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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| 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 25 of 68 11 January 2015 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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And Czech, for example, the national language of an entire country, is short on those? I
wasn't aiming that at you, Ari, but more at everybody else in this thread. Edited by tarvos on 11 January 2015 at 12:14pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5051 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 26 of 68 11 January 2015 at 12:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Ari- Russian!
Reasons: Besides being a challenging language, the language is widespread in Eurasia from Kaliningrad in the West to Vladivostok in the East. Russia is a bordering country of Scandinavia. It's a quick jaunt for you to visit from your home. Right now the exchange rate is highly advantageous. There's enough Russian language media to last you a lifetime. Last but not least, there is a supportive community on HTLAL. Some of our most knowledgeable members are Russian. I think with your current situation of where you live, your language-learning experience and the HTLAL support you would have available, that you are in an optimum position to learn Russian. Learning Russian would give you something to do for the next few years. Edited by iguanamon on 11 January 2015 at 12:54pm 4 persons have 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 27 of 68 11 January 2015 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
Well, like I said in the OP, I'm unsure about the amount of Czech media availible. For all I know, they might be watching mostly undubbed American movies and TV series. @Iguanamon: I do kinda want to know Russian, if nothing else then because of its sheer geographic spread. With Russian and Arabic, I'd know the official languages of 75% of the world's land mass. But my plan for Russian is to do Czech first, because it attracts me more and seems more fun to study. Then again, thinking about it, my sister-in-law speaks Russian and so does my Sifu in China, and they'd be thrilled. And Russian does have the advantage of a cooler alphabet than Czech … Damn you, Iguanamon! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 3836 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 28 of 68 11 January 2015 at 2:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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You're plenty of good challenges in terms of languages
- Icelandic: the language of the best country in the world, being very archaic it allows you to read the Old Norse literature - Georgian - Mongolian - Tibetan - Lithuanian - Latvian - Urdu - Xhosa - Vietnamese etc 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5749 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 29 of 68 11 January 2015 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I'm sure Ari has his own perspective on it, but allow me to respond to why Czech (and other minor languages) aren't very attractive to me. I have specific tastes in books, movies, music, and television. Seeing as how I struggle to find even a German TV show that I like, am I realistically going to find much worth watching in Czech? Much worth listening to or reading? Unlikely, and it would take a lot of time and failed attempts to find the few things I would end up liking. And I sure as hell am not going to put hundreds of hours into learning Czech just so I can read Harry Potter translations and watch dubbed American shows. I like to learn languages that I will run into often without having to hunt them down like a scavenger. How often am I likely to run into Czech, even in a large city like Boston? Maybe once a year. I hear languages like Japanese and German every week in Boston by just walking around the city. Now, I know the common response to this is that when you finally do end up visiting Czechia, the people will be overjoyed that you learned their small language and will shower you with good feelings. But for me this doesn't come close to making up for the cons I mentioned above. I satisfy my curiosity for Czech and its kin through dabbling and reading about them, and then I move on to the main course. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4798 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 30 of 68 11 January 2015 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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There are tons of Czech media. Tons. Of various quality, just as for other languages.
Yes, there are many dubbed things you can use as an intermediate, as I do it for my TLs. Then there are many movies and tv series originally in the language. Some are dumb soap operas but we've got quite a lot of really good comedies, fairy tales, recently a few good crime series, there are a few movies that got well known prizes, including Oscar. When it comes to books, we've got some of every genre, except for the long classical novels. There is a lot to read even when you restrict yourself to original Czech literature only. Lichtraush: Czech tv series are better than the German ones ;-) Yes, there are probably more books in German and movies, but German tv series suck. I am not usually a patriot but it offends me that you automatically assume everything coming from a smaller country must be worse than things from Germany. In this case, the bar is set really low. Really, it is just one state but with the same or large amount of people than Sweden. Does Sweden suffer from lack of native media? The only trouble though might be getting the material in your hands as it certainly is a trouble for me to get the things in Swedish here. Fortunately, czechs are basically forced by circumstances to be pirates. There is no Czechia by the way. The word doesn't exist. It is the Czech Republic. There is no official shorter version and there is unlikely to be one soon. The only czech using the word is the alcoholic president who is a living proof that 51% of voters are irresponsible and/or dumb. Czech can give you a huge headstart for Slovak (well, you will basically learn two languages in one), for Polish, for other Slavic languages including Russian or Croatian. Yes, if you go for usefulness, it is not a priority language for anyone except most immigrants, but Ari is obviously going for other things. As for Japanese. Ari, wouldn't you feel a little bit too mainstream? :-D Dead languages: no movies, just books. But the books are usually free! Latin is great, the grammar is like romance grammar + German grammar, in my opinion. And there is no language with more beautiful script than Ancient Egyptian. German is an economically reasonable choice. However, it is as well a language giving access to some good quality material for others, as I've seen a few weeks ago in Dresden. The only problem is if it bores you. I would recommend a dead language personally, it is a real challenge. Latin has really enriched my life, even though I didn't get as far as I had hoped and that I gave up. Books in Latin and Ancient Greek are still pillars of our culture nd the people writing them were obviously intelligent and the works still apply even to us. Ancient Egyptian is probably the coolest language one can ever learn! Hey, it's got hyeroglyphs, no other reason needed :-D Edited by Cavesa on 11 January 2015 at 7:43pm 4 persons have 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 31 of 68 11 January 2015 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
A bit, yeah. For me, Swedish would be a borderline language. There's probably enough for me to work with, but not by a large margin. Of all the languages I've studied, only Cantonese has less media than Swedish, and then only if we're talking about books. In movies, Cantonese beats Swedish by a long shot. But your post makes me feel better about the Czech media situation. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn't seem to carry any Czech ebooks (at least none that I'm allowed to purchase), which is a big bummer for me. Reading on the Kindle with a popup dictionary is incredibly practical and I wouldn't like to rely on paper books or hunting down individual ebooks and importing them into the Kindle.
According to Wikipedia, the term "Czechia" was launched already in 1993 by Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs Jozef Zieleniec, but it seems to never have caught on. And, as you probably know, the country is called "Tjeckien" in Swedish. Which doesn't invalidate what you said, I just wanted to elucidate a bit.
Consonant clusers! Also I'm impressed by the country's low religiosity and high income equality. Both of those things are indicators that I'm going to like the country and culture.
Yes. Yes I would.
Latin is a language I'm probably going to study, but not right now. My two latest languages were Spanish and Portuguese; I'm fed up with Romance for the moment. Gaah, so hard to choose. I've still got a bit of time to think, though. I won't pick up a new language before February at the earliest. But this thread has really helped me get some more structure to my thinking. I think I've ruled out Thai and Arabic for the moment. I want to learn a South-East Asian language at some point, but it's not the priority now. The Slavic route sounds more interesting to me right now. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4919 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 32 of 68 11 January 2015 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
How is the quality of the dubbed material? I have no problem watching dubbed material, if it's decent dubbing. One major complaint I've always had of Polish-dubbed series, though, is that they don't lower the volume nearly enough of the original English, resulting in basically two languages being broadcast at the same volume. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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