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Romance language learning sequence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7170 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 17 of 39 09 May 2005 at 9:14am | IP Logged | |||||
Ardaschir, I am impressed to see that this method of learning languages is still practiced. When I read it in Russel's biography of Mezzofanti, I assumed it was possible only for him. Congratulations! Here is the quote:
Click Here for the rest of this Mezzofanti anectode. Edited by administrator on 09 May 2005 at 9:17am 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Nephilim Diglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6939 days ago 363 posts - 368 votes Speaks: English*, Polish | Message 18 of 39 09 May 2005 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Dear Ardaschir,
Thank you for your detailed and very interesting response. It’s nice to have a rough idea of the time commitment involved in learning a language so that one can get some sort of system together and utilize both time and resources to the utmost. I fully take your point about the inefficiency of learning languages in school; I too was blessed (or cursed) with years of banal French lessons at school. The writer Jerome K. Jerome in his book ‘Three men on the Bummel’ (I think) makes the observation that all schoolboys ever manage to gain from their French lessons is the ability to memorise a seemingly infinite amount of regular verbs and then they seem genuinely surprised that when they do finally get to France, ‘the French aren’t much interested in hearing their own irregular verbs from fourteen year old English schoolboys.’ A great book to read if you ever want to know how not to learn languages. I like your idea of listening to tapes while running. I tried a similar thing in the gym whilst on the treadmill. I had the idea that I would do about 40 minutes a day on the treadmill and use the time to learn languages. I found it didn’t work so well for me because I always wanted to repeat or shadow the text and you can’t really do that in a public place with your walkman. I did, however find it useful listening to audio books in Polish whilst out walking in the forest – possibly because I felt it wasn’t actually a lesson and it was more for fun. I’ve followed with interest your ideas on shadowing on other posts and it’s something I totally agree with, especially for low level learners to help with intonation and phrasing. I’ve often encouraged my elementary students to shadow the dialogues on their tapes in their free time mainly because with certain phrases the intonation is already built into the sound profile. For example, if we take a semi-fixed expression like Would you like + noun, there is really only one way you can say this if you are offering something to someone, the rising intonation is on the verb and it would be difficult to say it any other way without sounding totally ridiculous. I suppose this further re-enforces the point that you should always learn new words in set phrases to help with memorisation. I’m a big fan of shadowing and I’d definitely recommend it to help with pronunciation and speaking. I remember from one of your other postings that you had studied the Slavonic group. I was wondering in light of our discussion how you would advise me to tackle the Slavonic group. I already have ok but not brilliant Polish and was wondering what sequence you would give for learning the Slavic languages and how much your figure of 720 hours for the Romance (easier) languages would have to be adjusted due to the complexity of these languages. I ask because I’ve just turned forty and I’d really like to put in a decade on structured language work as a hobby and I fully agree with your point about it being intellectually very satisfying to know a whole language group so that you can compare them. At the moment it looks like a choice between the easier Romance branch and the tougher Slavonic branch. What are your thoughts on this Ardaschir. By the way, isn’t ‘Ardaschir’ something to do with the tower of Babel? We both seem to have biblical names. Nephilim 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lengua Senior Member United States polyglottery.wordpre Joined 6478 days ago 549 posts - 595 votes Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German | Message 19 of 39 18 October 2006 at 10:01pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm heading in this direction of study: Spanish->French->Italian->Portuguese. Currently have no plans to continue with the Romance languages after Portugese, but that may change.
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| Miri-chan Tetraglot Groupie United States crimsonietta.ne Joined 6802 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Cantonese, English*, French, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Thai | Message 20 of 39 27 October 2006 at 10:26am | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm heading in the French -> Spanish -> Portuguese -> Italian direction. Personally, I think French is the best Romance to start with since there are a lot of similarities to the English language structure that are not quite as present in Spanish.
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| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6684 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 21 of 39 27 October 2006 at 11:05am | IP Logged | |||||
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Poor Romanian seems to be overlooked nearly every time. Not to mention the various other Romance languages, such as Catalan and Galician. :)
I definately would suggest starting with either Spanish or French as these are the languages you will find the most available resources for (not to mention the fact that Italian is only really spoken in 2 countries, give or take). Italian is often cited as being an easy Romance language to learn so I can't really see anything wrong with learning that one first, although it has less transparency with English than Spanish or French have. I can't really make any recommendations with Portuguese as it's a language I have little interest in but I'd suggest going on to Portuguese after tackling Spanish first. The written language will be fairly easy to tackle once you know Spanish, although you should be aware that European Portuguese (as opposed to Brazilian Portuguese) sounds quite different to Spanish or even French and Italian. Now, if you want to do a Romance language that is in a league of its own, do Romanian first. ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| makaveli1989 Groupie United Kingdom Joined 6537 days ago 69 posts - 73 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 22 of 39 28 October 2006 at 8:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think I'm going in the Spanish >> Italian >> Portugese >> French direction. I'm petrified of learning French which is the primary reason that I am leaving it till last. I also believed that I would learn Portugese after Spanish but the lack of materials put me off. Edited by makaveli1989 on 28 October 2006 at 10:25am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 6898 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 23 of 39 28 October 2006 at 10:07am | IP Logged | |||||
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Wow, I didn't know French was something to be petrified about!
As far as sequence, I think the Spanish>French>Portuguese>Italian>Romanian direction is what I will have done eventually (hah, years from now). For me French and Spanish have about the same priority and importance and Portuguese and Italian are extra because they're so easy to add once you have knowledge of two Romance languages. Edited by Sir Nigel on 28 October 2006 at 10:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6809 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 24 of 39 28 October 2006 at 10:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Why does French make you petrified?
There's Assimil (in Spanish and French), Linguaphone and FSI. What more do you want? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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