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Mastering a branch of languages | ||
Tags: Linguistic relationships | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4444 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 9 of 24 26 September 2013 at 10:32am | IP Logged |
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This looks very interesting, Henkkles and I wish you luck with your studies.
For what it's worth, here is my experience with learning a branch of languages: I did a degree in comparative Romance Philology at university. Of course, being an academic study, it included a lot of linguistic theory, studies of etymology, the history of phonetic and morphemic developments etc., but actually learning the Romance languages was very much a part of it. When I started I already had Spanish and French at an intermediate to advanced level, and I embarked upon the rest in the following order (not really one after the other, some I did in parallel to the others. I worked on Italian for three years, whilst with others, like Romanian, I only studied intensively for six to twelve months. And all the time I continued improving my Spanish and French): Italian (to B2/C1) Latin (one year of intensive studies, including reading a lot of classical literature) Romanian (to A2 approximately) Romansh (passively to B1) Catalan (passively to B2) Portuguese (passively to A2) As this was a full-time occupation for five-six years it was not at all overwhelming, but I don't think I would not be able to do the same today with another language family (although those lovely Slavic languages are calling out to me) combining it with job and family life. 6 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4058 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 24 26 September 2013 at 12:08pm | IP Logged |
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Yes, I have not set a timeframe for myself as I know that life more often than not has a tendency to swirl things up a bit and so on. As for the time being I'll stick to this plan. The best thing is that learning a branch cumulates overtime, each language (pair) will be easier than the one before.
Thanks for the listening tip by the way; Now I'll try to watch an episode of "I kveld med Ylvis" on youtube every week (only Norwegian talkshow on youtube I found) and it's entertaining. I can also feel myself understanding it better each time so by the time I've worked through all seasons I should be able to go to Bergen at least. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4633 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 11 of 24 26 September 2013 at 9:22pm | IP Logged |
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For Old English, this looks kind of useful:
Old English: Grammar and Reader Apparently includes parallel texts. Part of Iversen's log here (and no doubt elsewhere!) may be relevant: Iversens log - parallel texts for OE 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4058 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 12 of 24 26 September 2013 at 9:58pm | IP Logged |
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I bookmarked that book (heh) but the time for OE is not yet, I'm afraid. If anyone has great Icelandic and even some very useful German readers and thingies to share, please make me aware.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4664 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 13 of 24 26 September 2013 at 11:21pm | IP Logged |
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I also have an experience with learning a branch of languages, in my case - the Slavic ones. As for now, I'm at B1/B2 in Bulgarian, A2/B1 in Slovenian, having good passive knowledge (of course some active skills too) in Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian and Macedonian (probably Belarusian too, but I don't read in this language) and ready for learning Croatian.
So, if you don't aim at fluency in all of them, it's definitely doable. Edited by prz_ on 26 September 2013 at 11:25pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Henkkles Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4058 days ago 544 posts - 1141 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: Russian | Message 14 of 24 26 September 2013 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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I have to say that kind of interestingly you didn't even mention Russian. How are you feeling about that? Is your native language a burden or a blessing while doing that? I'd imagine it being kind of both. I'm not a native Germanic speaker nor a native Indo-European speaker for that matter so this will surely be a challenge for me. However, I'm free of the bias that a Germanic native language would give me.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4664 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 15 of 24 27 September 2013 at 1:12am | IP Logged |
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Generally blessing. I find Russian more natural to my ears than Bulgarian. In fact, Poles use colloquially not only Russian words, but even some phrases, with a famous "Пошёл вон!" on top (they are probably more often used on East and since I was born close to the Ukranian border...). Of course, if I'd blame myself for any mistake in conjugation or declension, It would be indeed a burden :D But it's not my style.
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| Halfdan Newbie Canada Joined 3989 days ago 13 posts - 21 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Danish, Mandarin, French | Message 16 of 24 27 September 2013 at 2:37am | IP Logged |
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I'll be doing a similar thing for the Germanic family as well, though I'm not as far
along as you, Henkkles. I've been studying German half-heartedly for a few years and have only been taking it seriously for a month or two. I like your idea of studying two languages at a time (one from each subfamily). I tried that with Swedish and German, but I found that I was constantly thinking in one language when trying to do so in another. To be honest, this was probably just a failure on my part to properly organise the languages mentally. Anyway, good luck and I, for one, would be interested in a log to check on your progress and perhaps effective ways that I could go about my Germanic languages as well. Edited by Halfdan on 27 September 2013 at 4:22am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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