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If I had enough time, I’d study... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 25 of 58 20 October 2011 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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It seems New York now has the largest number of expat communities anywhere on the planet, which is why there were some conservation efforts started. Hearing that made me want to go to the US for the first time in my life. I don't know which languages, but there surely would pop up some for me to learn.
And, Mongolian. Mongolian rocks. I don't know which variant, but I suspect they all sound equally awesome. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Dreey Newbie Canada Joined 4635 days ago 17 posts - 21 votes Studies: Spanish, German | Message 26 of 58 20 October 2011 at 3:04pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I would learn Russian and Czech! I'd like to learn Portugese and Japanese as well!
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| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6933 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 27 of 58 20 October 2011 at 5:11pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I can't quite get my head around this one. When you've learned Russian Cyrillic, which is a lot easier than it looks, you can spell out Russian words easily, with just a couple of exceptions, namely the 'ogo' and 'ego' which are pronounced 'ovo' and 'yevo' and the odd spelling change based upon the preceding consonant and stress, but with a bit of writing practice, it becomes second nature. I will concede that actual Russian pronunication, with its reduction and devoicing etc. is a bit different from what you learnw hen you learn the script, but once you've mastered the script, it isn't any more difficult to pronounce Russian than it would be to pronounce, say, French, for a non-native speaker. I just don't get the issue here with Belorussian and Russian. In fact, once you know cyrillic, you'll find it far more compact for writing Slavic languages than the ones that used Roman letters. For example, the 'sczc' in Polish is represented by just one Cyrillic letter in Russian. Learn Russian! It's a great language! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Chris Heptaglot Senior Member Japan Joined 6933 days ago 287 posts - 452 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Indonesian, French, Malay, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Dutch, Korean, Mongolian | Message 28 of 58 20 October 2011 at 5:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
One of the major problems is locating resources. Maybe you have more resources in Germany, but for English speakers, there is precious little readily available, apart from 'Colloquial Mongolian' and 'Modern Mongolian' by John Gaunt, but I think it's out of print. There are some resporces on this site: http://www.mongoliasociety.org but I didn't get a reply when I sent an email to try and buy some stuff, so I don't know how reliable it is. Edited by Chris on 20 October 2011 at 5:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6968 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 29 of 58 20 October 2011 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
It's not Cyrillic at all as I've already learned to use Serbian and Ukrainian Cyrillic (and even then those took me no more than a few days of study to read and write) Thus learning any other Cyrillic-based alphabet would be quite easy. The problem as you know is that modern Russian spelling is not that representative of the current pronunciation practices as it was of the earlier ones. The -ogo- ~ (ovo) thing is a pain but at least it's predictable when you realize it's just the pronunciation of the singular for masculine genitive and accusative animate. A bigger problem is in the example where I spelled xорошо as *xaрaшо* until someone corrected me saying that because the final syllable here is stressed, the o's are reduced. The converse is true as well in that I'm also more liable to butcher the pronunciation of something like xорошо ("khorosho") - again because of the noticeable lag between spelling and speaking practices. In contrast, I face fewer such difficulties with Belorussian whose spelling conventions somewhat better reflect the changes caused by vowel reduction.
I just don't share the same enthusiasm about it as you do. Russian culture hasn't interested me as much as those of the other Slavs either. However I may put myself eventually through some Russian course if only to use language learning materials for Uralic and Altaic languages that were designed for Russians. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| ilcommunication Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6504 days ago 115 posts - 162 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 30 of 58 20 October 2011 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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@Chung, if you do opt for Belorussian, approximately a bit less than half of Belarus will think you're awesome. Can't tell you much about how difficult it is, though.
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| sipes23 Diglot Senior Member United States pluteopleno.com/wprs Joined 4682 days ago 134 posts - 235 votes Speaks: English*, Latin Studies: Spanish, Ancient Greek, Persian | Message 31 of 58 20 October 2011 at 8:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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If I had the time?
Hm. Amharic and Albanian and Frisian. If I ever wind up in the right place, Iʻm sure I'll have the right excuse. For now, I'll focus on what firming up what I already have. I'd like a better active vocabulary in Ancient Greek. I'd like to read English from earlier centuries with greater facility. I wouldn't mind a more competent conversational grasp on Spanish (or Italian). As for Latin, I'd like to really know the vowel quantities well enough to write a bit of doggerel. I've added Persian to the mix, but that's going to be a slow drag. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 4893 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 32 of 58 20 October 2011 at 10:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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From the languages that I'm interested in, the only one that would cost me a huge amount
of time would be Japanese. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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