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Order of adding new languages | ||
Tags: Study Plan | Choosing a Language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6565 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes  Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 9 of 12 15 May 2007 at 3:16am | IP Logged | ||
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Heh, it seems like there are quite a lot of strategies. To recap for my own amusement:
1. Learn languages in your order of interest. 2. Learn languages starting with the easiest and most similar to your own, to make early successes and build confidence. 3. Learn languages starting with the most exotic, allowing more time for reaching proficiency. 4. Learn languages in order of 'importance' and widespread use. 5. Learn languages in order of how many other language-learning materials those languages have (Ardaschir's suggestion). I would add: 6. Learn languages in order of what is commonly spoken in your own region or neighbouring regions. These all sound like good criteria, depending on one's ultimate language goals. If you learn two languages at once, you could use one set of criteria for choosing language #1 and another for #2. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6500 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 12 15 May 2007 at 3:18am | IP Logged | ||
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My "2 cents" (answer to Jerrod's question):
I think you should add languages in alternation from the two or more language families you want to cover. Generally languages within one language family are relatively easy when you have learnt at least one of them well. There are exceptions: for instance knowing English will not help you much if you want to learn Icelandic, and knowing French will not make Romanian an easy language. But Spanish should not be too hard in that situation, and if you know already Spanish then learning Portuguese is a breeze. On the other hand a language from another family or subfamily will normally be relatively difficult to learn if it is the first from that family. So my advice would be to choose one language from an 'easy' family (your own or one from which you already know at least one language quite well), then something hard from another family, then back to something easy from a 'wellknown' family, then one more language from the new family on your list (by now it should be somewhat easier), then back to something wellknown again and so forth. In that way the two newest languages in your collection will allways be one hard and one easy language, and because you take them from different families the risk of contamination will be minimized. Edited by Iversen on 15 May 2007 at 3:21am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Raincrowlee Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 6499 days ago 621 posts - 808 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Indonesian, Japanese | Message 11 of 12 15 May 2007 at 7:36am | IP Logged | ||
It seems to me that you have a definite (though general) goal in mind, but instead of explaining your goal, you tried asking your question in a theoretical manner, which usually just makes things confusing. From what you said, it sounds like you want to learn the Romance, Germanic and Slavic language families, or at least a large part of them. Is that correct? Admirable goal. I wouldn't mind doing that myself. If so, then your first choices are obvious: French, German and Russian. French and German will give you access to a tremendous amount of material, and are quite useful languages in themselves. If you have interest in anything outside of languages (culture, business, history, science) there is a wide variety of material freely available on the Internet in those languages, and a huge number of learning resources as well. Russian is a key Slavic language, and also has the most material available and the largest number of speakers. Once you get fluent in these three, you will have a solid base both in the language families and in your language learning skills that you should be able to learn the rest of the languages with (relatively) little difficulty. As for the order, I would say learn French first, but it looks like you've already started learning Russian. A fine language, and it will make almost everything else look easy by comparisson. If you have the time, I would start learning French at the same time. It's easier than German, and if you really want to learn three entire families, you should get used to studying more than one language at a time. After you've learned how to balance your time and make progress with two, you might want to see if you can add German. If it doesn't fit into your schedule, then just work on Russian and French until you get to a comfortable level (finishing at least one entire course for each), and put one aside to learn the basics of German. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Jerrod Senior Member United States Joined 6300 days ago 168 posts - 176 votes Studies: Russian, Spanish | Message 12 of 12 15 May 2007 at 8:25am | IP Logged | ||
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Raincrowlee,
Yes I tried to generalize for the benifit of all. I have studied Russian 3 years and since I have a Russian wife, I should be able to improve my Russian with little ease. The next language is Spanish because I live in the USA (well will in 2 months), and my wife wants to learn it next. After this will be French. So I will have a solid background in Russian, Spanish and French. These are languages that I need and thus I have to proceed this way. From this point, it is all up in the air how best proceed. I think most likely the languages I want to learn from those three families are: French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese; Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, and Serbian; German, Swedish, Dutch, and Yiddish. Thanks for the responces. Interesting ideas on how to learn these languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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