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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Noise_ Triglot Newbie Latvia Joined 3687 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Russian, Latvian*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 9 24 October 2014 at 12:49am | IP Logged |
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At the moment I am 'fluent' in 5 languages. More precisely, Latvian is my mother tongue and, roughly speaking, Russian is second to that (my parents taught me it simultaneously); however, not as good as Latvian. I am also fluent in English and in the recent months have improved my French if not drastically, then at least for the better. Also, as a student of Humanities, I had the chance to study Latin for one term, so I am a bit acquainted with it as well. Now, why I have enlisted all these languages. No, not to show off. Long story short: I want to start learning a language (yes, 'a language' with the indefinite article) and I do not know which.So please, language gurus, what language(s) would you suggest? Justify you answer!
Please, take into account 3 factors: The level of fluency of my languages from highest to lowest: Latvian, English, Russian, French, Latin. I am willing to learn a language(s) which would be linguistically closest to the above mentioned and thusly would require less effort and, most importantly, it is just for the sake of my philological enthusiasm, so don't ask questions as to where I would use it, etc. No artificial languages. I still would like a language that has a backbone and is more or less known and recognized in different parts of the world P.S. I am rather new in this forum and this is only my first topic of some linguistic concern, so I hope that I posted this in the right section. Edited by Noise_ on 24 October 2014 at 12:56am 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 2 of 9 24 October 2014 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
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Than I believe your best choice would be Spanish, followed by Italian or Ukrainian, perhaps something Scandinavian
Spanish is much easier after French and bits of Spanish and you have plenty of resources, which makes learning far less complicated. And your philological enthusiasm might appreciate the differences between various kinds of Spanish, regional variants, dialects and so on. There is much more distinction then just 1 continental and 1 latin american Spanish. Italian would be another not too hard choice after French and Latin. Less resources but still enough, huge cultural heritage and so on. And if I understood well you want "a language with a backbone, more or less recognized" but you appear to want something not totally mainstream, Italian might be the one. Ukrainian might be a great follow up to Russian. Much more than western or southern Slavic languages. And from the whole slavic family, only Russian tends to be widely recognizes, sometimes Polish and Ukrainian as well. Or perhaps a Scandinavian language to use some of the ties with English, the fact that they are less scary grammar than German and your rare advantage of living quite close and therefore having better traveling and resources acquirement opportunities compared to most of us. Welcome to the forums. I wish you a good choice and lots of fun on the path. By the way, is everyone in the baltic countries so educated in languages? I met a Lithuanian this summer and she spoke five as well. edit: ouch, i just noticed you were asking the language guru's, which i am not. but i can still wholeheartedly recommend Spanish after French and basics of Latin, my experience has been very positive ;-) Edited by Cavesa on 24 October 2014 at 1:14am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 9 24 October 2014 at 3:41am | IP Logged |
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If you want be that lazy about it, how about Lithuanian (gotta stick up for the Balts), Belorussian (very similar to Russian; in a crude way, it looks and sounds like Russian with a lot -dz- and -h- sounds where you'd expect -d- and -g- with the nice touch of spelling being a closer representation of current pronunciation) or Afrikaans (very similar to English (and even more to Dutch)). As an alternative to Lithuanian and Afrikaans you could also look into Latgalian and Lowland Scots respectively which depending on whom you talk to are either dialects of Latvian and English respectively or distinct languages.
Otherwise just get the lead out and learn Finnish. You'll never go back to those boring-ass Indo-European languages again. ;-) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4046 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 9 24 October 2014 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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Polish, Spanish and Persian. They are beautiful and there is great culture associated to them. All decently easy for
you. Or Arabic, Mandarin and German. more or less the same thing as before and you have an access point to Arabic World, the most spoken language in the world and the language of the best economy in Europe. Or Malayalam, Mongolian and Guarani. Just because. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Noise_ Triglot Newbie Latvia Joined 3687 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Russian, Latvian*, English Studies: French | Message 5 of 9 24 October 2014 at 10:27am | IP Logged |
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Thank you for the replies! To be honest, at some point I was considering some of those languages that both of you mentioned.
Anyway, the language guru thing was an exaggeration, I just needed the opinion of somebody who has been in the process of acquiring/learning a new language and knows what is what. I don't know the current situation in the Baltic states, but it is safe to say that the majority of Latvian are at least bilingual. From this year on, English is taught as a foreign language from form 1, as well as we can choose between German and Russian. Most of the Latvian are rather reluctant to the Russian language mainly because of our nation's historical events. However, the very Latvian language in recent years, I suppose, is on the decline both taking into consideration the number of speakers and the quality of language, which is sad. Oh, and just to be more precise, Latgalian is deemed to be a language, not a dialect, even though it is connected to other languages. From your lists I will further think about Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian/Belorussian and Afrikaans. Just 1 question about Spanish - is there such a thing as 'Standard Spanish', i.e. which would be perceptible for people who are fluent in substandards of Spanish? I brought this up because of the Cantonese and Mandarin - dialects of Chinese which actually are different. Anyway, thank you for the replies! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 9 24 October 2014 at 10:53am | IP Logged |
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Different dialects of Spanish can in no way be compared to the so-called "dialects" of "Chinese". No linguist would call Mandarin and Cantonese dialects unless they were pushing a nationalist agenda. They're as different as Spanish and French.
Spanish, on the other hand, is universally comprehensible if you learn any of the common varieties, except that people might have a bit of a hard time with Rio Palatese (Argentinian) Spanish sometimes. It's mostly a matter of different words being used for different things and some minor grammatical differences (one verb form is only used in Spain, for example). At the most you'd have to explain a word or ask about it, but you would never run into a situation like that of Cantonese and Mandarin speakers, who often speak English to each other since neither knows the other one's language. Bonus trivia: The only reason Mandarin and Cantonese are sometimes called "dialects" is because of an old mistranslation of the word 方言, meaning "place-speech". That word was used for things like the speech of a certain place, be it a city or a country. Thus, English was also called a 方言 and should be considered a "dialect" according to this translation. Edited by Ari on 24 October 2014 at 10:56am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Noise_ Triglot Newbie Latvia Joined 3687 days ago 10 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Russian, Latvian*, English Studies: French | Message 7 of 9 24 October 2014 at 11:29am | IP Logged |
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Good to know that there is no mondial ambiguity concerning Spanish. About Cantonese and Mandarin - I just quoted my linguistics professor.
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 8 of 9 24 October 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged |
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I totally agree with Ari. Even as an intermediate learner using mostly european sources, I had no trouble understanding a mexican girl or a tv show dubbed into latin american Spanish. Whom I had more difficulty with, were people from southern Spain because the north speaks more standard Spanish and that is the one presented in the media. However, some more listening to them would have surely taken care of the obstacle, just as you need to get used to variety of native speakers in any language (heh, sometimes the native speakers need more time to get used to understanding each other as well). But should you use standard european Spanish, you should be understood by any Spanish speaker, in my opinion. There are as well more resources for it, even though the Latin American variant is getting more and more popular in the US. However, I believe the european one is more practical for people living on the old continent.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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