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Advice on Spanish and French/German/Por.. | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| WoofCreature Diglot Groupie Canada Joined 4314 days ago 80 posts - 118 votes  Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: German, Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 57 of 91 12 September 2012 at 1:03am | IP Logged | |||||
No, I spoke plenty of French at school. I was responding to Serpent's comment about how I had to have had a bit of contact with French outside of school because I live in Canada. I was trying to say that outside of school, I spoke more French during a month's stay in Brazil than I have my whole life living in Canada. Outside of Quebec and a few other isolated French speaking communities within the country, there is not much French to be found anywhere. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4495 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 58 of 91 12 September 2012 at 8:48am | IP Logged | |||||
I was reading dinosaur stuff while I was still in Canada (I learned to read very early). And my whole point is that it's exposure that did the trick, it was exactly the basic exposure at that age that led me to inadvertently assume it as a basic language. But my real point is that, despite needing a form of output at times, all that input and exposure leads a child to learn very fast and pick a language up naturally. It's a question of giving him or her the correct materials. You have also understood me correctly yes, I did go to a bilingual school and was taught English in a fairly immersive environment. But many of my friends who were not (exclusively) in that environment learned English to very high levels regardless, due to exposure. I like to say that that fine-tuned my level of English into actual native fluency later on. But the groundwork was always there. The exposure at an early age certainly helped. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4250 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 59 of 91 13 September 2012 at 3:13pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I'm sorry, but French (and I've researched this topic a good amount) should be much harder than Portuguese since I have a solid base in Spanish. I would buy the "Pois Nao" book to learn Portuguese for Spanish speakers IF I knew how similar Brazilian and European Portuguese are. Some posters say that there aren't too many differences but others (Brazilians!) say that it's very hard for them to understand their European counterparts. I don't want to get stuck learning a language that is only spoken in one large country (Brazil); I'd rather it be world-wide.
The difficulty of the language is of paramount importance to me because languages are not my job and since I'm a perfectionist, I need to reach a C1 or higher level in a foreign language; I am unwilling to reach a lower level in a language. There is probably a less than 1% chance that I would study a fourth language; three languages would be enough for me. If I had to choose between two foreign languages at C1+ or ten foreign languages at B2...I would pick the C1+ languages. I don't care that much how a language "sounds" nor about its "culture", I just like languages for their usefulness and, believe it or not, that is enough to push me to learn a tongue. What I don't like about French is that I'm uncertain about it's future and current use in Africa and aside from Quebec, it's not that widely-spoken in Canada. The spelling and phonetics of the language scare me also, and it would be decidedly harder to go from Spanish to French than Spanish to Portuguese. German would be nice, but I wouldn't get a "language discount" in learning it. Furthermore, I don't think it's that useful for an English speaker that will probably not live in Europe for the rest of his life. Also, I think that French and Portuguese have much better future growth so I've kind of eliminated German. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! http://www.amazon.com/Pois-n%C3%A3o-Brazilian-Portuguese-Ref erence/dp/0292717814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=13475416 23&sr=1-1&keywords=pois+nao
Edited by justonelanguage on 13 September 2012 at 3:24pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4918 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 60 of 91 13 September 2012 at 4:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
I suppose it really depends on how you'll be using the language. I can only comment as a translator, meaning my Portuguese usage is largely in written form. So my view is a pretty simplified one. Looking at it from that point of view, yes, there are some differences, but they're certainly not insurmountable (things like placement of pronouns and possessives, preposition use differences, second/third person use.) On the other hand, spoken Portuguese varies more so between the two continents. So if your goal is mostly spoken, I don't really see a way around choosing a specific vernacular. No reason you can't familiarize yourself with the differences - at least readily identifiable ones, though. R. == 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4250 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 61 of 91 13 September 2012 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I would definitely pick Brazilian Portuguese if I started to learn Portuguese due to it's relative proximity and economic weight over the other type.
The concern I have over the differences was just an argument against learning Portuguese. :(
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| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5050 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 62 of 91 13 September 2012 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Here's my opinion, from a learner's perspective, about Brazilian and Iberian Portuguese. They are not two separate languages. The standard varieties are very close. I concentrate on the Brazilian variety but one of my favorite writers in Portuguese is Mia Couto of Mozambique. I also regularly listen to Iberian Portuguese content.
Any world language like Portuguese, Spanish, French and, of course, English will have local divergences. I have talked with natives from Portugal with no problems in comprehension. Obviously, if hard core slang is used, I'd be totally lost- the same as a foreign learner of English would be if he/she were dropped off in the midst of backwoods Tennessee or certain neighborhoods of Glasgow. I last visited Portugal in 2005, before the economic crisis, and found many Brazilian, Mozambican and Cape Verdean immigrants there. They were not sent to language classes in order to understand Iberian Portuguese. The standard language in both varieties differs somewhat. The colloquial language differs to a greater extent. Portugal and Lusophone Africa have more exposure to Brazilian media than Brazil has to other Lusophone media. As someone who came to Portuguese from Spanish I found that Pois Não was not for me. It tended to make me see Portuguese through a Spanish lens and not on its own terms. I quickly abandoned it along with the FSI From Spanish to Portuguese program. I jumped straight into Listening/Reading and grammar. I used the free DLI Portuguese Basic Course for drills. I used lots of native content. I also had a private Brazilian tutor and Brazilian skype language exchange partners. My knowledge of Spanish was indeed a tremendous asset but at times it was a huge hindrance. For me, I'm glad I didn't approach Portuguese through the lens of Spanish and instead approached it on its own terms. This approach has helped me to keep these two similar languages separate in my mind. This may not work for you. You seem to be my polar opposite. I am far from being a perfectionist in language learning and am nowhere near as methodical in my learning approach. I agree with @tarvos. French is no more harder than Portuguese. What you are not taking into account is, that as an English speaker, you have a huge and massive discount due to the great percentage of shared vocabulary and as a Spanish speaker, that just adds even more to your already huge discount in vocabulary with even more vocabulary and a similar grammar. You'll soon find out, as a second language speaker of Spanish, that Portuguese is no walk in the park once you start learning it in earnest. Sure, you'll be able to get a large percentage of it without even having to study. Getting the language right, beyond basic communication, is very hard work. Despite it's similarities with Spanish, it can be a big bad bear that will bite you hard if you don't give it its proper respect as an, indeed, separate language. That being said, do what you want to do! If you think Pois Não is the way to go, go ahead. I will be happy to be proved wrong! Sorry for the long post. I hope my insights will help you. I wish you the best of luck on your Portuguese learning journey. It's a beautiful and rewarding language. Edited by iguanamon on 13 September 2012 at 5:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| justonelanguage Diglot Groupie United States Joined 4250 days ago 98 posts - 128 votes Speaks: English, Spanish | Message 63 of 91 13 September 2012 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks a lot for your insight! I always thought that Portuguese was easier for Spanish speakers than French. I'm not saying that it is *easy*, far from it...but easier.
How phonetic is Portuguese? I don't like non-phonetic languages (that actually bugs me about English) and that is why I was/am scared about French. I'm assuming that it is more phonetic than French? Based on my rudimentary research, I concluded that, in general, French was the hardest romance language to learn. If I could learn any language, it would actually be German due to their culture and how it sounds. This is a rare exception where I actually care about how something sounds. Since it wouldn't be as "useful" as the other two in the Western Hemisphere, however, that cuts it out. Add the fact that it seems that a lot of German's know English well and the grammar is supposedly a bear and it makes German less feasible. Maybe I like it because I like reading about WW2 and am interested in German involvement in world affairs.
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| Gala Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4338 days ago 229 posts - 421 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 64 of 91 13 September 2012 at 5:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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First of all, I don't have any experience with Portuguese (other than looking it over
in written form and listening to it a few times just to see how transparent it was) but have a bit of a background in French, and intend to go back to it someday. As an L2 Spanish speaker, my thoughts are very different regarding French vs. Portuguese. I ruled out Portuguese precisely because I see it as too similar to Spanish. I worry about the phenomenon of closely related languages competing/interfering with each other (in the brain and on the tongue) much more than many around here seem to. When I was studying French, I confirmed that, for me at least, this really can be an issue. I found that French was much more similar to Spanish than I had originally thought, and that this (while indeed making French a lot easier than it would have otherwise been) had a negative impact on my Spanish (and I imagine that, if I had been studying Portuguese, that impact would have been much greater.) That's why I shelved it: I'll probably not go back to it until my Spanish is closer to 2nd nature. I'll also say that French is (at least for me) quite a bit easier than it has a reputation for being. I think it's actually easier than Spanish in most ways, pronunciation and spelling being of course the major exceptions. I also think you're probably underestimating how big of a discount your Spanish would give you with it. Edited by Gala on 13 September 2012 at 6:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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