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Why not Spanish as essential? | ||
Tags: Polyglot Academy | Language Importance | L3 via L2 | Polyglottery | Alexander Arguelles | Choosing a Language | German | French | Spanish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes  4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 105 of 115 15 March 2014 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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Also, all eligible Americans are likely to know it already.
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| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4668 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 106 of 115 15 March 2014 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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For Dravidian languages, the most important languages are German, Russian and English.
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 107 of 115 15 March 2014 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||
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One issue with Russian is that it will take much longer to learn to a level at which you can use it for learning other languages.
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| daristani Senior Member United States Joined 7144 days ago 752 posts - 1661 votes Studies: Uzbek | Message 108 of 115 15 March 2014 at 3:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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An anecdote, copied from a blog entry by a Slovak linguist, that, with rather striking wording in the punchline, well illustrates the importance of German:
--------------------------- On Monday at Steiner's, I picked up a biography of Ján Stanislav, one of the greatest Slovak linguists of the 20th century. When I finally got to reading it earlier today, I stumbled across an anecdote from Stanislav's student years. It perfectly illustrates languagehat's observations on the influence of German learning on Russian intelectual history and shows that's it's not just the Russians who owe German scholars a great deal: Keď raz študent povedal Milošovi Weingartovi, že nevie dobre po nemecky - dostal nemeckú knihu do referátu - profesor povedal: "Němčina jest najdůležitejší [sic] slovanský jazyk" a boli sme odzbrojení ... When on one occasion, one of the students told Miloš Weingart that his German wasn't so good - he had just been assigned a book in German - the professor said: "German is the most important Slavic language" and there was no more excuse for us. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ericblair Senior Member United States Joined 4711 days ago 480 posts - 700 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 109 of 115 15 March 2014 at 9:01pm | IP Logged | ||
Just to make sure I don't misunderstand your point, do you see as #2 in this as being any of Spanish, French, German, etc....or did you have a specific one in mind? Edited by ericblair on 15 March 2014 at 9:07pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| James29 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5375 days ago 1265 posts - 2113 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French | Message 110 of 115 15 March 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am saying that if someone has English and French OR English and German their third language won't really matter much in terms of learning resources. With the first two they will have more than enough. Anyone who has the first two is going to have gazillions of resources.
Someone who has English and French (or English and German) is going to be able to have 98% of the non-obscure languages at their disposal. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 111 of 115 16 March 2014 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's not about having *any* resources, it's about the highest quality ones. If you only speak English, you have access to maybe 40% of the best language learning resources out there. With French OR German, let's say 60%. With French AND German, 80%. With French, German, Spanish and Russian it's probably 90%.
(Which means that with my German, Spanish and Russian but no French I probably have access to about 70%) Edited by Serpent on 16 March 2014 at 1:02pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| PeterMollenburg Senior Member AustraliaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5476 days ago 821 posts - 1273 votes Speaks: English* Studies: FrenchB1 | Message 112 of 115 31 March 2014 at 10:32am | IP Logged | ||
One program comes to mind here that makes me disagree. French in Action. All grammar explanations within the workbook are entirely in French from Lesson 5 onwards. This is no way a hinderance to acquiring new language and understanding the grammatical concepts that are introduced. Okay so it's not exactly learning L3 via L2 but rather L2 via L2. However one may or may not even be at an A1 or A2 level perhaps when the course switches to the medium of French for grammatical explanations. In studying L3 via L2 however it is a likely assumption that the author(s) have assumed that the learner is fluent (B2 or above) in the language of instruction so perhaps mentioning FIA is unfair in that the author(s) assume that the learner's level of French at that point is rather rudimentary. However how complex can the instructions be in an Assimil course to learn L3 via French? If one has a B2 level of French I would believe without much doubt at all that it would not be a hinderance. In fact if one's aim is to become a polyglot, the more this kind of activity can be done the better. If that is not one's aim, I still don't see much of an issue with it either. However I do understand what are you saying and can completely understand your points. Everyone is different. Some of us will deliberately go for the easiest/safest method of instruction, particularly if our main goal is the best possible result as opposed to an opportunity to learn something/a lot in a foreign language. Others will (including myself) read the language of instruction on a set up manual for a new piece of furniture/device in a foreign language before (if required) reverting to our mother tongue. If I were to study something at university again I would much prefer to not do it in English (my mother tongue) but rather another European language even if it meant the possibility of success was significantly reduced. I think that can depend very much on our values- ie is it more important for us (for whatever reason) to succeed in the subject matter presented, or is is more important to us (if we have the liberty to do so) to succeed in developing our foreign language skills in that same subject matter. Forgive me if any of this has already been covered, i'm yet to read to the end of this thread. I know i'm off topic here again also. I've learned something here tho. I hadn't thought too much about which languages were valuable for learning others in terms of the availability of materials in those languages. Despite Dutch not being up there (for obvious reasons) as one of the top languages to learn in order to expand one's options for learning more languages (which I would like to do), I still love the language :) Mind you I am studying French and feel quietly confident after having read how useful it is for learning other languages- i just recently purchased my first L3 course in L2 (a Dutch course in French) as the course looks good and I'm curious about trying this whole L3 via L2 thing out (i'm not starved for resources in English). How cool are languages! Edited by PeterMollenburg on 31 March 2014 at 11:20am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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