If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

General discussion about learning languages
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mentecuerpo
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If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby mentecuerpo » Wed Apr 14, 2021 5:54 am

Making polyglots.

I am not a linguistic, but here are some reflections based on a Wikipedia article I read on Foreign language influences in English:

A computerized survey of about 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd ed.) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973)[3] that estimated the origin of English words as follows:

French: 28.30%
Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%
Germanic languages – inherited from Old English, from Proto-Germanic, or a more recent borrowing from a Germanic language such as Old Norse; does not include Germanic words borrowed from a Romance language, i.e., coming from the Germanic element in French, Latin or other Romance languages: 25%
Greek: 5.32%
No etymology given: 4.04%
Derived from proper names: 3.28%
All other languages: less than 1%

Learning English can help in learning Latin language dialects.

The most spoken Germanic language is English, according to Wikipedia, with an estimated 2 billion speakers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages

However, Modern English is not entirely Germanic; it is Latin too.
Other Germanic languages have Latin on them too.

Old English: the core of the English language descends from the Old English language, brought from the 500s with the Angle, Saxon, and Jutish settlers to what would be called England.

Modern English: A significant portion of the English vocabulary comes from Romance and Latinate sources. Estimates of native words (derived from Old English) range from 20%–33%, with the rest made up of outside borrowings. A portion of these borrowings come directly from Latin, or through one of the Romance languages, particularly Anglo-Norman and French, but some also from Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish; or from other languages (such as Gothic, Frankish or Greek) into Latin and then into English. Therefore, the influence of Latin in English is primarily lexical in nature, being confined mainly to words derived from Latin roots.

It is relatively easy for an English-speaking person (native or not native) to learn a Romance Language (Modern Latin Dialects).
According to the Foreing Language Institute, it takes less effort for an English speaking person to Learn the languages more similar to English, and you know, they have calculated it: Spanish (24 weeks), Italian (24 weeks), Romanian (24 weeks), Portuguese (24 weeks) and French (30 weeks).

Interesting to see that it takes a few more weeks to learn French than the rest of the other Latin dialects, despite English having approximately 29 % lexical french derived words.

As expected, other Germanic languages are also more similar to English, and thus, it takes less time to learn them, 24 weeks (600-750 class hours) for Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish.

Interesting to see is that learning German will take approximately 36 weeks (900 class hours). German is included on the Category II languages: German, Malay, Haitian Creole, Swahili, and Indonesia.

I would imagine that if you are a bilingual English speaker who speaks one Romance language, a second romance language will take less than 24 weeks to learn and less than 600-750 hours of class.

Likewise, If an English speaker is bilingual and speaks another Germanic language, it will take less time and effort to learn another Germanic language.

I can imagine that if an English speaker speaks Spanish and German, he can become a polyglot easily, which less time and effort to learn the next Romance and Germanic language. Each new language learned decreased the effort required to learn the next language in the duo of Germanic/Romance languages.

So if you are monolingual learning English would be a good choice as your second language, it opens the doors for many other languages. Besides, English is the new lingua Franca.

If you are an English speaker, you are on your way to becoming a polyglot in many other European languages by learning, for example, Spanish and German.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_languages
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_l ... in_English
https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby mentecuerpo » Wed Apr 14, 2021 6:43 am

The following, as usual, is just my opinion.

If you are a monolingual English speaker thinking of Learning Spanish and German, I would recommend learning Spanish first.

Spanish is one of the languages that require less effort to learn for an English speaker.

If the monolingual English person is interested in learning German only, of course, there is no need to know any other language before jumping into German.

Why learning Spanish first?
For two reasons, first, Spanish is a living language in the USA. If you live in the USA, you already know that Spanish comes in handy. You will use the language and have many opportunities to practice the language in an immerse environment.

Suppose you do not live in the USA but visit this country. The minute you hit many US airports, especially Miami International Airport, Sky harbor Airports (Phoenix, Arizona), Lax airport (Los Angeles, California), you will hear Spanish everywhere you go. You will be able to practice the language.

Here in the USA, you hear Spanish everywhere, but good luck if you find someone by chance who speaks Italian, French, or German.

For example, you will have a better opportunity to practice Chinese, Hindu, Urdu, Arabic, or Persian and many African languages here in Phoenix than any other European language besides Spanish.

Secondly, learning Spanish as a second language will require less effort than learning German.

After you learn Spanish (or any other language for that matter), you have learned skills in language learning that will help you learn German faster for the simple reason that you are now better at language learning.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby Cainntear » Wed Apr 14, 2021 11:24 am

Learning lexis is easy, and the etymological complexities of English lexis can be as much of a hindrance as a help, as semantic drift has made many previously cognate forms into false friends -- eg. asistir => to attend; atender => to assist

English isn't a particularly helpful starting point, because it has such limited morphology, and a great deal of grammatical information is expressed through word order only.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby bolaobo » Wed Apr 14, 2021 2:18 pm

mentecuerpo wrote:The following, as usual, is just my opinion.

If you are a monolingual English speaker thinking of Learning Spanish and German, I would recommend learning Spanish first.

Spanish is one of the languages that require less effort to learn for an English speaker.

If the monolingual English person is interested in learning German only, of course, there is no need to know any other language before jumping into German.

Why learning Spanish first?
For two reasons, first, Spanish is a living language in the USA. If you live in the USA, you already know that Spanish comes in handy. You will use the language and have many opportunities to practice the language in an immerse environment.

Suppose you do not live in the USA but visit this country. The minute you hit many US airports, especially Miami International Airport, Sky harbor Airports (Phoenix, Arizona), Lax airport (Los Angeles, California), you will hear Spanish everywhere you go. You will be able to practice the language.

Here in the USA, you hear Spanish everywhere, but good luck if you find someone by chance who speaks Italian, French, or German.

For example, you will have a better opportunity to practice Chinese, Hindu, Urdu, Arabic, or Persian and many African languages here in Phoenix than any other European language besides Spanish.

Secondly, learning Spanish as a second language will require less effort than learning German.

After you learn Spanish (or any other language for that matter), you have learned skills in language learning that will help you learn German faster for the simple reason that you are now better at language learning.


Spanish isn't nearly as useful in the northeast and midwest of the country. I'm more likely to encounter a Chinese speaker or a speaker of an Indian language than a Spanish speaker.

For an aspiring polyglot, German teaches you grammatical cases (something lacking in Spanish) and French gives you access to higher quality language learning resources such as Assimil.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby golyplot » Wed Apr 14, 2021 3:56 pm

French also has the advantage that an English speaker can already read a lot of French on day 1. (Understanding the spoken language is another matter entirely).
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Apr 15, 2021 1:30 am

bolaobo wrote:Spanish isn't nearly as useful in the northeast and midwest of the country. I'm more likely to encounter a Chinese speaker or a speaker of an Indian language than a Spanish speaker.

For an aspiring polyglot, German teaches you grammatical cases (something lacking in Spanish) and French gives you access to higher quality language learning resources such as Assimil.


There is a new blog on this forum discussing language selection: How do you/did you choose which languages you learn/ed? https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=16765

If a person living in the US decides to learn Spanish, I am sure he/she will have many opportunities to speak Spanish without the need to travel. I have to pay Skype lesssons to practice my Italian and learn German.

The census cited below was in 2012; I think there may be more Spanish speakers in the USA by now.

"The United States has 41 million people aged five or older who speak Spanish at home,[3] making Spanish the second most spoken language of the United States. Spanish is the most studied language other than English in the United States,[4]."

"There are more Spanish-speakers in the United States than speakers of French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Hawaiian, varieties of Chinese, and Native American languages combined. According to the 2012 American Community Survey conducted by the US Census Bureau, Spanish is spoken at home by 38.3 million people aged five or older, more than twice as many as in 1990.[11][12]."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_l ... ted_States
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:12 am

Cainntear wrote:Learning lexis is easy, and the etymological complexities of English lexis can be as much of a hindrance as a help, as semantic drift has made many previously cognate forms into false friends -- eg. asistir => to attend; atender => to assist

English isn't a particularly helpful starting point, because it has such limited morphology, and a great deal of grammatical information is expressed through word order only.


I did not understand the importance of English word order (and Spanish word order) until I started to learn German. As well as my curiosity about the Latin Language, I realized that word order is not essential in some languages with case systems. I find it interesting how German and Latin work.
I like the common Lexis, and I recognized many German words thanks to my English and Spanish. It helps me in learning German for sure. I know there are a lot of false Friends.

After, in German means "anus" and not after. After is "nach" or "nachdem."

Bald, this word means soon, and is not a description for someone with little or no hair. The German word for bald is "Kahl"

So careful with the false friends.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby lysi » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:34 am

I don't disagree with the fact that English as a native language isn't a bad starting point for language language (especially given the large amount of language learning resources in English), however isn't the entire point of language learning to expand your horizons beyond your native language? So why let your native language limit your choices for a target language too? Just learn what you want.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby Lisa » Thu Apr 15, 2021 3:05 am

I recall when I started with Spanish and German (many years ago), German seemed easier since they don't speak as fast; you can actually sometimes catch a word or two. Also there are a lot of cognates in the easy/beginner words. Starting again recently, and in the intermediate stage; German is MUCH more difficult, past the easy words they are all completely confusing prefix/stem combinations. Knowing basic Spanish was no help at all in learning basic Italian... the words are similar but you have to learn how they are different which was more effort than just learning the word. But I expect it would have gotten quite a bit easier at the intermediate stage.

The thing with the latin/french origin words - a lot of which are fancy pants words in english - is that while they have changed meaning since they came into English (and in fact english words have changed meaning since then too, everything is always changing)... but there's some commonality that you can use as a memory hook, rather than a completely arbitrary sound.

One thing English doesn't have is other languages that are close enough to be somewhat mutually intelligible (I guess there are dialects but those don't count... ). I was reading that most Slavic languages are close enough for understanding, as well as Danish/Norwegian/Swedish. Seems like if you were starting with one of these it's a short jump to all of them and you'd be much closer to polyglotitude.
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Re: If you speak English, learning many other languages may be easier than you think.

Postby mentecuerpo » Thu Apr 15, 2021 2:00 pm

English and French have Lexical similarity

Besides Lexical similarity, what other elements make languages similar or different?

What is Lexical Similarity?

In linguistics, lexical similarity is a measure of the degree to which the word sets of two given languages are similar. A lexical similarity of 1 (or 100%) would mean a total overlap between vocabularies, whereas 0 means there are no common words. There are different ways to define the lexical similarity and the results vary accordingly. For example, Ethnologue's method of calculation consists in comparing a regionally standardized wordlist (comparable to the Swadesh list) and counting those forms that show similarity in both form and meaning. Using such a method, English was evaluated to have a lexical similarity of 60% with German and 27% with French. Lexical similarity can be used to evaluate the degree of genetic relationship between two languages. Percentages higher than 85% usually indicate that the two languages being compared are likely to be related dialects. The lexical similarity is only one indication of the mutual intelligibility of the two languages, since the latter also depends on the degree of phonetical, morphological, and syntactical similarity. The variations due to differing wordlists weigh on this. For example, lexical similarity between French and English is considerable in lexical fields relating to culture, whereas their similarity is smaller as far as basic (function) words are concerned. Unlike mutual intelligibility, lexical similarity can only be symmetrical. (en)

Source: https://dbpedia.org/page/Lexical_similarity
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