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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 17 of 68 10 January 2015 at 10:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Well, I know seven languages so far, and none have opened up any opportunities so far. I worked for seven years in a very global company with lots of business in South America and China, and nobody was ever interested in my language skills, more than a vague "Yeah, that could surely be useful". I worked a lot with engines (I'm a mechanical engineer) from Deutz and had business with them pretty much every week for years, yet only once did an opportunity come up where I wished I'd known German (a bad English translation made me wish I could read the German original). In general, since the company I work for has offices all over Europe and North America, I've been thinking of going to work in either the US or France. The US has a medieval system of measurements and the world's dullest language, but France isn't doing too well at the moment, and moving to Norway just in time for the drop in oil prices has taught me it's boring to work as a consultant in a country where everyone is in damage control mode. Learning German would mean I could go work at a German office, which could be nice, though my brief stay in Berlin last year left me with a rather dull impression. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| liam.pike1 Groupie Australia Joined 3543 days ago 84 posts - 122 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Esperanto, French | Message 18 of 68 10 January 2015 at 3:49pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I am a bit of an idealist, and I can be a little elitist at times, but I imagine a world where everyone (or the Western
World at least) can speak these major languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. German is the only one of these 'major' languages which you do not yet know. Due to your native tongue being closely related, German is a language which you shouldn't have to spend too much time on in order to get to a level where you can say that you 'speak' it. So, I know German is the 'meh' choice, but why not just take the logcal, sensible option this once at least? If you live in Norway though, shouldn't you learn Norwegian? Also, isn't the Japanese script (Kana) considered by many to be some of the most beautiful there is? I may be biased though because I am part Japanese... Finally, why not give Esperanto a try? In a few months you'd have it down pat, and it's more useful than most languages in the world, despite only having two million speakers. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 19 of 68 10 January 2015 at 4:11pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
Chances are I will. I'm considering grabbing a parallel text and an audiobook and doing some L/R work. It seems a bit illogical, though, for me, that German is considered this "natural" choice to learn. It's not a world language; it's just spoken in a few countries in Europe. It's not like the colonial languages that are spread out all over the world. In my mind German is on par with Japanese on the world stage.
I already speak Norwegian, since it's the same language as Swedish, more or less. I have little difficulties communicating with people around me, though I confess still having some trouble with the Nynorsk dialects. Swedes in Norway don't study Norwegian for the same reason why Brazilians in Portugal don't study European Portuguese. It's a bit weird at first, but you get used to it eventually (though it's taking longer than I expected). I've never heard of a Swede who has formally studied Norwegian.
It might be, but I don't see it. The three systems don't harmonize at all. It looks like blending a sans serif, a serif and a script font in the same text. Each system on its own has some charm, but put together it looks awful. I still like it, though, it's pretty cool with the three systems. But it looks ridiculous.
I like Esperanto in theory, and I actually tried to learn it once, but failed miserably. There's no resistance, nothing to grab a hold of. I can already almost read it because of the languages I know, but studying it is just so dull. I like the Esperanto culture, but the language leaves me cold. There's just nothing interesting about it, except possibly the system of affixes. I might give it another try sometime, I don't know. I really love the idea of constructed languages, but I want constructed languages that are made to be interesting, whereas Esperanto is designed to be featureless and bland. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4177 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 20 of 68 10 January 2015 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I don 't think that German would be so boring for you .It's true that Swedish and German belong to the
same family , but , although you'll have some discount on vocabulary , grammarwise these languages are quite different, and I don 't really think that L/R alone will allow you to say you speak German .The more German I learnt , the more I understood how different it is from Italian , they simply think in another way , I may say that beacause my native tongue isn't Germanic , but it seems to me you are underrarting German Too much ,even from a swedish point of view , I am sure that it'll be a challenge to get to a point you can say you speak it well , it's not Norwegian ,nor Danish and I don't really think it is as Spanish and French would be for me . I may be wrong here , but I am under the impression that these two systems are more akin culturally than linguistically. Edited by albysky on 10 January 2015 at 6:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6386 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 21 of 68 10 January 2015 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Chung's profiles are in the collaborative writing subforum: Balto-Slavonic, Finno-Ugric. There's probably Turkic too but that's what I found in our team thread at least.
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| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4496 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 22 of 68 10 January 2015 at 10:12pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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What's with all the fawning over languages that have more native speakers? Eventually
the only languages that count are the ones that you're using with people you know, and you never get to know the entirety of a country anyways. Maybe you can meet 20 Germans or 20 Japanese or 20 Russians, but you could equally well meet 20 Czechs or 20 Polish or 20 Sudanese for that matter. As long as the language doesn't have under some few thousands of speakers and is a major/national language of a country, you'll be fine when it comes to speakers. Icelandic has 300,000 speakers, yet if you go to Iceland, that's the language you need. Same for Slovenian or Thai. Pick the country you've got the most feelings for, the people you want to know about, the music you want to discover. That could still be Japanese or German, but if you're all about the Czech golems then it's goddamn Czech you need to learn. 7 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4848 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 23 of 68 11 January 2015 at 1:33am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It seems pretty egregiously Eurocentric to put German in the top five on the world scale. Unless you're highly interested in European literature, there's a strong case for any of Mandarin, Hindi, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, or Arabic, all of which have more speakers who can't fairly be considered to be large populations of little significance (in the case where you don't find the very idea of that insulting) as they're used in regions containing global cities like Shanghai, Mumbai, São Paulo, Moscow, and Tokyo, all of which dwarf any German city. Yes, German literature is a great among European literature, but if you were champing at the bit to read Goethe in the original, well, you wouldn't have to ask. That said, German has a much stronger position in Central and Northern Europe, where you live. Russian might be close though, being right across the Arctic and all. Edited by robarb on 11 January 2015 at 1:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6371 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 24 of 68 11 January 2015 at 9:17am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
It's about media. I don't really learn languages to speak with people, though going to the country is part of the attraction, of course. But mainly I like learning languages and I learn them by using books, TV shows and movies in the language. If a language has few native speakers, it likely has little media availible. But population size isn't all, things like GNP and politics have a lot to do with it. There's a lot more literature in Icelandic (330 000 speakers) than in Wu (80 million speakers). If I were just going for native speakers I'd have Hindi and Bengali on my hitlist. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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