Advice on choosing my next language

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kgoedert
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Advice on choosing my next language

Postby kgoedert » Tue Feb 21, 2017 6:06 pm

Hi,

Almost two years ago I started learning french by myself, following lots of great advice from this forum, some books and blogs. I am pretty satisfied right now with my achievement. For someone that considered it impossible to learn a language without taking formal classes, and a formal teacher, and just weeks ago was able to communicate with a french person for two hours, yeah, I am pretty happy with myself.

Now, I am reading french for half an hour a day and watching about one hour and a half of movies/series in french every week. I intend to continue doing that for at least another year. But, since my experiment with french was successful, I would like to take on another language.

I have two candidates. Spanish and german. Since my native language is portuguese I believe spanish would be quite easy. I just think I might start confusing it with french, that is my biggest worry. I think german is different enough of french for me not to confuse it.

Are my assumptions correct? Should I go for german now, and giving french another year to settle in, to be less confused with spanish in the future?

Thanks

Kelly
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DaveBee
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby DaveBee » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:24 pm

kgoedert wrote:Hi,

Almost two years ago I started learning french by myself, following lots of great advice from this forum, some books and blogs. I am pretty satisfied right now with my achievement. For someone that considered it impossible to learn a language without taking formal classes, and a formal teacher, and just weeks ago was able to communicate with a french person for two hours, yeah, I am pretty happy with myself.

Now, I am reading french for half an hour a day and watching about one hour and a half of movies/series in french every week. I intend to continue doing that for at least another year. But, since my experiment with french was successful, I would like to take on another language.

I have two candidates. Spanish and german. Since my native language is portuguese I believe spanish would be quite easy. I just think I might start confusing it with french, that is my biggest worry. I think german is different enough of french for me not to confuse it.

Are my assumptions correct? Should I go for german now, and giving french another year to settle in, to be less confused with spanish in the future?

Thanks

Kelly
Congratulations on your French success. :-)

If you've got the time for another language, I vote for German. With Portuguese and French to help you I'm sure you'd be able to pick up Spanish in record time if you needed to. German would be more of an adventure!

Do you have a plan for your German study?
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby DangerDave2010 » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:45 pm

I'd go (and indeed I have gone) for Spanish, because Latin America is close, and cheap. And being so similar to Português, you'll be able to learn a great lot from exposition alone.
Last edited by DangerDave2010 on Tue Feb 21, 2017 9:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby iguanamon » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:46 pm

Welcome to the forum, Kelly! Bem-vindo/a ao fórum! If you are not confusing your native Portuguese with French, I doubt you'll confuse Spanish with French. More likely is confusing Spanish with Portuguese ;). There are plenty of free resources from Deutsche Welle for learning German with an English base and also a Portuguese base. I also found this link to the Goethe Institut Brasilien at DW. Some of the former students of the Cervantes Institute in Rio have a blog- Los insistentes.

Obviously, Spanish would be easiest for you at first and would probably give you more opportunities to speak it closer to home. Though I met a lot of Argentines in Brazil, I've also met a quite a few German tourists in São Paulo and Rio. Again, welcome to the forum. Boa sorte !
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby arthaey » Tue Feb 21, 2017 8:49 pm

Go with whichever you're more excited about. Langauge study is a marathon, so if you don't have any external factors requiring you to learn a language, you'd better have good internal motivation.

Are you excited about picking up another Romance language? Adding a related language can be fun because you see results very quickly.

Are you excited about learning a different language? It can be fun to have a new challenge.

No answer is "wrong". Be honest with yourself and go for what you want. :)
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby Jar-Ptitsa » Tue Feb 21, 2017 9:40 pm

I think that it depends of this:

if you want a fast result like with French, then choose Spanish.
But I agree that you will muddle it up with French. For most people, Spanish and Portuguese would be the problem, but you won't mess up with Portuguese because it's your native langauge, but it would mess up with your new L2 French although Spanish is more similar with Portgugese than French.

if you want a language that is more different, but not so different that it's exrtemely difficult then choose German
You will muddle it up with English, but English will help you with the grammar except the cases. German is great

Both languages are very nice, personally I would say choose German, so that you will have 2 Romance and 2 Germanic langauges :)
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby Xenops » Wed Feb 22, 2017 2:00 am

Coming from a completely biased opinion, I think German culture is more interesting than Spanish culture. ;)
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby blaurebell » Wed Feb 22, 2017 9:52 am

Xenops wrote:Coming from a completely biased opinion, I think German culture is more interesting than Spanish culture.


Well, that's just a super weird thing to say. I kinda get where you're coming from, but there isn't even a single "Spanish culture" in Spain itself! And then there are all these different Spanish speaking countries in the Americas that are super different in culture and outlook. Argentinian culture is more Italian than Spanish, Cuban culture is communist, there are some countries where the indigenous cultures have tons of influence. And with every single country the basic vocabulary is different too. While Spanish might be easier to learn at first glance if you already know French, it's quite another thing to understand "basically everything written and spoken" in any Spanish speaking country on this planet. The gap in Spanish between B2 and C1 understanding is massive because there are so many different accents and cultures. So, easy start, tough to get beyond B2 unless you are willing to concentrate on understanding one single country only.

I wouldn't really be able to say whether German or that mess of Spanish speaking cultures is more interesting to me. It fascinates me both and both are very very different. Maybe the question which language to learn also should include the mentalities of the native speakers. Germans are much more rigid and rule following in all aspects of their lives. Spanish speaking cultures are mostly warmer, more open, more welcoming. If I would like to communicate and maybe visit I'd probably go with Spanish since that's closer to my own mentality, and I say that although I grew up in Germany. If it's less about communication and more about literature and such, then it would depend what you like. Contemporary literature in Germany has been stuck since WW2, nothing worth mentioning apart from W.G. Sebald who left the country. And this one is just as beautifully written in English, because Sebald actually lived in Britain and oversaw the translations. I do love German classics and stuff from the 1910-1933 + some exile literature, but it's often tough reading even for native speakers. For contemporary literature definitely Spanish, for classics and modern literature definitely German. For Movies, Spanish - much more variety there!
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Kundera
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby Kundera » Wed Feb 22, 2017 10:23 am

As a native portuguese speaker, I don't think you'll mix french with spanish, unless you're a beginner in both languages.
German is a way harder than spanish for a portuguese speaker - please don't downplay this. Learning german doesn't pays up upfront, rather it would take some months until you be able to open any news at http://www.faz.net/ and have a gist about what they're talking about.
Moreover, assuming you live in Brazil, I must point out that there's a plenty of spanish speakers out there. On the other hand, you'll probably find german speakers solely on internet (it is not easy to find a riograndenser hunsrückisch speaker). You must take in account such issues before making any decision on your further studies.
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kgoedert
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Re: Advice on choosing my next language

Postby kgoedert » Wed Feb 22, 2017 11:02 am

First of all, thanks for everyone that took time to respond.

@DaveBee, my plan independent of the language I and up choosing is more or less what I did for french (though it was my first time doing it and I spent something time trying to figure out how things worked), which is:
- I have 6h/week I can use to study
- I will at first alternate days going to a grammar book and the assimil course, for up to an hour a day. And while doing this, adding cards to an anki deck
- After that, find some youtube videos to clarify especially grammar points if needed.
- Then signup for a german super challenge and find a tutor on italki specially for conversational purposes

As for all the discussion about culture... I don't have any bias towards one or the other. I agree with @blaurebell that said that germans are more rigid and the spanish more warm and all that.

Considering what you all said, yes, I live in the south of Brazil, and every summer (like right now, looking out of my window) I see a lot of cars from Argentina around the city going to the beaches, and they would be an opportunity to speak spanish very early. But, someone also said, german would pose more as a challenge that spanish. Right now, maybe I am more for the challenge....
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