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What to do when you can’t choose?

 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center Post Reply
23 messages over 3 pages: 1 2
Jeffers
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 4669 days ago

2151 posts - 3960 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Hindi, Ancient Greek, French, Sanskrit, German

 
 Message 17 of 23
30 November 2014 at 6:54pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
Your priority languages are set, German and Mandarin. And they are already tough ones to get to high level. Sure you can add to them but with your time options, I wouldn't study more than three languages intensively. Perhaps you could try Ge+Ma+one more for a few months and than switch the third one for another and maintain it until you feel it's time to switch back.


Brilliant post, Cavesa.

And she's right, you don't have much choice but to work hard at German and Mandarin. You've signed up for a French course, so I would put that in the second tier of priority. Especially since you've already had some contact with French, and Assimil courses in French are great for a large number of languages.

I have an additional idea which will help you keep your interest in the other languages alive, but also force you to stick to the priority languages: get a resource or two in each of the languages you are interested in, but buy them in German if possible. If you can't get a German resource, get one in French. The purpose is that you will allow yourself to use them when your German/French is good enough. You can flick through them all you like, and you might get a sense of some of the important features of the language. But until your German/French gets to a high level, don't work through them formally.


Cavesa wrote:
P.S. Why on earth do we always automatically assume the other person behind a computer is a man? It is statistically improbable everyone is a man. And it reminds me of a joke: Men online are men irl. Women online are men irl. Ten year old girls online are irl FBI agents."

Yes, sorry, I'm guilty of referring to both Cavesa and Serpent as he. To be fair, REM is the name of a rock group made up of men. If you google Cavesa, you get pictures of caves and cars (I'm not into either, but they seem masculine). And Serpent... well wasn't Slytherin a man? On the other hand, I've also referred to Elexi as she, and I think actually Elexi is a he (but anything ending in a long "ee" sound is feminine in Hindi, so....)

Edited by Jeffers on 30 November 2014 at 7:00pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4769 days ago

3277 posts - 6779 votes 
Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1
Studies: Spanish, German, Italian

 
 Message 18 of 23
30 November 2014 at 7:31pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa was my first character in my most beloved pc game ;-) And I got the name from a
name generator on the game's website. I left her for a mage though.

Oh, and thanks, Jeffers :-)

It is very true German and French will open much wider options when it comes to learning
material. French comes not only with Assimil and German comes with valuable resources for
languages Germans are "more likely" to learn than English natives.
1 person has voted this message useful



hrhenry
Octoglot
Senior Member
United States
languagehopper.blogs
Joined 4890 days ago

1871 posts - 3642 votes 
Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese
Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe

 
 Message 19 of 23
30 November 2014 at 8:28pm | IP Logged 
Jeffers wrote:
And Serpent... well wasn't Slytherin a man?

As far as the word "serpent" goes, it's a masculine noun in many languages, so that's bound to influence a person's way of thinking.

R.
==


1 person has voted this message useful



Rem
Groupie
United Kingdom
Joined 3517 days ago

66 posts - 96 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Mandarin, Czech, French

 
 Message 20 of 23
30 November 2014 at 11:10pm | IP Logged 
I don’t know why people tend to automatically assume that the person typing is a man
until told otherwise, but it is common, especially when playing online games. Play a
male character and you’re assumed to be a bloke...Play a female character and you’re
assumed to be a bloke playing a female character. lol


I think I’ve finally made a decision for my languages.

I’m going with...

German
Mandarin
French
Czech


I’m going to leave Italian and Spanish for now, until I have a more solid grasp of
French and I definitely think that Thai would be too much work alongside Mandarin
(especially as I’m still in the beginner stages). The tones are confusing enough
without having to worry about getting them muddled with another set from a different
language. o.O

German and Mandarin will obviously be my main focus, with French 3rd and Czech 4th. If
it gets too hectic I’ll drop Czech for a while, but I’m going to give it a shot with
all 4 to begin with.

The good news here is that it looks like Assimil have a Czech course with a German
base, so maybe I can look into using that later on. :)


2 persons have voted this message useful



Nieng Zhonghan
Bilingual Tetraglot
Senior Member
Antarctica
Joined 3431 days ago

108 posts - 315 votes 
Speaks: Portuguese*, Japanese*, Spanish, Galician
Studies: Finnish, Icelandic, Armenian, Mongolian
Studies: Old English, Russian, English, German, Korean, Mandarin

 
 Message 21 of 23
01 December 2014 at 2:42pm | IP Logged 
I think you did the right thing for not studying Mandarin and Thai at same time,
assuming that you have no previous experience in any other tonal languages. It is not
that Thai is that difficult, but it is better to reach a decent level in Mandarin
first.

As for Czech, a great book that helped me a lot is called “an essential grammar” that
you may find in Amazon UK or any other bookstore. Pay attention into the Czech
morphology (word formation, for instance, prefixes and suffixes); it is not as scary
as I was told. Since you wrote that you like grammar, that book might be a good one
for starters. In case you have Czech books at your university’s library, take a look
at it first.

You may also find interesting the czechclass101 series. It is not the best among the
101 series, but it has been useful in the past.

Anyway, good luck!
1 person has voted this message useful



Slayertplsko
Heptaglot
Newbie
Slovakia
Joined 4593 days ago

24 posts - 29 votes
Speaks: Slovak*, Czech, FrenchB2, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 22 of 23
01 December 2014 at 9:43pm | IP Logged 
Cavesa wrote:
P.S. Why on earth do we always automatically assume the other person
behind a computer is a man? It is statistically improbable everyone is a man. And it
reminds me of a
joke: Men online are men irl. Women online are men irl. Ten year old girls online are
irl FBI agents."


Well, I'll certainly remember your sex from now on. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6357 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 23 of 23
01 December 2014 at 10:01pm | IP Logged 
hrhenry wrote:
Jeffers wrote:
And Serpent... well wasn't Slytherin a man?

As far as the word "serpent" goes, it's a masculine noun in many languages, so that's bound to influence a person's way of thinking.

R.
==


It's feminine in Portuguese and Spanish :-) But I didn't know that when choosing it.
And in Russian it's zmeja, which is also feminine - I believe it has cognates in pretty much all Slavic languages. (And more importantly you'll see my obviously female name and photo if you check my profile - that's true about many other members too. Well, this assumes someone is cis-gender.)

TBH I actually tend to assume that everyone whose username ends in -a is female. Like ellasevia, kujichagulia or daegga too...


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