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100 words’ languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5156 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 31 21 October 2011 at 3:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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I hasten to clarify - I am not looking for languages with only 100 words, but I am curious to know which languages you would go for if your ambition was only to learn 100 words. Not to become fluent, or even to be able to make simple conversations, but just to be able to say a few sentences in order to make contact with people you meet.
In my case it would be Urdu, Persian and Berber. That may sound like a strange selection, but they are actually chosen because I often meet people who speak those languages, and it would be a terrific ice breaker to be able to say even a few words in their languages. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 21 October 2011 at 3:42pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5203 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 31 21 October 2011 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me, it would probably be Korean and Tagalog.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5084 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 3 of 31 21 October 2011 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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@Solfrid Cristin, Barry Farber wrote about this in "How To Learn Any Language". He was talking about his dogged refusal to learn any more languages and how that was wrong-headed and his solution was:
"I could have easily and profitably picked up a few words and phrases every time I went to the Greek coffee shop and in the process learned another major language. But I didn’t. In the 1980’s immigrants to New York, where I lived, began to pour in from unaccustomed corners of the world, adding languages like Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Farsi, Bengali, Pashtu, Twi, Fanti, Wollof, Albanian, and Dagumbi to our already rich inventory of Spanish, Chinese, Italian, Yiddish, Portugese, Greek, Polish, and Hebrew. I abandoned the policy. Now I want to learn them all – not completely, just enough to delight the heart of an Indian or African cab driver who never before in his entire life met an American who tried to learn his language." In my case it would be Hatian Creole and Danish. I often run into both here and it would be nice to be able to say a few words to them in their languages. I learned enough Creole to be able to greet someone and this has paid off enormously for me in good will with Haitian cab drivers the last time I went to New Orleans. They were so surprised to hear an anglo speaking Creole. All the Danes who visit here typically speak English at least well enough to get by but it would be nice to be able to speak just a bit of Danish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5746 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 4 of 31 21 October 2011 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can think of four languages that could be useful to me if I knew only 100 words: Korean, Vietnamese, Thai and Samoan. There are quite a few Korean, Vietnamese and Thai speakers here and they don't all speak English. There aren't very many Samoan speakers here but of those that are here many don't speak English or they would prefer to speak Samoan whenever possible. Edited by mick33 on 21 October 2011 at 8:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cpnlsn88 Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 4859 days ago 63 posts - 112 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin | Message 5 of 31 21 October 2011 at 8:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is a really interesting concept. To learn a new language to a high level of competency requires long study and alot of work over a long period. I think dabbling has a lot to say for itself and can have a real impact when talking to people even if you can only say a few sentences, as well as satisfying some personal curiosity. For me this is likely to be Spanish and Italian as well as Urdu and while we're going for it.... Polish and BSL. If you're not aiming high then the outlay in time etc is not high so it's well worth doing and I may try this.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4856 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 6 of 31 22 October 2011 at 2:13am | IP Logged | ||
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Afrikaans (for fun)
Dutch Cajun French (well, I live here...) Thai (but only speaking, no reading!) Greek Maltese Arabic Swedish Really, this makes me want to reach for a phrase book and learn a few set expressions. I'd have 100 words in each in a small amount of time, I think. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| VityaCo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6903 days ago 79 posts - 86 votes 1 sounds Speaks: Russian*, Ukrainian*, English Studies: Spanish, Japanese, French | Message 7 of 31 22 October 2011 at 2:50am | IP Logged | ||
An interesting question for a language learner and for a multi-language countries. Had anyone heard about a method or a program designed for that goal? Did anyone use this method successfully in real life? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6978 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 8 of 31 22 October 2011 at 3:43am | IP Logged | ||
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Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Farsi, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi-Urdu, Indonesian/Malay, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tamil, Thai
The higher a language's popularity/perceived prestige or dispersion, the less likely I want to learn it (unless it'd be mandatory for professional reasons). I'd be content with getting my "100 words" out of the way in such "useful" languages so that I could get on with the real task of perfecting my Finnish, Hungarian, Northern Saami, Polish and Slovak Go "uncool" languages! 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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