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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5765 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes  Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 25 of 41 28 February 2010 at 11:55am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Here are my reasons for learning both (as I am learning both) as well as a few for each which weren't important for me to begin with, but have become more important for me as my general interests have developed.
German - The language is not so simple as to be boring, but also not so incredibly difficult as to cause too much frustration. I like the unusual word order. - I love German accents. - I love German literature, especially the Fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. - German history really interests me - not just the history of Germany itself since the unification in 1876, but also the history of the Germanic tribes during the Roman period. - German food is great - beer, meat, the really generous portions of everything, from my experience, the bread, for some reason. - Germany is home to the world's largest library of prehistoric archaeology, which is in Frankfurt. - German is also useful if you are interested in philosophy, as a lot of philosophical material was originally written in German. Russian - Interest in the Cyrillic alphabet - which has since disappeared after learning to decipher it. - Interest in Russia's history - The Soviet Union mainly, although also before then. - Russia has a very rich literature, although it's a bit strange in places (The author Nikolai Gogol' being one such example) - The Russian language fascinates me. I am a big fan of grammar and although there are undoubtedly languages which are far more complicated than Russian, Russian is complicated enough for now. Six cases, frustrating word order, vocabulary which both looks and sounds like nothing on earth. Interesting. - Russia is such a vast and diverse country in so many different ways. - Russian doesn't have different accents or dialects - I think this has something to do with the Russian language only being standardised very recently (I think Pushkin was credited as being the Father of Modern Russian) and therefore Russia hasn't had the time to develop dialects just yet despite its size. Hope this helps/is of interest to someone. Jack Edited by LanguageSponge on 28 February 2010 at 11:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 26 of 41 28 February 2010 at 12:56pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This can't be the reason. Dialects evolve over time as variations in spoken language. A standardized language imposed through the educational system, literature, mass media, social mobility etc. can have the effect of unifying the spoken language. Standardization of a language is thus more likely to lessen the dialectal variation than to strengthen it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| WortDrauf Already banned: zarathustra, lifelover Newbie Canada Joined 5394 days ago 23 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 27 of 41 28 February 2010 at 7:35pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Which is what he was saying... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5452 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 28 of 41 28 February 2010 at 8:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
No, he was not. When a language gets standardized, you don't erase the dialects overnight (unless you impose the standardized language with force). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6776 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 29 of 41 06 March 2010 at 6:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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If you want to learn a language purely for it's utility (as opposed to historical/cultural value) then the answer is simple: Russian.
Of course that "utility" only comes into play if you actually intend to live in or visit that area. Russian will allow you to speak with people in 2 dozen countries and with hundreds of different ethnicities and cultures. German will allow you to speak to....Germans. (Yes yes and Austrians and Swiss.) As a rule there is almost nobody you can talk to in German that doesn't know English also. (There are minor exceptions...such as in Czechia and Slovakia where some people know German as a second language but not English.) That is most definitely not the case with Russian. I spent 10 years studying German on and off (on and off is why it took me 10 years). I'm not sorry I learned it, but if I had to start over I would have done Spanish. My advice would be to learn Russian and Spanish, if your goal is communicating in the maximum area of the globe. If you are interested in Asia, Mandarin is naturally also important. But you will spend the rest of your life learning to read and write it fluently. Russian and Spanish are both classified as "critical needs languages" by the US government, qualifying you to apply for jobs at the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies -- if you're interested in that kind of thing. German is NOT a "critical needs language." There are some ways in which Russian is actually easier than German. First there are no articles. (This means you don't have to decline them!) It's like German has the worst of both worlds: case and articles combined. Russian just uses case. Second, you can tell the gender of most Russian nouns just by looking at them. (There's another memory saver.) With most German nouns, there is no way to tell gender, you just have to memorize it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5959 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 30 of 41 06 March 2010 at 7:22am | IP Logged | ||||||||
The thing is, German speaking countries have much closer ties to the U.S. than Russian speaking countries. An American is much more likely to go to Germany to work or study than to go to Russia or another Russian speaking countries. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6776 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 31 of 41 06 March 2010 at 10:04am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That much is true. It depends on personal interest though. If you are interested in the former Soviet Union, it is a much larger area of the world, with a lot more economic potential, than Germany/Austria. Russian is taught in almost no American high schools and only in the biggest American universities. If it were taught more there might be more Americans interested in traveling to Russia. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| arkady Bilingual Diglot Groupie United States rightconditi Joined 5399 days ago 54 posts - 61 votes Speaks: English*, Russian* Studies: German | Message 32 of 41 10 March 2010 at 10:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I started learning German about a month ago and when I tell people what I am doing, they usually stare at me blankly and then ask "but...why?". This includes both English and Russian speaking friends of mine. It makes no sense and from the standpoint of utility, they are right, it makes no sense.
Does it really have to? If it is something you enjoy then any amount of knowledge one acquires makes sense at some level, even if it is difficult to explain. Beyond the constant exercise of the brain, always a good thing, one opens up doors and gateways by acquiring a language. Who knows, maybe there will be certain music, litertature or fiml in the future that I will be able to enjoy which can then pave the way for more interests. I really have no idea, but if it happens, I will have that power and not my friends. Also, many English speakers in America suck at English. Sure most can get by, but in terms of writing or even speaking eloquently the number dwindles rapidly. We should always be striving to improve our native language because language is our primary form of communication and yet nobody really cares to do so. German holds a part of English's origins and it is not entirely impossible to assume that knowing German can either improve one's English or possibly present clarity in various words. This is the reason people learn Latin, yet for some odd reaosn no one ever questions Latin students on why they are learning a dead language. If tangible utility is the only reason to learn a language, then every American would learn Spanish and Mandarin. Alas, there is more than meets the eye. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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