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How languages help you on for the next | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5119 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 47 04 May 2010 at 1:39pm | IP Logged |
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My actual question here (which was too long for a title) is:
In which order did you learn your languages, at which age did you learn them and how did they help you with the next languages you learned? (and to be a bit philosophical - is it possible to identify "the perfect sequel" of learning languages in order to benefit from the ones you already know)? I started out with English at the age of 9- where I had a lot of help from my native Norwegian, both in vocabulary and structure. The next one out was Spanish at the age of 11, and I remember thinking at the time, that about the only word Spanish and Norwegian had in common was "marmelade" (we are talking about the vocabulary of an 11 year old here :-). However I did realize, that a lot of the English words I knew were very similar (difficult/dificil, neccesary/necesario). German, at the age of 13, had again a lot of similarities in vocabulary with both English and Norwegian, but was difficult because of the cases. When I moved on to French at the age of 13/14 I found that both English and Spanish were of big help, as a lot of the vocabulary, and also the structure of the language was known to me. At 18 I started with Arabic, where I had no help whatsoever from my other languages. The alphabet was different, the vocabulary was different, the structure was totally different and they wrote from right to left. At the very most, I got the explanation for some of the names of rivers and cities in AndalucÃa ( e.g Guadalquivir, which is a big river, coming from something like "Wad-al-kibir in Arabic, wich means the big river...). After studying English, French and Spanish at the University for years, I decided to do Italian, just for fun, at the age of 26, and found that I could understand a lot of it - at least 70 % due to my knowledge of French and Spanish. Moving on to Hebrew at 28 I saw again a lot of the structure and the vocabulary I had learned in Arabic. The alphabet was different, but it felt familiar somehow. At 29 I had an extremly brief flirt with Dutch, and found that I had 60-70 % of the vocabulary since I knew English, German and Norwegian - and also the structure of the language was very similar to the other three. At the age of 30 I started learning Polish, and felt that I was in deep water again. I suppose that if you analyze all the world's languages, Polish is farly close to Norwegian, at least when you look at the structure, but it felt very foreign indeed. All the words were new, and although I had a little help when it came to grammar, because I was familiar with the German case system, it was still difficult to get my head around it. At the age of 37 I had a brief look at Portuguese, reading a couple of novels in it, and saw again that knowing Spanish, French and Italian, Portuguese was fairly easy to understand. Then a few years ago I started learning Russian, but gave up. I couldn't get my head around the alphabet, and the Polish that I thought I had forgotten by then, grantedly was useful when it came to understanding some of the vocabulary, but it pushed its way into every single sentence I tried to utter in Russian, and interfered with my Russian pronunciation. A year later I tried again. And gave up. Again. Three months ago I realized I needed to learn some Russian quickly, because I was going to Ukraine, and whether it was the added incentive, or that the language had matured in my brain, I don't know but slowly I started to understand a little. I was even able to understand some Ukrainian, since I recognized some words from Russian and some words from Polish. So what is your story? When did you learn what, and how did it benefit your learning of other languages? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 04 May 2010 at 1:42pm 8 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Danac Diglot Senior Member Denmark Joined 5133 days ago 162 posts - 257 votes Speaks: Danish*, English Studies: German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Russian, Esperanto | Message 2 of 47 04 May 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, a very thorough listing of your language experiences. I'll try to keep mine shorter.
English/German: a basic knowledge of the languages from about age 5 or so, mainly through watching tv. I also occasionally met with and talked to German children in this same period, but the memories are quite faint, but I remember speaking a bit of German. English: I started having English in school at about age 10, and finished at about age 20. It never seemed very dificult, perhaps because of the many influences in English here and there, and because of the occasional similarity between Danish and English. German: I started having German in school at age 13 and ended at age 20. At least in the Danish school system, people don't really care for German, since it seems useless at the time (age 13), and since most people don't really want to struggle with it. It always came naturally to me, and I always enjoyed it. There has also historically been lot of influence from German in the Danish language, so that often helped me in acquiring vocabulary. Spanish: I started having Spanish in school at age 14, and ended at age 20. It seemed a little different, but there was still a lot of vocabulary from English, so that helped occasionally. The grammar never really presented a lot of problems, though there were problems with remembering irregular verb forms and so on. However, I never really fully understood the finer details of the more exact distinction between preterito and imperfecto and their usage, since I'd never really been exposed to this difference through my other (all Germanic) languages, and I also didn't work very hard at understanding it. Ancient Greek/Latin: At age 20, I began studying Ancient Greek and Latin, but I broke it off after about 2-2,5 years of studying at my local university. This was another thing entirely. The rather complex morphology of Ancient Greek and Latin couldn't really be compared to anything I knew. The case system also seemed more complex than the German one, but the greatest problem was the verbal system of Ancient Greek, since it has an amazing amount of different forms for any given verb. There was also some vocabulary from Spanish and English that helped with Latin, so it never seemed as hard. Occasionally, I drifted away from it, and a bad experience with teaching Latin while trying to study full time as well made me decide to drop out and try something else. Serbo-Croatian: After my time with Ancient Greek and Latin, I began studying Serbo-Croatian or BCS, as we also call it. I was 23, which I still am. A year or so before beginning, I bought myself a couple of books about BCS and started learning the basic grammar and a few words. It didn't seem too difficult at first, but that changed a little when I began studying it full time. My previous experiences with languages helped a great deal, and at first it didn't seem like a problem to relate to the case system or the verb system after having dealt with Ancient Greek, Latin and German. I am struggling with a few things, and the major thing is verbal aspect. We never had to use it actively in Ancient Greek or Latin, we just discussed it, so I was aware of the concept, but just not enough to help me get it yet. I'd imagine that we'll keep on working with it, so it'll probably get it sometime. Just for fun I tried listening to the Michel Thomas Polish, and it was actually quite interesting. With my basic knowledge of BCS it didn't seem too hard, but they did't cover that much ground there. It just showed me that the first Slavic language learnt would probably be a great steping stone into the realm of Slavic languages. Edited by Danac on 04 May 2010 at 3:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6057 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 3 of 47 04 May 2010 at 5:28pm | IP Logged |
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If you have learned one L2, you know you can do it. So you feel able to do it again. A lot of learning is about psychology.
Also, you may have developed techniques for learning your first L2 that are relevant for any others you seek to tackle. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6239 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 4 of 47 05 May 2010 at 2:18am | IP Logged |
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^True, but I think a strong personal interest and exposure to the target language are more important then learning techniques in language acquisition. :)
This is my humble experience in the world of languages: My language learning story began when I was around 5-6 years old and started watching cartoons and occasionally also other TV programmes in English. Thus I had already learnt some basic words in English before going to school at the age of 7. Over the years, English 'grew' on me, so to speak, even though I remember not paying much attention in English classes. I just picked up words and sentences here and there, and by the time I was 13-14 I spoke English pretty fluently and helped my English teacher. :D At 16 I went to high school and got accepted into the International Baccalaureate programme. Well, to be honest, I was a bit nervous, but in the end my English proved to be good enough to have me put in the same English literature classes with native speakers. :) One factor that helped me a lot was that my family started travelling when I was little, so I got several opportunities to hear and practise foreign languages. The second language (the first I started studying independently) I chose was Mandarin Chinese. I have always had a certain level of interest in it, but my efforts have so far been in vain. The adventure began when I was 8 years old and went to the local library to get a Chinese beginners' course book. I actually managed to learn a lot of characters and spoken words, but lost my motivation after only a couple of months. My mother was very supportive, but she was unable to help me in my studies, so I got angry and decided to study on my own. I consider that a major turning point in my life because I realized at that very moment that one could actually study a language independently, immersed in books and foreign language audio material. I started and stopped learning Chinese many times.. Maybe one day I'll continue from where I was left... At this point I'd like to thank the Finnish school system for teaching me the basics of two languages! When I went to the 4th grade, my mum asked me if I wanted to take a foreign language as an extracurricular class. My answer was an immdiate YES. The school offered French and German, and I originally wanted to study French but since there were only a few others who wanted to study it, a group was not formed. I ended up taking German instead and certainly don't regret that choice! The lessons weren't very good, though, but hey, at least I learned the basics. I became truly interested in the language only at the age of 14 and started studying it at home, too. It took many many years to reach basic fluency but was definitely worth it. I think I got to that point at 19-20 years of age, and have maintained more or less the same level of fluency ever since. I'm able to read books in German and understand song lyrics, for example, but there's still so much to learn. The second language I started learning at school was Swedish. As some of you, dear readers, might know, Swedish is a compulsory school subject in Finland, so there were big motivation problems. I hated the language (not because of historical reasons, but because of the way it sounds) since day One. I rarely did my homework and hardly paid attention in class, but somehow Swedish managed to enter my brain and stick there. The process of becoming fluent was a bit longer than with German, but I reached a reasonable level of fluency at around 20. I think having a real interest in German helped me a LOT with Swedish because the languages are structurally similar and share lots of common vocabulary. My Russian friends in secondary school would teach me a few words in their native language every now and then, so my interest in the language and in the culture grew and I began studying it independently from my mum's old school books. She helped me at the beginning, but even though I studied quite intensively (not for long, though), I felt I wasn't making any progress at all, so I dropped it after only a few weeks. Russian is a language that I fell in love with the first time I started studying it, and I soon found myself starting again... and again... and again... You could say that I've been studying it on and off for the past 10 years! It's only now that I'm making some considerable progress. The languages I knew before starting Russian have been of no help at all because they are structurally rather different. Understanding the case system wasn't a problem in the first place, because my native Finnish has an even more elaborate system of 15 cases! In my teen years I experimented with several languages, most of them rather exotic. The local library was the place where I used to go after school to get some language materials. European languages didn't seem so interesting or exotic any longer, so I began studying Thai, Japanese, and Hindi, to mention just a few. The commonly spread lack of interest/motivation/time/cool factor caused me, however, to drop each and every one of these languages within a couple of months from starting in my tender years. Russian and German were the only languages I kept on studying on and off, but I never lost the passion I have for languages. When I turned 17, I started taking my language studies more seriously and signed up for an Italian course offered by my school. That was love at first sight! I wanted to take the university entrace exam in Italian, so I began studying really hard a few months before I finished high school and reached a reasonably good level of written comprehension. I got in and my Italian got a lot better in a matter of months. A year later (in 2006) I made my first trip to Italy and was able to communicate with virtually everybody. :) In November 2006 I was doing my Italian teacher training when I met my girlfriend who happens to be Italian. We have been speaking Italian from the very beginning so now when she wants to improve her Finnish and English, I find code-switching extremely difficult because I'm so used to speaking to her in Italian. I believe I have achieved a very high level of fluency in both oral and written Italian, including all the four basic skills. This is attested by the fact that I have studied translation and interpreting (English<>Italian) and have actually worked as an interpreter from/into Italian. The university offered lots of interesting language courses, but my four picks were Latin, Spanish, Icelandic and Slovene. I studied them 8 weeks each and later on continued on my own. Knowing 5 languages fluently was a great help because I could use a comparative method to learn the basics of all these new languages. I think that if you already speak at least 3-4 foreign languages, it is fairly easy to learn a couple more because you already have a theoretical basis on which you can build any future language projects. In my case that has worked well, and I can read for example basic Norwegian and French, even if I can't form a single sentence in them. My Italian was already pretty fluent when I took an elementary course in Latin (2005) and in Spanish (2006). The latter especially is so close to Italian that I could understand at least 60-70% of written Spanish without having ever formally studied it. So I took the course and continued my comparative studies at home. It took only a few months to reach basic fluency which I have maintained by reading stuff in Spanish on the internet and by visiting Spain (my dad's got an apartment on the coast). Now I'm actively studying Russian and understand it fairly well. :) I study 15-30 minutes every day and have made a lot of progress in the past months. My method is as follows: I read Easy Reader books in Russian, listen to Russian music and translate the lyrics, speak to native Russians (here it's really easy to find them!) and sometimes systematically go through single chapters in beginner level course books. In the future I'm going to start learning Bahasa Indonesia and Wolof, and improve my Latin which I actually studied intensively last summer. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| stout Senior Member Ireland Joined 5156 days ago 108 posts - 140 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 47 08 May 2010 at 4:06pm | IP Logged |
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Though I have no interest in learning another foreign language besides French,having some knowledge of French is useful in understanding other latin languages like Italian,for example:mange-manga,a plus tard-a piu tardi,porte-porta,etc.
Pardon me there was a mistake in the previous quote... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5752 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 47 08 May 2010 at 5:11pm | IP Logged |
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Solfrid and many others here are far more advanced in multilingual learning then I am, and though my language history includes many years, unfortunately, far too many were inactive years (A warm welcome to Solfrid Cristin by the way - sorry I have not had much time for posting lately and should have said hello before now!)
I started to learn Spanish at age 14, simply because it was a requirement in school. I noticed right away that I learned it quickly and liked the language, but I didn't have much dedication to it until age 19. At that time, I had to leave university for two years and missed my studies so much that I decided to continue them on my own, and I chose Spanish as one focus. This helped me to get through a very difficult time; before long I was getting up early and studying for several hours, and enjoying it. There was no World Wide Web available at the time (1991-1993), so I had to work with books, dictionaries, and Spanish TV. Still, I learned so much that when I returned to university, I moved from beginner classes directly into the advanced classes--very difficult, but worth it! In the post-university years, I returned to Spanish study many times, informally, and especially if my job at the time could benefit from it. But I was, in general, an inefficient language learner, and I although I made progress but I could have accomplished much more. Fast forward to 2008, age 36. Finally I was able to make a long-delayed visit to German-speaking territory. After making travel plans, I dedicated myself in German learning, not expecting too much, but I got quickly addicted! I realized that I'd forgotten just how much I enjoyed language learning, and discovered many new ways to do this via the Internet. The first six weeks of German I did totally on my own before I even had the idea to look on the internet for other language learners.I found out that my belief that my new learning interest was bizarre and a little obsessive was . . . true. And that was OK! Because I found out that, out there in the great wide world, other people did this, too! I think learning this fact was the single most important revelation I've ever had in my language learning life. Thus, here I am, still going, moving on to French now, and finding that the many years I gave to Spanish (and English - that was my degree!) serve me well in this new language. Language learning is part of my life now. I expect many difficulties along the way (such as not having as much time as I want for it right now) but it's here to stay! And, to return to the original question, all language study I do in the future will grow from the present and past - what I learned, and what I am learning. That was way too long! I will check for typos later. Edited by meramarina on 08 May 2010 at 5:48pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5632 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 47 08 May 2010 at 6:55pm | IP Logged |
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Solfrid Christina, I have already half a life behind me full of language learning, so I want to give you only the statistics:
1. English: started at age 7, elementary school, USA 2. Latin: started at age 12, grammar school, Germany 3. French: started at age 14, grammar school, " 4. Ancient Greek: started together with French at age 14, grammar school Abitur exam language: English 5. Dutch: started at age 22, university, Germany 6. Esperanto: started at age 30, private lessons, later correspondance courses 7. Italian and Spanish: started at age 31, university, Romance Philology 8. Portuguese and Turkish started at age 32, university, Later I stopped with both Portuguese and Turkish 9. Russian: one year of private lessons at age 36 After this year I stopped with Russian 10. Danish: Short holiday in Kopenhagen, age 41, afterwards half course of Danish, VHS After this half course I stopped with Danish 11. Turkish: Relearning from level zero at age 47, VHS-course, study-group, self-study 12. Danish: Relearning from level zero at age 48, self-study. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 08 May 2010 at 6:57pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5752 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 47 09 May 2010 at 5:06am | IP Logged |
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It is very encouraging to me to see that Fasulye and Solfrid and others have achieved so much in language learning when 30+ years old or more. All ages are excellent for learning, I admire younger learners very much, too, and I wish I'd been more serious about it sooner. But you don't meet too many in mid-adulthood really dedicated to language learning, although that is understandable, because so many people have family, career and other responsibilities to tend to - and we do, too - but it's important to see, by personal example, that it can be done! I am glad we all have a place to meet each other here!
Also, it has been so helpful to me to see that others have had long periods of no language study at all, but upon returning to it, found success. Learning Spanish and then many years later German was a strange feeling - the two experiences were just so very different, so far apart, I almost feel as if I had a whole new and much more efficient mindset the second time. And now that I've decided to continue, I can apply what I've learned both times and so far I'm learning much faster (even without a lot of time or energy to study right now, unfortunately!). I started out learning languages, and now there's an entire secondary effect of learning how to learn languages. But that is why we are all here discussing it, right? :) 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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