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Romance language learning sequence

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ElComadreja
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Philippines
bibletranslatio
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 Message 1 of 39
12 March 2005 at 5:00pm | IP Logged 
Someone mentioned the language path Spanish>Portuguese>Italian>French
What is the advantage to this? Is Italian halfway between French & Portuguese, etc?
After learning Spanish I just went after French since it seems to be the oddball of the family and I figured that all the other ones would be a snap (relatively speaking)
Might I actually spend less time attacking this in a different way? I'm all about efficiency.

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kidnickels
Triglot
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United States
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 Message 2 of 39
12 March 2005 at 5:04pm | IP Logged 

I highly doubt that there's enough efficiency gain to make a difference in the order you learn the Romance languages. I'd say that you should learn them in the order in which they interest you - or perhaps you should attack those where you know native speakers first.

BTW, Romanian's probably the real oddball of the family - unless you want to count Romansh
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Eric
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Australia
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 Message 3 of 39
12 March 2005 at 5:48pm | IP Logged 
Hi Elcomadreja, it was me that mentioned that path, yet it's not from Barry Farber per se, his name was just an inclusion as he said after 4 languages one knows how to learn a language better. (If I recall correctly)

That path is personally the path I'm going to take after I'm fluent in Spanish as I assume every step on that path I've chosen is close to each other.

eg: Portuguese is in many respects very similar to Spanish, if you have Castellano audio and Portugues subtitles you notice many words similar.

This is probably due to Portugal's close proximity to Spain, and I've heard some people compare Portuguese as another 'dialect' of español like Galacian or Catalan (can we call Basque a dialect?)

Also Francois rated portuguese 1 star, so it's logical if I learn Spanish fluently, to take Portuguese as the next step, yet as kidnickels said you have to be interested in a language, fortunately all the langauges/countries in that path I like very much (which is why sadly, I have no interest in Romanian)

I picked Italian after that as it has similarities to Spanish and I know it's easier than French, which I really want to learn because it has so many things going for it, but to be honest I'm scared as hell of French which is why I am going to leave it to last.

Edited by Eric on 12 March 2005 at 5:51pm

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Malcolm
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 Message 4 of 39
12 March 2005 at 6:31pm | IP Logged 
I also like to plan my language learning career (I have it planned out for the next 5 years!). However, long term plans like this almost never go the way they're intended. There's a very good chance that you'll suddenly be swept away by some non-romance language before making it to French. Anyway, if it were me, I'd do Spanish, French, Italian, then Portuguese, since this is the order of usefulness in my country. I wonder if learning Latin would help in any way.
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kidnickels
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 Message 5 of 39
12 March 2005 at 9:26pm | IP Logged 
Malcolm wrote:
I wonder if learning Latin would help in any way.


Probably more trouble than it's worth - Latin has six (or seven, if you include the locative) noun cases, which only Romanian has among the five major Romance languages today. That would be less of an issue if the speaker came from a language that also declines its nouns (e.g., Russian) but it still represents additional material to learn.
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ElComadreja
Senior Member
Philippines
bibletranslatio
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 Message 6 of 39
12 March 2005 at 10:03pm | IP Logged 
I forgot to mention those... Catalan & Romanian... Is there anymore I'm missing? Catalan looks like half Spanish half French anyway. Though I thought Romanian was somewhere between French and Italian.

That was kind of another reason why I went into French, It looked like the next most useful romance language.
Yeah, my plan is to fill in this whole family as far as the spoken languages go (so Latin’s out)

Romanian has those noun cases? Unh. I might save that for after another, more useful language gets in my head (Russian has noun cases right? Quenya? )

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kidnickels
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 Message 7 of 39
12 March 2005 at 10:32pm | IP Logged 
Yes, Romanian has noun cases - four, I think, as opposed to the six-maybe-seven of Latin. The vocabulary is also quite recognizable to a speaker of any of the Big Four (F-I-S-P), but not as similar as any of those two are to each other.

I think a speaker of Catalan would tell you that it is its own language, but some linguists call it a Spanish dialect. If Catalan is its own tongue, Occitan probably is too, and maybe Gascon as well.

Edited by kidnickels on 12 March 2005 at 10:33pm

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Seth
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 Message 8 of 39
12 March 2005 at 11:04pm | IP Logged 
I Romanian has reduced the number of noun cases that were once in Latin.

Yes, Russian has six noun cases...and many, many declensions.


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