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Tackling Germanic languages

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15 messages over 2 pages: 1
Ygangerg
Pentaglot
Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French
Studies: German

 
 Message 9 of 15
23 January 2011 at 10:38pm | IP Logged 
Thanks everyone! I'm still studying Icelandic every day and like it quite a bit, so I've decided to continue it. It's very close to *Old Norwegian (edit: Old Norse), so that's a plus.

Afrikaans would be very interesting. Your suggestions have me excited to look into that one, Dutch, or German after a bit more time with Icelandic! Each one has its own special attraction, for sure.

Edited by Ygangerg on 24 January 2011 at 12:12am

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ellasevia
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Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 10 of 15
23 January 2011 at 10:45pm | IP Logged 
I guess you've already made up your mind, but I just read on here that Professor Arguelles recommended that the optimum order for a native English speaker tackling the Germanic languages would be to start with German, and then to study Icelandic second. This is probably because they are the most difficult in the West and North Germanic groups respectively, and after those two the other Germanic languages would be much easier. I suppose from there you could study whatever interests you most.
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Ygangerg
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Senior Member
United States
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, French
Studies: German

 
 Message 11 of 15
23 January 2011 at 11:02pm | IP Logged 
Ah! Well that's almost enough to give me pause, but I think I'm going to stay my course. I look at it this way: with "exotic" languages that aren't related to mine at all, I wouldn't have the option of choosing the "closest" one, right? With Germanic languages, anything I choose will be relatively close to home in many respects.

That being said, German is looking like a very strong candidate for my next endeavor :)

p.s. Ellasevia: do you still know where on the forum Prof. Arguelles mentioned this topic?

p.p.s. Mithridates: thanks for the great link!

Edited by Ygangerg on 23 January 2011 at 11:12pm

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ellasevia
Super Polyglot
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Senior Member
Germany
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2150 posts - 3229 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian
Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian

 
 Message 12 of 15
23 January 2011 at 11:31pm | IP Logged 
I don't know where the Professor said this himself, but I found the reference to his comment on this page (message 18).

Edited by ellasevia on 23 January 2011 at 11:32pm

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Mithridates
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Korea, South
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 Message 13 of 15
24 January 2011 at 2:27am | IP Logged 
Yeah, I would stick with Icelandic. It's easy to move from that into another Germanic
language, not so easy the other way around. You might find some of these links to be
interesting too (Disney movies with subtitles):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTDHjhMsGG0
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Lucky Charms
Diglot
Senior Member
Japan
lapacifica.net
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752 posts - 1711 votes 
Speaks: English*, Japanese
Studies: German, Spanish

 
 Message 14 of 15
24 January 2011 at 4:34am | IP Logged 
Ygangerg wrote:
p.s. Ellasevia: do you still know where on the forum Prof. Arguelles
mentioned this topic?


This wasn't in a thread about the Germanic languages specifically, but about the path
to becoming a polyglot in general: He said that French and German are must-have
languages, and the ones he'd recommend starting out with, because so many materials for
learning other languages are written in French and German.

In a later thread (started after ProfA became inactive), a member was wondering why
this would've been said about German, and what kind of language learning materials
would be more readily available in German than in English or French. A few members in
that thread confirmed that German has the greatest selection of materials for a learner
of German dialects and Scandinavian languages (and if memory serves, Latin, Ancient
Greek, and Central European languages as well). Actually, it was with this thread in
mind that I recommended going with German first, and I heartily recommend it as your
second choice after Icelandic!
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zerothinking
Senior Member
Australia
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528 posts - 772 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 15 of 15
25 January 2011 at 7:54am | IP Logged 
This is probably obvious to many people here but if you know English and German then
Dutch is so easy to learn. Dutch has similar grammar and words to German but is also
similar to English in more ways than probably any other major language. Afrikaans is too
because it developed out of Dutch.

Edited by zerothinking on 25 January 2011 at 7:55am



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