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Learning a "Useless" Language? | ||
Tags: Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Qaanaaq Newbie United States Joined 3975 days ago 14 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English* | Message 1 of 23 20 February 2014 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi all,
I was Wikisurfing the other day, and was surprised to learn that Lithuanian is in fact the closest thing there is to a Proto-Indo-European language. I got a book and have been studying it for a few days now. It's pretty damn hard. Some features/cognates are charming though: labanakt ("good night"), baseinas ("swimming pool", cf. piscina in Spanish). Grammar is ridiculous, highly inflected language...somewhat reminiscent of Latin from my school days. There are so few speakers of Lithuanian - I've never met one - and if the FSI is any indication, I could learn a much more useful language in the same amount of time, such as Russian or Turkish. However, I feel that a solid foundation in Lithuanian could be a good starting base for any and all other Indo- European languages. My reasoning is somewhat similar for why (some) people study Latin or Esperanto. But at the end of the day, Latin has historical value, and Esperanto has a global community. Would I be wasting my time with Lithuanian? Thoughts and input appreciated! Edited by Qaanaaq on 20 February 2014 at 6:46am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6448 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 2 of 23 20 February 2014 at 7:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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1. That's an urban myth.
2. Baseinas comes from French (not sure if directly or not) and is a loan rather than cognate. 3. If you're fascinated by the language, go for it. The main problem will be the resources, really. 4. OMG just today I've been wondering if I could read Lithuanian with my knowledge of the surrounding languages (Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Germanic). I have a friend who's been there and wrote me random things from a phrasebook and it looked cool. If I can learn to read it naturally, one day I probably will. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4104 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 3 of 23 20 February 2014 at 10:30am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are over three million speakers of Lithuanian, that's a humongous amount of people.
You can't waste your time with any language ever. Lithuanian is to my understanding the most conservative alive language grammar wise in the Indo-European family but to say that it's the closest thing to PIE is a bit of a stretch. I would say learn a language you're interested in. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6554 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 23 20 February 2014 at 10:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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It may be exaggerated to see Lithuanian as a surviving remnant of Proto-Indoeuropean. On the other hand I have seen more than one serious work about the roots of Indoeuropean use this language as one of the languages used for reconstruction projects - and here it is in the company of more renowned languages like Ancient Greek, Latin and Sanskrit.
As for the amount of resources you can get it should help that it is the official language of a nation - though you may have to order things directly from Lithuania. But it might be hard to find good pedagogical resources. If you decide to take on a minor language it should be a burning interest that drives you, not usefulness or mere curiosity. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 DavidStyles Octoglot Pro Member United Kingdom Joined 3792 days ago 82 posts - 179 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin, French, Portuguese, Norwegian Studies: Mandarin, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Serbian, Arabic (Egyptian) Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 23 20 February 2014 at 1:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
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There's a "Teach Yourself" course available for Lithuanian, "TY Complete Lithuanian", which promises a B2 level upon completion.
At the time, I was just cramming, so didn't complete it, and haven't yet made any reprise as it's not a priority language for me presently. I just mention it so you can know there are semi-respectable resources out there for anglophones to learn LT. Given what you suggested, one would expect Lithuanians to be a nation of polyglots, given the expected ease of learning other languages, but in my experience it's not so. Most Lithuanians seem to speak Lithuanian, and then if they speak a second language, it's usually Russian (because it was insisted upon during the Soviet era), followed by much rarer incidences of speaking English or other languages. Just my anecdotal experiences, mind; actual broader statistics may vary. For what it's worth, in my opinion English is an excellent starting point to other European languages, as while technically a Teutonic language, it clearly has a foot in both the Teutonic and Romantic camps, with plenty of connections to the Baltic and Slavic languages too, and not a small amount of Greek influence meaning that really most of Europe is pretty well covered by an existing proficiency in English. Really, the only particularly alien major European languages to an anglophone should be Finnish and Hungarian. Edited by DavidStyles on 20 February 2014 at 1:35pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4104 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 6 of 23 20 February 2014 at 2:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
What are these connections? I mean sure English gives a few hundred word base to the other Germanic languages after the great vowel shift and endless consonant shifts rendered a large part of the Germanic vocabulary just only curiosities of cognates, for example the word "deer" which I think has cognates in every other Germanic language where it quite uniformally means "animal" (tier, djur, dýr). Of course, a good grasp of English gives a good few thousand words of Romance vocabulary, but could you give examples of these connections to Baltic and Slavic languages as I can't think of anything.
You forgot Estonian and Euskara (Basque). 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4558 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 23 20 February 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Indeed. Baltic and Slavic aren't really that well-connected to English apart from things
like 1-10 and mother/father/brother/sister and some other words. It's hard as it is. As for the question: no language is useless if you know how to use it. I could make Breton useful - and it's not officially recognised by France and doesn't have over 300,000 speakers. How useful a language is depends on you and not the language - it's a tool you use to do other things. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4490 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 8 of 23 20 February 2014 at 2:11pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I am always sceptical to the claim that a language, whether it is Latin, Old Greek, or in this case, Lithuanian, is a particularly good foundation for learning other languages. Of course, any language within a language family is useful for learning other languages of the same family, but to claim that Lithuanian should give you some advantage in learning any Indo-European language, that I very much doubt. Personally I would only go for learning Lithuanian if I really had an interest in that particular language, or the country and the culture.
As for material, I do not know too well what is out there, but apart from TY, there is also a "Colloquial Lithuanian" by Routledge, so at least some English-based material exists at beginner level. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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