Message 22 of 24 14 January 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
I agree. My own learning sequence, Dutch >> English >> French, has so far proven quite efficient. Pretty logical when you consider I basically went from a Germanic language, to a Germanic but Romance-influenced language, to a Romance language. Very often when I'm making word lists, the French word will either bear a connection to English, Dutch or even both, making vocabulary acquisition a very smooth process. Of course, the number of French loanwords is much larger in English but Dutch has been surprisingly helpful with a lot of vocabulary and sometimes even expressions and idioms. It also makes sense that French loanwords in Dutch are closer to their originals, since Dutch was influenced by French much more recently than English. As for the original point of this thread, I was pleasantly surprised a while back to find that the click language Khoekhoe includes a couple of Dutch words. Since Khoekhoe is spoken in Namibia, I assume the sequence would be Dutch >> Afrikaans >> Khoekhoe. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| alang Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 7226 days ago 563 posts - 757 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish | Message 23 of 24 14 January 2011 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I actually tried to make a personal map on which languages will help with successive ones. It turned out pretty messy. First constructed language, then family, creole and loanwords. Of course the other features a non- related language has with another.
Examples: Esperanto -> Romance or Germanic languages (Vocabulary), and Turkish (Agglutination) -> Persian (Arabic loanwords) -> Arabic -> Hebrew (Semitic language cognates) .The Turkish above can veer towards Japanese or Korean due to grammar. This is like Bao above. Spanish -> Chavacano (Spanish Creole) -> Cebuano (Spanish loanwords and Bisyan grammar and words) -> other Austronesian languages (Austronesian cognates). Portuguese -> Papiamento (Portuguese Creole) -> African languages (words) or French, Spanish, English, Dutch. Papiamento-> Swedish (Tones)-> Mandarin Mandarin-> Japanese (Chinese characters) Indonesian has so many loanwords from different languages and cognates with other Austronesian languages it is very rich. Language with a Latin alphabet -> Other language with Latin alphabet. There was much more, but I don't think it ever ends. Like I wrote above it became really messy. All in all I believe the more diverse languages, the more connections people will be able to recognize. It is great and eases the stress level. Edited by alang on 14 January 2011 at 7:26pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5538 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 24 of 24 14 January 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I'm kinda surprised here about the vocabulary fixation. Sure, having common vocabulary
helps but words can be easily learned. It's grammar that trips you over twice a day and syntax that stomps all over you (now that you're downed by grammar) and laughs at you. I'd rather prefer advancing by language pairs which share similar logic, not so much similar vocabulary. There are some easy routes, for example: Your native tongue -> any scandinavian language -> any other scandinavian language at 50% off Much more important to my mind is that the more you acquire languages the more your learning capacity grows and the easier will be to make connections in any new language. That being said, realistically speaking the most practical scheme is nowadays basically this: Your native tongue -> French/Russian/English/German/Spanish -> your target language -> profit! That FREGS group is basically THE library for all your needs, for better or worse. 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. |
