How varied are your languages?

General discussion about learning languages

I have learned one or more frgn langs to int level or higher that has (compared to my native lang):

1) The same family with the same or different script, or another family with the same script.
25
36%
2) Another family with a different script.
7
10%
3) 1) and 2).
36
52%
4) Neither.
1
1%
 
Total votes: 69

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RyanSmallwood
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby RyanSmallwood » Sun Jun 26, 2022 2:11 pm

There's no reason why the Assimil method can't work for more distant languages, the issue I find is that they don't alter their ~100 lesson design much that was originally made to go mostly between Romance and Germanic languages. When I've used Assimil for more distant languages I learned some stuff, but there wasn't enough basic input for features to really stick, and some new lessons there would be so much new vocab and grammar concepts introduced it was really difficult to intuitively understand all the components of a sentence. You could of course brute force your way through memorize every dialog, and every grammar note and maybe you could say you understand it all, but it felt to me like I just wasn't getting the proper input my brain wanted to get used to all the new features.

This is why I started using FSI courses as input, once you remove all the pauses they function a lot like Assimil courses with a dialog in the beginning, only you get a ton more exercises putting the vocabulary through tons of different sentence combinations. When I started doing this, it felt like I was really assimilating the language like Assimil courses are supposed to do. So to me it can work perfectly well with any language, but for more distant languages you just need tons and tons of easy sentences for things to click, and lots of language courses don't provide anywhere near enough.

The same goes with Listening-Reading, the process works, but you need easier texts or more of a foundation. A good example is the Journey to the West Graded Reader series for learning Mandarin by Imagin8 Press. It starts out at a vocabulary of 600 and goes up to 3000 over the course of the series, its perfectly suited for Listening-Reading containing Hanzi, Pinyin, Full English Translations, and a Vocab List. Most importantly, most other graded reader series make the same mistake Assimil makes and are only a few hours long per story, if even that, whereas the Journey to West graded reader series looks like it will be ~30 hours long when its finished, which means plenty of long term repetition to let things sink in.

I've also tried just jumping up to straight un-adapted native materials early on, and it can be made to work, but because a lot of sentences are way too difficult usually there are fewer opportunities to learn things (usually simple dialogs or places where a word is repeated so much that you can't help but notice even when everything else is complex), so it takes longer to build up a foundation. Its not efficient on its own, but it can be a fun break from using learner materials if you have nothing engaging enough for lazy study suitable to your level, but I'd keep make sure I use other methods for building a foundation faster.
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thevagrant88
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 3:14 am

RyanSmallwood wrote:…for more distant languages you just need tons and tons of easy sentences for things to click.


After my experience with Japanese, this is exactly why I’ve become a convert to working through multiple textbooks. I gave myself way more headaches than I needed. I just wish there was an FSI course for Japanese that wasn’t the pricey Speaking Japanese series.
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rdearman
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby rdearman » Mon Jun 27, 2022 9:17 am

thevagrant88 wrote:
RyanSmallwood wrote:…for more distant languages you just need tons and tons of easy sentences for things to click.


After my experience with Japanese, this is exactly why I’ve become a convert to working through multiple textbooks. I gave myself way more headaches than I needed. I just wish there was an FSI course for Japanese that wasn’t the pricey Speaking Japanese series.


Here you go, FSI Japanese: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... anese.html
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RyanSmallwood
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby RyanSmallwood » Mon Jun 27, 2022 10:29 am

rdearman wrote:
thevagrant88 wrote:
RyanSmallwood wrote:…for more distant languages you just need tons and tons of easy sentences for things to click.


After my experience with Japanese, this is exactly why I’ve become a convert to working through multiple textbooks. I gave myself way more headaches than I needed. I just wish there was an FSI course for Japanese that wasn’t the pricey Speaking Japanese series.


Here you go, FSI Japanese: https://fsi-languages.yojik.eu/language ... anese.html


The Fast and Headstart courses are unfortunately very different from the Basic Course most languages have and don't work as a good substitute.
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thevagrant88
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby thevagrant88 » Mon Jun 27, 2022 11:02 am

Yeah, while I do appreciate it, those are unfortunately much less complete than the Basic Courses. Thank you though!
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby leosmith » Mon Jun 27, 2022 5:07 pm

Deinonysus wrote:I made a double reading comprehension oopsie! I chose option "another family with a different script" because really what haven't I dabbled in at this point? But I do know same-family and same-script languages too, so I should have picked 3. But then I realized that you only wanted intermediate or higher, so I should have chosen "The same family with the same or different script!" Because it would be a big stretch to call my Hebrew intermediate, although I'm hoping to remedy that this year.

np - I just allowed re-voting
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby Milagros Calgary » Wed Jun 29, 2022 4:37 am

Not varied at all, just know english and spanish, also know some words in italian and french. :D
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Jastreb
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby Jastreb » Tue Jul 05, 2022 5:43 pm

All languages I have studied are non-Uralic so they are in a totally different family. On the other hand the only one that doesn't use the Latin alphabet is Russian and there I'm just an eternal beginner.
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Jul 05, 2022 7:28 pm

Not really, I'm boring!

I keep wanting to add a more distant langauge, but something always comes up. The last one to be postponed: Hebrew. I still want to learn it, and enriching my list with something more distant is one of the (less important) reasons.
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Erisnimi
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Re: How varied are your languages?

Postby Erisnimi » Sat Sep 03, 2022 10:00 am

For a Finnish speaker, it would take a different kind of commitment to stay within that language group. Even if you counted Hungarian, I bet most Finnish speakers find many other languages easier to get into, because they find them more familiar or more useful for their purposes.

English is always my starting point when learning a language, and it's useful in that I already had a rudimentary French vocabulary before even starting with French. And with a popular language like French, you can't help but have come across a few words and phrases anyway. C'est la vie. There's a lot there, already!

It's easy for me to get Germanic languages, German and Swedish especially, mixed up. In some ways then when I take on a very different language like Hebrew, I enjoy that it's virgin territory, mostly. I am more concentrated, and whatever familiar word I come across, like a loan word, it usually sticks out. I am not building on expectations like I would be were I to learn another Germanic language, Norwegian for example, which I can already read anyway! Take a language from a new family of languages with a new script and it's very liberating and activates the brain in new ways.
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