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Yet another ’my next language’ thread :)

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32 messages over 4 pages: 1 2 3
IarllTroseddwr
Newbie
United States
Joined 3448 days ago

23 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish

 
 Message 25 of 32
29 January 2015 at 1:50am | IP Logged 
Greek would definitely be interesting. I love the alphabet. Have you considered Swahili? It's different enough to be interesting, but not usually considered too difficult to learn. I think the noun classes are a fun change to the normal noun cases that most languages have. One issue would be the lack of materials. I've found a fair number of books for learning, but the amount of literature and videos in the language are minimal. There is a fun translation of the Pharell Williams song "Happy" into Swahili that is very entertaining to watch. Also a video on YouTube about Lion Guardians that I found fascinating and made me want to learn the language.
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tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 3836 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 26 of 32
29 January 2015 at 3:22pm | IP Logged 
Swahili can be fun but African languages are very low in my priorities :(
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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

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

 
 Message 27 of 32
29 January 2015 at 3:45pm | IP Logged 
tristano wrote:
Cavesa wrote:

From the Romance, have you considered Italian? It is quite different from Spanish and
French, I don't think it would mix that much with your Spanish, which is probably a
well founded fear when it comes to Catalan or Portuguese.


Hi @Cavesa,
   unfortunately I don't know if I can learn a language as difficult as Italian.
I would prefer something easier ;)


:-D :-D :-D Sorry!!!
And idiot mistakes like this are exactly the reason why you shouldn't skip sleeping.
Too small amounts of sleep make brains melt, as I've just demonstrated.
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Cavesa
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
Joined 4798 days ago

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

 
 Message 28 of 32
29 January 2015 at 4:05pm | IP Logged 
To your Czech question: Yes, there is a lot of material for Czech, perhaps more than
for each of the Scandinavian languages (but it is probably outweighted by the fact
that Scandinavian languages tend to be easier for natives of non-slavic european
languages). There are various courses (and some appear to be of very good quality),
grammars and such tools for learners up to B2.There are already courses published not
only by the huge international houses or the local czech ones. Even German publishers
appear to be adding Czech to their protfolios of "languages that are not the top five
but still worthy of some investment".

Unlike the Scandinavians, the Czechs in general suck at English and our tvs are
anticultural morons, so you'll have lots of dubbings for intermediate stage of
learning (ranging from technically correct but otherwise bad quality up to the best
dubbings you can ever hope for, a few are even as good as the originals), just as tons
of translated books.

And once you are more advanced, there is quite a lot of movies, tv series and original
books, I would guess at least as much as for Swedish. As usual, when it comes to
smaller literatures, it depends on your tastes. Should you be interested in sci-fi,
fantasy or crime books, you should be well satisfied and nicely surprised. If huge
classical novels are more to your taste, I recommend Polish or Russian instead, we
haven't got those, even though we've got quite a lot of "high literature" authors of
shorter forms.

I would say Czech is the Slavic number three when it comes to the amount of available
resources. Slovak is just twice as small (even though there is surely a lot to
discover as well) and it comes nearly for free with Czech.
(A funny fact: there is quite a lot of foreigners studying medicine in Prague and some
are studying in Czech. Who wants an easier degree, pays for English taught classes,
who wants high quality education, studies with us. People with various native
languages, like Russian, Spanish, Arabic,... learn Czech to study. Et voila, around
25-30% of their classmates and some of their teachers speak Slovak instead! :-D But
they are usually brave and awesome and soon understand both without troubles.)

Polish is surely number two, Russian being number one. The southern branch suffers
from being divided (sometimes artificially) among two or three languages. The rest of
the eastern branch lives in the shade of Russian. An old friend of mine was half
Ukrainian and from her experience, even the Ukrainians use large amounts of Russian
media, thanks to high intelligibility, so that makes the country produce less content
in its own language.

Edited by Cavesa on 29 January 2015 at 4:08pm

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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 29 of 32
29 January 2015 at 6:36pm | IP Logged 
Well dear Tristano :-).... if you put it that way and you want to play a bit with assimil , I would go either for
Polish ,Czech , Turkish or Persian
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daegga
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Austria
lang-8.com/553301
Joined 4310 days ago

1076 posts - 1792 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian
Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic

 
 Message 30 of 32
30 January 2015 at 2:58am | IP Logged 
Serpent wrote:

Well but a great thing about HTLAL is exactly that, recognizing the limits of your experience and
forecasting how it can be different for someone else. I *did* have some background in Germanic languages
and I found listening to Danish extremely hard until I got some experience with Swedisn and Norwegian.
It was like this (sorry if my comparison offends
anyone). Even most Scandinavians can't understand Danish as well as Swedish/Norwegian respectively, and
while many would likely agree that it's easier to understand than to pronounce, I've never heard such
comments from someone who didn't already speak a Scandinavian language.

I love Danish, and it will be really cool if tristano chooses it, but it won't be easy.


It's not like I find Danish easy. But that's not the case with Norwegian/Swedish either. Sure, Danish is
harder to start with. In the end it doesn't matter. Danish/Norwegian/Swedish is not equal to
rigsdansk/standard østnorsk/rikssvenska. None is easy, all are manageable. It all depends on what you
want. Some people are crazy enough to even try out French ... and succeed.
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 31 of 32
30 January 2015 at 10:14am | IP Logged 
Hey guys,
   I decided the first of the two languages for this year ;)

It will be the scandinavian trio :P
And since they are three languages I'm going to start now.

I will decide the other one later on. Let's say that Turkish and one of the slavic are
the favourite right now, but I change idea every three seconds, so :P
I will update this thread later in the year, and of course every suggestion is
welcome.

(@Cavesa, no worries :D I thought you were a man for months and then another user made
the mistake for me :D No one is safe when it comes to make errors :D And thank you
very much for your presentation about Czech!)

Edited by tristano on 30 January 2015 at 10:16am

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tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 3836 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 32 of 32
30 January 2015 at 2:06pm | IP Logged 
Forgot to say, I stick to the order Norwegian - Swedish - Danish.


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