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Romance language family learning sequence | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 6899 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes  2 sounds | Message 9 of 23 17 March 2006 at 11:38am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's also worth noting that Spanish is better understood by someone who knows Portuguese than the other way round.
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| El x3n Diglot Newbie Puerto Rico Joined 6506 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 10 of 23 13 July 2006 at 8:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Man, do I EVER agree!. I can see how I can get away with writing it and feeling comfortable with grammar. As I'm paying attention and listening, it seems like relying too much on "similarities" between the two can lead to several mistakes. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| lady_skywalker Triglot Senior Member Netherlands aspiringpolyglotblog Joined 6685 days ago 909 posts - 942 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, French, Dutch, Italian | Message 11 of 23 13 July 2006 at 8:41am | IP Logged | |||||
I second this. I can read written Portuguese and more or less get the gist of it but speaking and listening are a completely different matter. Some words sound the same or close enough to guess but on the whole I find the spoken language a lot more difficult to understand. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| El x3n Diglot Newbie Puerto Rico Joined 6506 days ago 5 posts - 5 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English Studies: Portuguese | Message 12 of 23 13 July 2006 at 9:09am | IP Logged | |||||
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I feel very comfortable reading it. I have enough time to process the context in which a word is used and make good sense of the sentences. Hearing it takes a bit more time, but it makes me realize how tricky it can get for a native Spanish speaker to disassociate from preconceived notions of what a word means, especially when they are almost identical, even in sound.
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| lengua Senior Member United States polyglottery.wordpre Joined 6479 days ago 549 posts - 595 votes Studies: French, Italian, Spanish, German | Message 13 of 23 19 October 2006 at 2:28am | IP Logged | |||||
This is true! I hear stories frequently with Brazilians understanding their Spanish-speaking counterparts, but the latter not receiving the same 'relative-language' benefit. It's a very interesting phenomenon. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 6899 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 14 of 23 19 October 2006 at 2:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's interesting you would bring that up again. I don't still know that much about Spanish and Portuguese combined, but it seems I've come up with an idea as to why this is true.
Portuguese seems to elide much of what's still in Spanish so a Portuguese-speaker is hearing "added sounds" to what would sound like butchered Portuguese from a Spanish-speaker. Considering I know more Spanish, when I hear Portuguese it's difficult to get my ear round it. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6498 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 15 of 23 19 October 2006 at 4:05am | IP Logged | |||||
It is clear that Romanian normally would be the last major Romance language that you would study if you choose to attack the whole family. It has a different grammar, a different wordstock and - as noted by Frisco - a serious lack of decent textbooks. There is one added problem: on the internet most sources go for a simplified writing where î â ă ţ and ş are written as i a a t s, which makes them suitable only for people who already knows the language. Apart from the Romanian version of Wikipedia the homepages with correct writing are mostly more or less official pages with not exactly hilarious content. And unless you are able to go there yourself and bringing back a trunkful of books you mostly have to order anything you need through mail. My own textbooks, grammars and dictionaries are all bought long time ago so I can't give any advice on what to buy right now. Edited by Iversen on 19 October 2006 at 4:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| linguanima Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Australia Joined 6513 days ago 114 posts - 123 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Spanish, French Studies: Italian, Latin, German | Message 16 of 23 21 October 2006 at 6:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been studying all the major Romance languages for a long time. From my experience, I suggest the following sequence:
Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish If you want Latin, you can insert it somewhere around French. The aim of this arrangement is to enable one to master the two most studied and practical Romance languages, French and Spanish, and at the same time, have a taste of all the others, as a reinforcement of language ability and an amplification of linguistic knowledge. I haven't arranged the languages in terms of difficulty. Technically speaking, Spanish is the easiest language among them. But if you start with Spanish, you are going to encounter a gradation of difficulties when you tackle each of the other languages. French is the hardest language. I would have suggested French as the first attempt but if you are just introduced to this wonderful language family, you don't want to be put off by the detailed and highly irregular grammatical features of French. Italian is somewhere between French and Spanish - not only in terms of difficulty, but also in semantics and syntax, and is extremely pleasant to ears. Therefore I recommend Italian as the first greeting from the Romance family. When you have an extensive knowledge of Italian, you've conquered 70%-80% or so of French grammar and vocabulary, and you can start French and effortlessly pick up this beautiful, elegant, more nuanced language. After Italian and French, many will naturally go to Spanish. Despite practicality, I suggest tackling Portuguese before Spanish, and European Portuguese rather than Brazilian Portuguese is preferred. Admittently, Portuguese and Spanish share 90% of vocabulary and grammar, so learning either is learning the other simultaneously. But Portuguese is slightly harder than Spanish in terms of grammar (esp. verbs) and pronunciation, and is more formal than Spanish - Portuguese writing uses more 'intellectual words' than the Spanish one does. Because of this there is something magical in the Portuguese language that enables Portuguese speakers to understand both spoken Spanish and written Spanish easily, and that disqualifies native Spanish speakers to have a smooth taste of the Portuguese language - they cannot understand spoken Portuguese unless it's written. This is tested by my Portuguese and Spanish friends. So if you really want to possess both Portuguese and Spanish, start from Portuguese - you can't go wrong! Another point: Latin is extremely useful to solve difficulties in Romance languages. Many irregularities in modern Romance languages are reminiscence of Classical Latin, e.g. Italian irregular aorist (dire-dissi; lat. dicere-dixi), such French words as vituperation (lat. vituperare, to blame). So if you are motivated, and if you have time, grab a Latin grammar with you and study it. It doesn't matter if you can't read Cicero - you study Latin for the linguistic support of modern languages Edited by linguanima on 21 October 2006 at 6:35am 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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