I've been thinking about beginning to start a fourth language to study. I have some time and I don't have to study it extremely hard, I could make it a long-term project that I work on little by little everyday, sort of how Russian has become for me. Part of the reason I have time, is less time devoted to Russian, but also, my French studies is mostly only extensive reading and listening, and occasionally intensive reading. So it is easy to fit in throughout the day. I'll write the languages I'm thinking about as a fourth language and try to give an explanation why I may choose it.
Korean I'm quite comfortable and confident with the Korean alphabet even in writing. Much much more so than even with the Russian alphabet. I have tried to learn Korean twice over the past several years but I think my methods were pretty bad for my personality. Mostly used flashcards and Anki, and I've forgotten most things. Also I got discouraged by the honorifics, because all learning materials start by teaching the most polite honorific, and I just wanted the honorific I could use with friends. I understand honorifics are a huge part of Korean culture though, even more so than in Japanese I think, so it is something a foreign learner needs to learn, I just get impatient wanting to learn conjugations I can use with friends. I think the language is cool and I have a number of Korean and Korean-American friends.
Cantonese My reasons aren't very good for this one, but I really want to learn the language at some point. I've been to Hong Kong and stayed with a family before and the mom didn't speak any English, so I learned a few phrases. I really enjoy Hong Kong, but I probably shouldn't study this language next due to time constraints.
Indonesian I like that the language is written in Latin alphabet with few diacritical marks, unlike Vietnamese or even Polish and Czech. I would like to give this language a shot one day.
Estonian This has always been a language I wanted to learn even though I understand the grammar is very complex, more so than Russian I believe. But at least Estonian uses the Latin alphabet which is a plus over Russian for me personally. I traveled to Estonia while I lived in France to visit a friend and I loved the country and the people. I also like the idea of learning a language with only around 1,000,000 native speakers in a way. If I had to choose a non-Indo-European language, I should probably choose this compared to the other two. Also, Estonian girls.
Swedish I used to have lots of Swedish friends in college, and I also think the language was really cool and would be fun to learn. Swedish people are really fun to hang out with and nice to talk to. Another reason I want to learn Swedish so much is a Swede I once knew told me there isn't any point for me to learn Swedish, and I am so lucky to be a native English speaker. What a strange thing to say. Anyways, the only Swedish words I remember are kjol and tack. I learned kjol from a dictionary over six years ago because I thought the word looked interesting with the kj next to each other, and I never forgot the meaning since.
Dutch I've become increasingly interested in Dutch for some time. It is an interesting language to me because I find similarities with it and English but also German. It seems like a bit in between the two in some ways.
Haitian Creole I think Iguanamon has convinced me that I will have to learn Hatian Creole one day after I realized how similar the vocabulary was to French. The grammar also seems pretty interesting.
Italian This is a language I probably have the best shot at getting to a high level due to my solid Romance language foundation. But I think it may be too similar to Spanish and I wonder about interference. I'm not totally sure interference would be a problem with me personally, since I never had any interference issues between French and Spanish, vocabulary wise.
Catalan Another Romance language and perhaps a better choice than Italian due to less similarities with Spanish, I believe. Catalan has interested me for awhile and I enjoy the history of the language as well. It has some similarities with French, which would be cool. Also since it is a Romance language, I think I could learn at a faster pace than with some other languages, due to grammar and vocabulary similarities shared with French and Spanish, although I would have to pay attention the false-cognate and grammar that is not the same and learn those cases well.
Ukrainian I'm sure I want choose this language next but I thought I would write it anyways. One of my reasons for learning Russian actually was so I could use Russian language texts to learn Ukrainian from. I think there would be way too many similarities between Russian to learn now, and also I'm struggling with Russian so much, it would be quite silly to try another Slavic language at the same time. Also Ukrainian has a bit different Cyrillic alphabet than the Russian one.
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French I read some more of Père Goriot today. I learned a new word, rafistoler and I have no idea if it is an old-fashioned word or if people still use it. I think the word is really cool, cause it has a neat look and sound to me. One problem about reading 19th century novels in a foreign language is a foreigner never can easily tell how rare or out of date a new word learned is. I would love to use rafistoler in my writing or speech sometime, but I'm afraid people may tell me I have the speech of a very old man. lol I've actually had that happen before, I used words I learned from a novel and people were shocked a foreigner even knew such a word, and they also told me I sound like an old man talking if I use such a word. Perhaps though, that can be my legacy to the French language, I just use old-fashioned slang and words from Balzac novels in everyday conversation, in an attempt to bring them back in style.
I really enjoy reading Balzac, he is very fun to read as a foreigner because he loves to go overboard with descriptions, so it can be good for vocabulary. You just need a higher level of reading comprehension to understand at first, more so than many other French authors, except for Proust perhaps. What a native speaker likely finds redundant and tedious when reading Balzac, I find very enjoyable.
I will try to give some examples of Balzac's passion for description.
Ce jeune malheur ressemblait à un arbuste aux feuilles jaunies, fraîchement planté dans un terrain contraire. Sa physonomie roussâtre, ses cheveux d'un blond fauve, sa taille trop mince, exprimaient cette grâce que les poètes modernes trouvaient aux statuettes du Moyen Age. Ses yeux gris mélangés de noir exprimaient une douceur, une résignation chrétiennes. Ses vêtements simples, peu coûteux, trahissaient des formes jeunes. Elle était jolie par juxtaposition. Heureuse, elle eût été ravissante : le bonheur est la poésie des femmes, comme la toilette en est le fard. Si la joie d'un bal eût refleté ses teintes rosées sur ce visage pâle; si les douceurs d'une vie élegante eussent rempli, eussent vermillonné ces joues déjà légèrement creusées; si l'amour eût ranimé ces yeux tristes, Victorine aurait pu lutter avec les plus belles jeunes filles.
Aussi Balzac likes to use a pattern of lots of verbs one after another sometimes for effect.
Si quelque serrure allait mal, il l'avait bientôt démontée, rafistolée, huilée, limée, remontée, en disant: ça me connaît.
If you don't know enough words, a sentence like that could be tortuous for a foreigner, but it is good learning if you don't know only one or two. Also, it is good instruction on style, a foreigner could learn to create sentences like that in their own written stories.
Spanish Just doing Duolingo and FSI. FSI is really great. I tried to watch just a small part of a telenovela after doing FSI today and the words didn't seem all jumbled up. I could hear lots of individual words, but my comprehension was still low. I plan to write in Spanish some here sometime in the future. Also in the FSI lessons, I can't figure out if my ears are playing tricks on me or what, but it seems Spanish speakers tend to swallow vowels in certain scenarios and it sounds sorta French like. For example, Dónde está el hotel? It sounds closer to, Dónde está 'l'hotel, where the e in el is dropped the a on está combines with the l sound, and the l sound combines with hotel. Also I notice a similar case with, Dónde está la embajda? It sounds almost like the French definite article before a vowel, like Dónde está l'embajada?
I can't tell is the vowels are actually being swallowed in Spanish and disappear completely or if they just become softer and quieter and I can't hear them in native speech.