Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

General discussion about learning languages
Cavesa
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Re: Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Jun 12, 2018 11:56 am

William Camden wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger
A Slovak Jew who worked on a money counterfeiting operation for the Germans while a prisoner in a concentration camp. He wrote a book about it after the war. It seems his manuscript was written in a mixture of Slovak and Czech, and the publishers edited it into standard Czech.
I heard about this man, definitely a fascinating story to learn about. But the edition into the standard Czech is no surprise, despite not being necessary (most probably). What is even worse: translations between Czech and Slovak. The Slovak natives sometimes get something in Czech, when their publishers don't want to bother for a smaller market. We don't. It is also surprisingly uncommon to find Slovak books regularly in the czech bookshops, despite the natives being our hugest minority.

I think the generation of Adolf Burger may have been much more used to the Slovak-Czech hybrid. Czechoslovakia was one country, with much more intertwined media market, with more mobility of some groups of people (as far as I know, it was far from uncommon to pass the several years of the obligatory army training in the other region), and with more individual sense of belonging to the whole Czechoslovakia. It was a country based on local patriotism. It was not exactly a national country, despite being created in their era.

We cannot compare the use of the Cz-Sk hybrid back then and now. Now, there are two countries, each has an official language with a standard regulated by its own institution, each has its own media market (no matter how often it makes little sense), its own politics and economy, its own schools (even though lots and lots of slovaks go to the Czech Republic). It is definitely possible to spend life "monolingual" now, while it was not so before the 1992.

I find it rather noteworthy though, that the Cz-Sk hybrid seems to be more palatable to learners than an Es-It or Es-Fr hybrid. Or perhaps we should look at more closely related languages. Would you be more or less reluctant to speak an Es-Catalan hybrid?
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William Camden
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Re: Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

Postby William Camden » Tue Jun 12, 2018 12:10 pm

Cavesa wrote:
William Camden wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Burger
A Slovak Jew who worked on a money counterfeiting operation for the Germans while a prisoner in a concentration camp. He wrote a book about it after the war. It seems his manuscript was written in a mixture of Slovak and Czech, and the publishers edited it into standard Czech.
I heard about this man, definitely a fascinating story to learn about. But the edition into the standard Czech is no surprise, despite not being necessary (most probably). What is even worse: translations between Czech and Slovak. The Slovak natives sometimes get something in Czech, when their publishers don't want to bother for a smaller market. We don't. It is also surprisingly uncommon to find Slovak books regularly in the czech bookshops, despite the natives being our hugest minority.

I think the generation of Adolf Burger may have been much more used to the Slovak-Czech hybrid. Czechoslovakia was one country, with much more intertwined media market, with more mobility of some groups of people (as far as I know, it was far from uncommon to pass the several years of the obligatory army training in the other region), and with more individual sense of belonging to the whole Czechoslovakia. It was a country based on local patriotism. It was not exactly a national country, despite being created in their era.

We cannot compare the use of the Cz-Sk hybrid back then and now. Now, there are two countries, each has an official language with a standard regulated by its own institution, each has its own media market (no matter how often it makes little sense), its own politics and economy, its own schools (even though lots and lots of slovaks go to the Czech Republic). It is definitely possible to spend life "monolingual" now, while it was not so before the 1992.

I find it rather noteworthy though, that the Cz-Sk hybrid seems to be more palatable to learners than an Es-It or Es-Fr hybrid. Or perhaps we should look at more closely related languages. Would you be more or less reluctant to speak an Es-Catalan hybrid?


Burger also spoke rather good German, noticeable in interviews and TV appearances late in his life. (German was a widespread L2 in the region and many Jews also treated it as a cultural language, often abandoning Yiddish in favour of it.) After the war he moved to Prague. If he had stayed in Slovakia it is possible he would have had the book published in Slovak.
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Cavesa
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Re: Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

Postby Cavesa » Tue Jun 12, 2018 12:31 pm

William Camden wrote:Burger also spoke rather good German, noticeable in interviews and TV appearances late in his life. (German was a widespread L2 in the region and many Jews also treated it as a cultural language, often abandoning Yiddish in favour of it.) After the war he moved to Prague. If he had stayed in Slovakia it is possible he would have had the book published in Slovak.


It was normal to be bilingual back in those days. Czechoslovakia was really more of a "we live here together, so we should be a nation" kind of country than vice versa. Our Jews could have flourished in a country with that mindset, had it not been for the occupation and WW2.

Sure, it would have been transformed to Slovak, had he returned there. But the point still stays: his mix of both languages was seen as a mistake and not just personal style even back then, when it was certainly a more normal thing colloquially than it is now.I wonder whether the issue would be treated differently in various other eras, more open to use of colloquial language in literature. And I don't mean just more modern times. Centuries ago, it was normal to write a book in one's own language and use lots of Latin, French, and other citations. And you just expected your readers to keep up with you. Small languages were also less codified back then.
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reineke
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Re: Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

Postby reineke » Fri Aug 31, 2018 8:12 pm

FSI chart

French - 30 weeks (vs 24 weeks required for Spanish, Romanian etc.). Somewhere in between Cat I and Cat II languages. The second link includes an interesting conversion chart that may answer some burning questions like French vs Spanish, Romanian being exceedingly difficult because of Slavic influences, Bulgarian helping significantly with Russian etc. If you know a closely related language, the training time is cut in half (with exceptions). Conversion from Est Slavic <> South Slavic languages takes longer than learning a second Romance language. Cat IV is called "Super-hard languages" which sounds too colloquial for my liking.

Conversion Training in Related Languages
(SLS strongly encourages you to consult the Language Training Supervisor)
Closely related languages: (average length of training assignment 10-12 wks)
• Czech 3/3 > Slovak 3/3
• Serbo-Croatian 3/3 > Croatian variant 3/3 :> Serbian variant 3/3 Bosnian variant 3/3
• Macedonian 3/3 > Bulgarian 3/3
• Indonesian 3/3 > Malay 3/3

Related languages: (average length of training assignment 14-18 wks)
• Thai 3/3 > Lao 3/3
• Russian 3/3 > Ukrainian 3/3
• Spanish 3/3 > Portuguese 3/3

Other Related Languages:
• Germanic 3/3 <:::> Germanic 3/3 (18 to 22 wks)
(Germanic languages: Dutch, German, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish)
• Slavic 3/3 :> Slavic 3/3 (30 to 36 wks)
(Slavic languages: Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian,
Slovak, Slovenian, Ukrainian)
(Converting Bulgarian or Macedonian 3/3 to Russian 3/3 typically requires the full
44-week course.)

https://www.state.gov/m/fsi/sls/c78549.htm
https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/247092.pdf
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Deinonysus
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Re: Does knowing a related language significantly help learning?

Postby Deinonysus » Fri Aug 31, 2018 8:35 pm

As others have said, yes. Absolutely. My experience with Duolingo Danish and Indonesian is some anecdotal evidence of them.

I know a few languages related to Danish: native English, conversational German, and some very basic Icelandic. I blew through 680 words in about two weeks, getting up to level 11.

I am learning Indonesian right now, and I just reached level 11 in that too, also in around two weeks. But I have only learned 247 Indonesian words with the same amount of time and effort. That is because I don't know any languages that are related to Indonesian, so I need to repeat lessons much more to get the vocabulary into my head.

Indonesian grammar is notoriously easy, and I would say that it has around the same difficulty for me as Danish grammar (at least at my current level, which is low in both languages), despite the fact that Danish is closely related to my native language. But even despite this, I was still able to get almost three times as far in Danish with the same amount of time and effort because I had so much help with the vocabulary.
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