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Fluency in one language vs. reading in two | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 9 of 20 15 September 2014 at 4:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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For these specific languages there seem to be good books specifically for reading. And sooner or later you just learn by reading more :)
Please expand on your reasons though. I doubt that there's any degree that requires you to know English+French+German+Spanish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 10 of 20 15 September 2014 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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If your normal activities require you to communicate with Spanish speakers, then high proficiency in Spanish is
clearly more useful. If you just want to be a better polyglot, then two passive languages are better because good comprehension already puts you within striking distance of spoken fluency. I do however question the assumption that you can learn a passive language significantly faster, unless you already understand a closely related language. I find spoken fluency tracks my comprehension skills in all my languages, except that in the ones I don't practice speaking, my spoken fluency seems to drop. It doesn't really drop though, as it always improves to match my comprehension level whenever I start to use it regularly again. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Talib Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6660 days ago 171 posts - 205 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (classical) Studies: Arabic (Egyptian) | Message 11 of 20 15 September 2014 at 9:54pm | IP Logged | ||
Any of those languages (Spanish, French, and German) can support Arabic studies, but the minimum requirement at the university is just to pass a reading test in one or two of them. I would like to go beyond that and achieve fluency or at least be able to read the language(s) without difficulty. Maybe it is a mistake for me to ignore some of the “exotic” languages that I find interesting, but the languages in question would be more useful at this time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| luhmann Senior Member Brazil Joined 5332 days ago 156 posts - 271 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: Mandarin, French, English, Italian, Spanish, Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 12 of 20 16 September 2014 at 2:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Conversation is much easier that reading. Conversation uses simpler constructions and a much smaller lexicon. For me the trade off would be more like, to be able to read in one, vs fluent conversation in four.
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| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 13 of 20 16 September 2014 at 9:10am | IP Logged | ||
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There is nothing wrong with studying the "mainstream" languages as long as you are trully interested in them. It is just one of the small peculiarities of the htlalers to pursuit the exotic ones so often. :-)
If your main goal is your pursuit of the Arabic studies, than how about finding out which languages will give you the access to most resources related to Arabic language and culture? Professor Arguelles recommends those who wish to become polyglots (but it probably applies to people wishing to study exotic languages as well) to have the big three: English, French and German covered first. However Spanish is on the rise and Spain has had long historical ties with the arabic world. And there are many fields where another european language, other than English, can be more than useful. So, perhaps get to know which countries and universities would be the best for you to visit as an exchange student or after university, which languages are native to the most important specialists in the field and so on. Perhaps you will find a golden mine of resources writen in another language as well. So, I'd do such a research first, if I were at your place. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 20 16 September 2014 at 9:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Somewhat off-topic but it's a peculiar set of criteria that makes English, French, and German the "big three." It
makes total sense for Arguelles, who's oriented towards the canon of great and influential books, primarily Western. It also makes sense under the nebulous concept of international prestige. In today's world though, there's a strong case for a big three of English, Spanish and Mandarin. If you care about number of native speakers, French and German are not that high, and if you care about geographic spread, German isn't even close. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5008 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 15 of 20 16 September 2014 at 6:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It still makes sense from the point of view "languages that give you the most resources to learn other languages, including the less common ones, small ones and dead ones".
English is the most obvious choices. The rest of the world learns English, the English natives are free to pursuit whatever folly they want. And the market is so huge that it can feed the few authors making books for weird-language-X learners as well. French and German are still large languages with huge tradition of foreign language learning (even though the stereotypical view of the French doesn't support the theory) which give you access to many different sources for other languages. They are a requirement (one or both of them) for many students of Egyptology, Asian Studies and so on for exactly that reason. Spanish is a huge language but are the Spanish natives so eager to learn many various languages? From my visits in Spanish bookshops, I wouldn't say so. There are usually some resources for the big european ones-English, French, Italian, German. Fewer resources for Russian and Chinese, some for Arabic (yes, the tradition is there). But other than that? Not really. And the Spanish are as well among the most monolingual nations I've had the pleasure with. Mandarin? Yes, important language and so on. But is it really practical to learn other languages through Mandarin? I highly doubt there will be so many sources, and of that good quality, to learn other european languages than the usual big four. Perhaps for other asian languages? I must admit I have no idea but I don't think Mandarin is a good language to add the pursuit of Arabic studies. There are other reasonable choices, some people, knowing which area of the world with small languages interests them, might find Russian to be the perfect intermediary. Or something small at first sight but in close relation (geographical or cultural) to the desired L3. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 16 of 20 16 September 2014 at 8:35pm | IP Logged | ||
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Fair enough. If you're looking for materials for further language study, French and German are good and Spanish
is not so good. As for Mandarin... it depends on what languages you care about. There are probably few resources in Mandarin for the smaller European languages like Swedish, Romanian, Slovak, Greek, etc. However, it's also true that the world's population is heavily concentrated in Asia and there are a lot of languages in the Sinosphere. Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese are massively influenced by Chinese, and even Chinese minority languages like Cantonese, Min Nan, and Wu have more native speakers (though less literature) than the European languages cited above. Part of the Mongolian-speaking area is in China. Chinese also has a lot of sway in parts of the very populous Malay-speaking world. Clearly, most of us here, myself included, have a bias toward learning the European languages, and from that perspective Mandarin is less useful. But there are hundreds of millions of people speaking languages for which Mandarin would be a good gateway, and the trend is only more in that direction. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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