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German spin-offs | ||
Tags: Germanic Languages | German | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Heart of Oak Newbie Scotland Joined 5044 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 31 27 July 2010 at 1:16am | IP Logged |
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I've started learning German and I was wondering if there are any languages that I will be able to pick up really quickly once I have mastered German?
For instance, I have heard that if you are fluent in Spanish, then Portugese is a lot easier to learn (and presumably vice versa), similarly with the Scandanavian languages that have similarities to each other. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mrhenrik Triglot Moderator Norway Joined 5871 days ago 482 posts - 658 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, French Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 31 27 July 2010 at 1:24am | IP Logged |
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Dutch and the Scandinavian languages come to mind, Dutch more so. Most words will be very
similar to a word in either German or English, so you'd get a major head start there. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| johntm93 Senior Member United States Joined 5119 days ago 587 posts - 746 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 31 27 July 2010 at 3:35am | IP Logged |
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Dutch, and other Germanic languages for the most part; probably Frisian, Yiddish, the Scandis should be a little easier. Luxembourgish would be easier too.
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| tracker465 Senior Member United States Joined 5144 days ago 355 posts - 496 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 4 of 31 27 July 2010 at 7:44am | IP Logged |
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Dutch is very easy, I could understand a lot written before I even began studying it. When learning Dutch (Afrikaans is the same way), there is so many similarities to English and German, that it is not so difficult to pick up.
With the Scandinavian tongues, they are a bit further out than the relationship between German and Dutch, but there are also many similarities. If I push myself, I can pick out some text and understand a fair bit, though not nearly to the level that I can understand Dutch via German. Still easy to learn though, when you have the others. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6457 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 5 of 31 27 July 2010 at 11:05pm | IP Logged |
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Dutch, Afrikaans, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are all pretty easy if you've got German (and the other way round). I actually consider Luxembourgish to be a dialect of German, not a separate language, as I can immediately communicate with someone only speaking Luxembourgish (however, I grew up very close to Luxembourg and our local dialect is very close to Luxembourgish...)
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| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5074 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 6 of 31 27 July 2010 at 11:39pm | IP Logged |
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As has been said, knowing German will give you a fairly big discount in learning Dutch/Afrikaans and Swedish/Danish/Norwegian (including all dialects.)
German will also give you a certain amount of discount with learning Old Norse/Icelandic - languages which would otherwise be every bit as difficult as Russian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Heart of Oak Newbie Scotland Joined 5044 days ago 19 posts - 20 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 31 28 July 2010 at 12:06am | IP Logged |
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Thanks guys, it sounds as if Dutch may be somewhere in my future by the sound of it. What about Hungarian? Is Hungarian more Slavic than Germanic?
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| feanarosurion Senior Member Canada Joined 5073 days ago 217 posts - 316 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish, Norwegian | Message 8 of 31 28 July 2010 at 12:11am | IP Logged |
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No Hungarian isn't even in the Indo-European family. It's got quite a few slavic influences, but it's actually in the Ugric branch of the Uralic family. You're not going to get any help with Hungarian from German, or even any other Indo-European language, in my opinion. I don't mean to discourage you, but if you were to tackle Hungarian, you'd pretty much need to start from scratch.
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