Preferred method to study languages that are extremely close to native language?

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Dtmont
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Preferred method to study languages that are extremely close to native language?

Postby Dtmont » Mon May 10, 2021 8:40 pm

What is the best method to study a language that is very close to your native language? Would it be similar to studying any other languages or can you skip some steps? Usually when I start a language not close to English I learn a bunch of vocabulary then when I recognize things a bit I move on to clozemaster and learn grammar rules as they come up. If I want to learn Norwegian, could I just go to clozemaster and start learning sentences since I understand more than 80% of the vocab(I have also studied German)?Would it be the same for Afrikaans where I recognize even more? What do you do when learning languages similar to ones you know well?
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Re: Preferred method to study languages that are extremely close to native language?

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Mon May 10, 2021 9:11 pm

From How fast can you learn a related language?

jeff_lindqvist wrote:[...]the old HTLAL thread Slavic Language Family Learning Sequence. In the very last post, Theodisce says:
Theodisce wrote:If I was to draw a conclusion, I would say that 100 hours of listening to a language is a solid foundation upon which to build your knowledge, provided you already have a decent command of a Slavic language.



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It is very inspiring, and I have listened A LOT to my extremely close languages Danish and Norwegian. It doesn't mean that I "have learned" either language, but I know both a lot better than before.
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Re: Preferred method to study languages that are extremely close to native language?

Postby Iversen » Mon May 10, 2021 9:20 pm

I would do more or less the same things as with a more distant language, i.e. wordlists and grammar studies, supplemented with studies in the culture. The whole thing would just take less time, and I could drop bilingual texts at an early stage.

An instructive example might be Swedish (although with the caveat that I haven't really caught the finer details of Swedish prosody). I have made wordlists, estimated vocabulary sizes, read a Swedish grammar (and hundreds if not thousands of pages in Swedish), watched Swedish TV, written texts for the paper bin and spoken to native Swedes who seemed to have problems understanding my Danish. In other words: the whole package ...

In contrast, my problem with Norwegian is that I prefer Nynorsk spelling, and the Norwegians don't - and therefore I haven't got the same resources as I would have had if I had chosen Bokmål (which to me looks like misspelled Danish, totally devoid of the enticing exotic flavour of Nynorsk). Therefore I haven't really tried to learn Norwegian - I just understand it.

And the reference language doesn't have to be a native one- for instance I used my Dutch to study Afrikaans, but even here I went through the usual program with wordlists, bilingual texts, reading and listening and writing my own stuff - there was just less morphology to learn because the boers have simplified their linguistic inheritance from the Dutch settlers.
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Re: Preferred method to study languages that are extremely close to native language?

Postby lusan » Mon May 17, 2021 3:26 pm

Dtmont wrote:What is the best method to study a language that is very close to your native language? Would it be similar to studying any other languages or can you skip some steps? Usually when I start a language not close to English I learn a bunch of vocabulary then when I recognize things a bit I move on to clozemaster and learn grammar rules as they come up. If I want to learn Norwegian, could I just go to clozemaster and start learning sentences since I understand more than 80% of the vocab(I have also studied German)?Would it be the same for Afrikaans where I recognize even more? What do you do when learning languages similar to ones you know well?


No change. I am Spanish native and, currently learning Italian. I would assume is just another language. Of course, listening is dangerous easier... I say dangerous because there are many false friends and other complexities.

Comparing to a native of a friendly language, I would estimate:

Grammar - Easier - They should be similar
Speaking - Easier - After learning a minimum word set.
Listening - Easier - Similar language structure
Reading - Ease - Most common words would be very different. Example, despertar versus svegliare, andare versus ir, etc
Writing - Difficult

I would just move forward as a new one, though Grammar and Listening would be a lot easier. I reached Italian A2 level abilities in 4 months. I would not be surprised if I could repeat the job with Portuguese. For French, 3 years and still learning a lot, reading is good, writing is none, while listening is a work in process.
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