Maintaining related languages

General discussion about learning languages
94000d
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Maintaining related languages

Postby 94000d » Tue Dec 06, 2022 10:46 pm

What is the time discount for maintenance of related languages? For example, between closely related languages like Spanish and Portuguese, or more distant languages like Russian and Polish.
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IronMike
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby IronMike » Sat Dec 10, 2022 11:04 pm

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UrsoPreto
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby UrsoPreto » Tue Dec 20, 2022 12:16 am

In my case it was a huge discount. I goofed around with some apps and YT channels for Portuguese learners for about two weeks and then dove right in with online Preply classes 100% in the target language. The first couple of weeks were a pretty clumsy, with lots of Portunhol, but I advanced pretty quickly. Compare that with my current Swahili studies, where I'm about two months into this, putting in 2 hours a day, including 3-5 hours of one on one classes a week for the last month, and am nowhere near being able to have my classes all in Swahili.

My experience with Italian was similar, already having Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Not quite as easy as the Portuguese learning experience, but pretty close.
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Sae
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby Sae » Tue Dec 20, 2022 12:53 pm

I have been curious about this myself, because the thought did enter my head of "would learning Turkish to a certain level to help with Turkic languages?" Because Tuvan is on my list. There's Tuvan resources in Turkish for learning Tuvan, the resources for learning Turkish are pretty great and I could potentially learn to B1. Kazakh is also a consideration for the future as well, once I've tamed my currently target languages. So I had wondered how much of a discount would maybe aid my Tuvan learning. But given Turkish and Tuvan are geographically very far apart and have had different influences shape their language, I figure that would mean there's less of a benefit.

However, something else did occur to me and that's Mongolian's influences on Tuvan and Mongolian is one of my target languages. In the Tuvan I know so far, some of the Mongolian influences have looked obvious. How Mongolian and Tuvan ask questions is similar and they use the same question word. Progressing with Mongolian has also answered one of Tuvan's mysteries for me, and that's why I sometimes hear "be" pronounced as "ve", and Mongolian has a rule based around it and they will write "ve" when it's pronounced "ve", unlike Tuvan which always has "be" written. And I can recognise the relationship between some words, like "Bayrlyg" ('goodbye' in Tuvan), "Bayartai" ('goodbye' in Mongolian), 'Bayarlalaa' ('thank you' in Mongolian). Also "Mendi" (Tuvan) and "mend" (Mongolian) and the verb form "bol" like in "boldu" (Tuvan) and "Boldog/bolson/bolno/etc" (Mongolian) and of course, there's the vowel harmony too, which I better understood through Mongolian. So I think that familiarity is a useful discount so long as I don't confuse the two.
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Le Baron
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby Le Baron » Tue Dec 20, 2022 6:09 pm

Is the question about actual 'maintenance' of existing language? Or the positive, possibly time-saving, effect of learning a related language? The answers above seem to be talking about the latter.
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leosmith
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby leosmith » Mon Dec 26, 2022 11:19 am

Le Baron wrote:Is the question about actual 'maintenance' of existing language? Or the positive, possibly time-saving, effect of learning a related language? The answers above seem to be talking about the latter.
Ditto. To my way of thinking, there is no discount for maintaining similar languages. For example, you do a 30 min maintenance activity for each of French, Spanish and Mandarin. You don't spend less time on French and Spanish because they are similar to each other. You may spend different amounts of time because you have different levels, or the languages have different difficulties, etc., but not because they are similar. There is a discount in learning similar languages, but not in maintaining.
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94000d
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Re: Maintaining related languages

Postby 94000d » Wed Jan 04, 2023 3:00 am

Le Baron wrote:Is the question about actual 'maintenance' of existing language? Or the positive, possibly time-saving, effect of learning a related language? The answers above seem to be talking about the latter.

The actual maintenance.
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