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Help Picking a language for a Younger Sib | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6250 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 9 of 29 23 March 2007 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Sorry, forgot those two:
Funny video sketches in Esperanto, similar to Youtube Esperanto television (currently down) French is not as hard as Russian or Japanese to learn, but it's somewhat harder than Spanish (though English has borrowed more French words than Spanish words). The biggest problem is the relation between sound and spelling, it's very weird, almost as difficult as in English. In Spanish or even German that part is much easier to master, though there are a few remaining questions like "Is this [f] sound spelled 'f', 'ff', 'ph' or 'pf'?". In Esperanto it's no problem at all: if you know the alphabet, you can correctly spell anything you hear and correctly pronounce anything you see written. I believe that your brother might easily get discouraged from learning foreign languages if his experience with Polish wasn't too good and he now tries to learn a language entirely on his own. He should probably at least get somebody who knows the language and can help him through the tough bits. In any case he should know why he wants to learn the language he chooses. Best make a list of reasons and refer to it in times of despair ;-) Edited by Sprachprofi on 23 March 2007 at 6:18pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6482 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 10 of 29 23 March 2007 at 6:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
I think most people have a bad feeling for French because they've had to study it in high school or college to fulfil their language requirement. It isn't quite as easy as Spanish, which is much clearer when spoken, but if you look at a page of French, as a native English speaker, you probably already know 30-50% of the words on the page. They might be spelled a little differently, or not quite have the same meaning, but that makes it far easier to approach than even German. I get the feeling that the reason your brother (and maybe you) got discouraged about Polish is that the teacher emphasized learning the cases and all the agreements in the language. While it's necessary to learn that stuff to really know the language, if you put too much emphasis on it too early, it will make the learner frustrated because he's learning a lot of rules and not able to actually use them for anything. Whichever language he tries, just make sure the lessons are more than grammar and vocab lists. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| fredomirek Tetraglot Senior Member Poland Joined 6686 days ago 265 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Polish*, EnglishC1, Italian, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 11 of 29 23 March 2007 at 6:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Wow.. you really want to convince him to study Esperanto hehe ;).
Now seriously, sorry to be a bit off-topic, but why learn artificial language if there are so many "natural" ones? They have their unique, beautiful history and process of developing. There are many languages that are dying and men create new languages.. does it really make sense? Wouldn't it be better to try to preserve already existing languages? You will probably say that it was supposed to be the international language, well it didn't work actually, did it? English is still the most international language. You say it's relatively easy and people usually choose the easier languages instead of very hard ones, but do we want to learn a language that is too simple? I must admit that I partially like all the irregularities in Spanish or Italian, it's great experience to see the correlations between irregular verbs and to simply conjugate them automatically. Anyway, it's probably not the reply to this thread hehe, it's just my opinion. And Esperanto-lovers, please don't be too harsh for me ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| MeshGearFox Senior Member United States Joined 6475 days ago 316 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian | Message 12 of 29 23 March 2007 at 7:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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What about Swedish or Norwegian? Those seem like they have easy grammar and are rather English-like.
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| tujiko Senior Member United States Joined 6313 days ago 140 posts - 144 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 29 24 March 2007 at 12:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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Definitely Spanish. It's the most-studied FL in the US, as well as the most prevalent. And if he sticks with it, he'll be able to use it for life in this country - and that's a pretty cool tool to have in one's kit as an American.
Also remember that it's more important for him (relatively speaking) to learn /one/ language to a competent level, because from there, every other language gets easier - regardless of which language was learned first. Therefore, pick a language that's 'easy', since he'll be more likely to see it through, instead of abandoning it one or two months from now. For native English speakers, that means Romance or Germanic languages. This doesn't mean he shouldn't study a language he's interested in. But there comes a point where interest simply cannot override difficulty, and in a 13-year old, I'd say that point is close to the starting line. The ideal situation would be to give him a language he can start to use with people who speak it around him as soon as he starts learning it. They'll provide more motivation than anything else will. Edited by tujiko on 24 March 2007 at 12:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6250 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 14 of 29 24 March 2007 at 6:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
That's because it's the one language he's least likely to get frustrated with. And lots of Esperanto speakers are polyglots, so they'll help foster the language bug ;-) Okay, just some quick replies here, don't want to get too off-topic...
Esperanto has a history and has developed, too. And a unique culture you can experience at the meetings. Since learning Esperanto is always a personal choice, not something your parents or your school forced you to do, there have to be less speakers than for those languages that you are forced to learn - but those who do speak it, value it much more. And chances are much more likely that you'll find people with similar interests and beliefs among Esperanto speakers, for this reason. For example, there is no chance in hell that racists will learn Esperanto. On the other hand, people open to the world and interested in other cultures and other languages are the most likely to learn it.
I'm all for preserving language diversity. Esperanto speakers believe that they are actually contributing towards preserving languages, because Esperanto doesn't aspire to replace local languages (unlike English, French, Spanish, Chinese, etc. that are promoted at the expense of local languages and have at times forbidden the use of local languages). Esperanto is supposed to become everybody's *second* language, that is, a language that everybody learns in addition to his native tongue.
Yes, right now a lot of people are learning English, just like they have been learning Latin, French and Russian before and might be learning Chinese in the future. The richest nations can push their languages like that and even charge big fees for teaching it. Esperanto is a volunteer effort, it doesn't have the big money to advertise nearly as much, so it's pretty much limited to the word of mouth. However, it has persisted for more than a hundred years, it has more speakers than minor national languages like e. g. Estonian and today it's in a better position than ever because the internet is multiplying the amount of people who will hear about it and who have the chance to learn it. If mankind was able to put aside all the muscle-flexing about what languages get used as international languages (e. g. the European Union's inability to find a common language for that), Esperanto would be the logical choice for that. It's neutral, not associated with any one country (which would make other countries start bickering, see France vs. English) and if the goal is for everybody to learn it as a foreign language, it's definitely the most suited for that, since it was developed for just that purpose. English is simply too difficult. When in China, I met several thousand people who are trying to learn English (I assessed the prospective students' English skills for an elite foreign affairs university). None of them could speak English with any amount of fluency, the vast majority could just say "Hello" and "How are you?". It's not that different in Europe really. A recent study showed that the vast majority of Germans doesn't understand the English used in commercial slogans. Even though everybody has to learn English for at least 6 years in High School (9 if you want to be allowed to go to university) and English is very close to German, making it one of the easiest languages for Germans to learn. Being able to communicate with people from foreign countries is really limited to the educated elites, especially when it comes to poorer countries. I believe that's wrong.
You're a language geek like me ;-) I'm very sure that the average Joe Blow prefers his language learning to be as painless as possible. Irregular verbs are a reason many people get discouraged from learning foreign languages, it does not exalt them. What fascinates me as a language geek in Esperanto is the system of prefixes and suffixes that allows you express yourself very creatively (and nobody has the right to tell you that this suffix doesn't work with that word stem), even with a limited vocabulary. Examples: varmacha -> varm-ach-a (varma = warm; -ach- ~ ugly) -> uncomfortably warm detaladi -> detal-ad-i (detali = detail, elaborate; -ad- ~ long duration) -> to elaborate on a topic for a long time pagegi -> pag-eg-i (pagi = to pay; -eg- ~ big/much) -> to pay a lot forgesejo -> forges-ej-o (forgesi = to forget; -ej- ~ place) -> place where you put stuff and then forget it preterami -> preter-ami (preter- ~ pass by; ami = to love) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| awake Senior Member United States Joined 6416 days ago 406 posts - 438 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Spanish | Message 15 of 29 24 March 2007 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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I'll second the suggestion for Esperanto. Sprachprofi, has already listed
numerous advantages of Esperanto, but I'll try to add a few to the mix (or at least build on those previously mentioned). First of all, Esperanto is designed for ease of learning and international communication. I learned the entire grammar within a few weeks (and that's not an atypical experience among esperanto learners) It's said that Esperanto can be learned 4-10 times faster than any national language. It's true. Here are a few of the features of Esperanto that make it easier to learn: 1) Esperanto has a phonetic orthography, and its system of pronunciation is perfectly regular. If you read an Esperanto word you know how to say it and if you hear one you know how to spell it. 2) There are only six verb tenses and they are all completely regular. No irregular verb patterns to memorize. Learn to conjugate one verb and you immediately know how to conjugate any other verbs you learn. In fact, all the rules are perfectly consistent with virtually no exceptions. Once you learn something in Esperanto, you can use it freely. 3) There are no genders to learn for nouns. This helps speed vocabulary learning. And word order is extremely flexible. 4) As previously mentioned, Esperanto makes extensive (and perfectly regular use of affixes for word building). In English, We have to learn many different words for related concepts As one very simple example, consider the following. Dog, puppy, pack of dogs, etc... Cow, calf, herd of cattle, etc... In esperanto, -ido is an affix that means child of. In Esperanto, the word for dog is hundo and the word for cow is bovo. If you want to say puppy that's hundido, and calf would be bovido. -aro is an affix that means collection of. Thus, hundaro = pack of dogs. hundidaro = a pack of puppies. etc.. And in Esperanto you're allowed to use the affixes anywhere that they make sense. Take libero, the word for freedom. liberido would be "a child of freedom." Montaro is the word for mountain range (literally a collection of mountains). practically what all this means is that with a relatively small vocabulary of root words, you can multiply your vocabulary multiple times once you've mastered the 20-30 main affixes (both prefixes and suffixes). This vastly accelerates the speed at which you can learn new vocabulary, which is one of the hardest parts of learning a new language. The affix system also lets you combine them in ways to express very fine and subtle shades of meaning. 5) It's a great tool for learning additional languages. The biggest surprise for me in learning Esperanto is how it helped bolster my understanding of English Grammar (my native tongue). Because Esperanto is put together so elegantly, grammatical concepts are very clear. I now see structures in English that I was only vaguely aware of before, only now I have a much deeper understanding of them. I have no doubt that studying Esperanto will greatly help me master new languages in the future. 6) There are an estimated 2 million speakers of esperanto throughout the world. They can be found in almost every major city around the world. Whatever culture you're interested in, there are likely Esperanto speakers eager to share it with you (since most people who learned Esperanto did so with the intention of getting to know people in other cultures). There was a recent thread in this forum about how difficult it can be to find practice partners in various languages. That's not the case in Esperanto (at least in my experience). And many of the people you meet in the esperanto community would be thrilled to help you learn their native language as well. When I go to look for practice partners in Spanish (the next language I'll tackle) or japanese (the one I have slated for learning after that) I have no doubt that I'll be able to find many native speakers through the Esperanto community. And through the passporta servo (already mentioned - literally the passport service) I'll be able to visit those countries and experience the cultures first hand without the need to stay in expensive hotel rooms (and I can even use the service for travel within my own country if I so choose). And when I go to those countries, I'll be shown the culture, and history and life of the city by people who live there, not by prepackaged tours. 7) There's a wealth of literature (both native and translated, prose (fiction and nonfiction) and poetry) available in Esperanto. And though people sometimes speak of an esperanto culture (traditions that arise out of esperanto meetings) there is great diversity in the Esperanto community. There's a saying that if you get five esperantists in a room the only thing they'll agree on is that Esperanto is a good thing, and if you get 10 of them in a room at least one won't even agree on that. :). 8) Just as an aside, there was a study done several years ago. A high school class was broken into 2 groups selected at random. The control group spent 4 years learning french. The second group spent one year learning Esperanto first and then the remaining 3 years learning french. Keep in mind that one year studying esperanto is like 4-6 years studying french., so the Esperanto group learned Esperanto to a very high level of proficiency. The interesting thing though, was that the Esperanto group also learned more french than the control group (even though they spent 25% less time learning french). Learning Esperanto helps you understand how languages are put together. Everything is so logically constructed, and the rules of grammar are not obscured by the many exceptions found in most national languages. That bears repeating. Study Esperanto first and it's likely that you can then go on and master another language in the time it takes you to learn that other language by itself. It's like picking up a language for free. :) 9) This is highly subjective, but in the opinion of many people Esperanto is a fantastically beautiful language. Spoken Esperanto most closely resembles italian, which many consider to be a very beautiful language. Beyond the beauty of the language's sounds and rhythms, it's also very elegant in the way that one can creatively express themselves - and there is great beauty in that as well. 10) If you've read this post, and those of Sprachprofi, you can see that we Esperanto speakers can be a passionate lot when it comes to advocating the language. There's a reason for that. If you're skeptical, let me offer a friendly challenge. Take 6 weeks and learn as much esperanto as you can. My suspicion is that you'll be so shocked at how deeply and rapidly you can progress in Esperanto, you'll keep on using it (and learning it deeper) for a long time to come (and you'll be able to add another language to your list of languages learned for a relatively small output of personal effort). :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6377 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 16 of 29 24 March 2007 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | ||||||||||||||
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you've almost convinced me to take esperanto before portuguese ;)
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