Suggestions on learning languages & how to keep persiste

sennacherib   Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:55 pm GMT
Hello Friends in unilang, it's a pleasure to meet you guys!

I know it's an old problem that some people might encounter when they decide to learn a new language. But I do have some troubles in the process.

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[b]Here's my personal info:[/b]

I learned German in my freshmen year in college for about one and half month. At first I found it kind of interesting and fun to learn as its regular pronunciation and similarities to English. As time past by, the problem emerged: I was not so used to the case system and complicated inflections even if I tried to adapt to it, later I realized that it's a common linguistic phenomenon in Indo-Euro languages. Then I learned off and on, later I decided to quit which was not such a wise decision...

And during the summer vacation, I picked up some Spanish as I was crazy about the music of the Mexican duo band [i]Sin Bandera[/i], which by the way is awesome! I learned some basic pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and I felt that Spanish was easier than German for it has only 2 noun genders and most of them are regular, and it's also easy to pronounce. Maybe the major problem is the verb inflection compared to German whose verb inflection is more regular.

I've never tried French yet and I know that French is not so easy to learn as its distinct phonology and grammatical exceptions. But I do enjoy listening to it.

As for Italian, to be honest, I'm obsessed with its pronunciation. So is Russian though it's much more harder...

And I'm also interested in learning some other languages as well, such as Dutch, Swedish and Greek...

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[b]Questions:
What am I supposed to do? And how to keep persistency during the learning process?[/b]

- [i][b]Should I...?[/b][/i]

01. pick German up again as Germany's economic status and beautiful landscapes in Germany, Austria and Switzerland?

02. continue to learn Spanish as its rising popularity and large Spanish-speaking population?

03. challenge myself to learn French as its global prestige and international status?

04. learn Italian or Russian just because their pronunciations?

05. take a chance to learn Dutch or Swedish for that both Netherlands and Sweden boast high living standards and beautiful landscapes?


- [i][b]What keeps you persistent during the learning process? What's your biggest motivation?[/b][/i]

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[b]Appreciate any suggestions and opinions to [i]any [/i]questions:)[/b]
sennacherib   Wed Jun 10, 2009 1:58 pm GMT
sorry for writing ''Hello Friends in unilang'', it should be antimoon.

I just copied my post from unilang, sorry about that again:(
eeuuian   Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:02 pm GMT
If you're in the US, I'd go with Spanish, since it's likely to be more useful than German (just about everywhere in the US), or French (in most places away from Quebec).
sennacherib   Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:37 pm GMT
to eeuuian:

I'm in China.
eeuuian   Wed Jun 10, 2009 2:50 pm GMT
<<I'm in China. >>

In that case, perhaps:

- Hindi
- Arabic
- Spanish

These seem to be the languages of the (near) future.
sennacherib   Wed Jun 10, 2009 3:17 pm GMT
honestly I'm not so into Asian languages...

maybe Spanish is a nice option:)
a   Wed Jun 10, 2009 4:44 pm GMT
Why not learn some Interlingua. The grammar is even easier than Spanish, and Spanish people can understand it. It sounds like you're into a lot of different languages--there are many people like that. The only way is to continue learning several languages at once to keep yourself satisfied. I've done that. I've found that as long as the languages are different enough, it's difficult to confuse them--but it will happen every once in a while. It's not that big of a deal.

You could also try inventing you own languages based on real languages.
regular joe   Thu Jun 11, 2009 3:57 pm GMT
It sounds like to me you are wanting 'permission' to leave german out, which is fine. I think, just how you wrote, that you would find spanish or italian most fulfilling. With you being in China however, you will have a more difficult time finding people to practice with in those languages. Maybe you could 'camp' outside some universities and hunt out spanish/italian students for practice ;) good luck

p.s. do not waste your time making up a language because the only reason to learn a language is to communicate. that wouldn't be very possible if you are the only one who speaks "your" language. And, by-the-way, spanish people cannot understand interlingua. why would you say that "a"? They are called languages because they are not mutually intelligible!
eeuuian   Thu Jun 11, 2009 4:15 pm GMT
<<Why not learn some Interlingua.>>

Might as well just learn a "real" language. If you learn Spanish, you'll be able to partially understand Interlingua (at least the written language) as a free bonus.

<<honestly I'm not so into Asian languages...>>

Is Arabic "asian", or is it a worldwide language now. If you're looking for a real challenge, you could try a North American language, like Navajo. Of course, it's not clear the benefits are worth the huge (life-long?) effort required.
interlingua   Thu Jun 11, 2009 5:37 pm GMT
>>
And, by-the-way, spanish people cannot understand nterlingua. why would you say that "a"? They are called anguages because they are not mutually intelligible <<

Interlingua es facile! Interlingua es un instrumento moderne de communication international. Milliones comprende immediatemente Interlingua.

You honestly can't understand that?!?
K. T.   Thu Jun 11, 2009 11:02 pm GMT
If that's Interlingua, I'm sure that Spanish speakers would understand it.
guessed   Fri Jun 12, 2009 1:03 am GMT
I'm guessing this page is writtten in Interlingua:

http://www.interlingua.com/

It looks like Spanish native speakers shouldn't have too much trouble reading it. There are some words that might require some guesswork:

- Lege, legeva
- Jocos
- diffunder
- Ligamines
- ci
- puero
- scheda
- hodie
- ascoltava
- sonator
- abona

It's nice that they seem to have picked 's' for plurals, and use -tion in words. It looks like adjectives don't agree with the nouns.
Xie   Sat Jun 13, 2009 12:35 pm GMT
>>It sounds like to me you are wanting 'permission' to leave german out, which is fine. I think, just how you wrote, that you would find spanish or italian most fulfilling. With you being in China however, you will have a more difficult time finding people to practice with in those languages.

Well, in "China", everything is going to be difficult. Our OP should know about books published in China. Yeah, loads of them, but still the problem is just how difficult it could be even to learn reading in a foreign language.

I don't have problems with German declensions at large, and in fact they are quite simple. You just need some persistence to go thru grammatical structures well enough to start reading. You may find French "less difficult", but for me, the problem with French is twofold. One, I'm personally not persistent enough, especially since I'm still learning German, and so it's just difficult to remember words and gram. patterns easily, even tho a lot of French words are transparent, when I already know a lot of English. Two, French, and I suspect Spanish alike, for example, is after all Romance, the first one in my life, and you just need even more persistence to get used to how it feels to learn a Romance language. German, tho, is "simpler" when I know English. French grammar still looks quite fragmented and foreign to me after 1 year of dabbling.
heapools(off)   Sun Jun 14, 2009 9:29 pm GMT
<<German, tho, is "simpler" when I know English. French grammar still looks quite fragmented and foreign to me after 1 year of dabbling. >>

From an English speaker's viewpoint, isn't it easier to learn French or Spanish than German or Icelandic?
Xie   Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:55 am GMT
I'm not even an English speaker, but I don't find German particularly hard. It has a lot of cognates and the grammar, particularly the verb system, is fairly similar.

In terms of vocab, English and German share more easy words, while English and French share sophisticated vocab. When you learn more German verbs, suddenly you find it somewhat abstract, but you can still figure out a lot of them by instinct, when a lot of German verbs are very Germanic and you can draw associations from German verbs you already know. This is not often the case for English, for me as a learner, since the word origin is often somewhere else, and there's no way of even guessing.