How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

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Xenops
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How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby Xenops » Sat Jan 22, 2022 7:53 pm

If you wanted a B-C level of fluency in a family of languages that are quite similar to each other, how do you go about it?

I was thinking specifically of Norwegian-Swedish-Danish, but this question could also be applied to the BCMS languages, or smaller languages in France and Spain (I honestly feel like I'm more likely to get Catalan confused with either French or Spanish, than Spanish and Italian)

Would you first focus on one until the B-C levels, and then poke around into the sister languages? I've also read the argument for learning two simultaneously (though not as often).
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby einzelne » Sat Jan 22, 2022 10:02 pm

1. One language at a time.
2. You start with the language you want to have active skills.
3. For all others, I would develop passive skills only.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby daegga » Sat Jan 22, 2022 10:27 pm

For the Scandinavian languages, it's pretty simple:
1. learn one of them (B2 or higher)
2. quickly go through some beginners material of the others (I did roughly 7 lessons of Assimil per day)
3. mass input (reading, audio books, TV)

I can hold a conversation in any of them, but I lack precision in the latter 2. Spelling/grammar/pronunciation is shaky in the latter 2 too - they are all so similar that my first scandinavian language always shines through. Passively they are all on a similar level.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 23, 2022 1:38 am

I didn't really plan the sequence of my languages - external circumstances like availability and school dictated the order, and I basically studied all my languages concurrently (I still do) - but apart from Italian and Spanish I started them sequentially with an interval of approx.one year between each newcomer.

I got my first Germanic (and Nordic) language for free by being Danish, and that gave me easy access to Swedish and Norwegian. I know that I could read and understand English before I was 13 years old because I borrowed books in English from the grown-ups' library on my mother's library card, and the age limit for getting your own adult card was fixated at 13 years. Until recently I blamed school for deciding when to start learning English, but during a recent meeting in my travel club I was informed by a bunch of teachers that in the 60s you couldn't get English before 5. class (it's earlier now), which in my case would be from the time I was 10½ years old. So either I learnt it very fast or Fred Flintstone & Co. gave me a headstart. Anyway, German followed one year later, and I learned passive Low German by watching German TV soon after. I know that I could read Dutch in 1972 during my 1. Interrail tour where I was 18 years old, and I followed a university course in Old Norse + Icelandic in the mid 80s,but only learned to speak Icelandic thirty years later. Afrikaans came after 2010, and I have still not learnt things like Faroese or any of the Frisian dialects.

As for the Romance languages (and Latin) I was taught French and (passive) Latin in the 'realskole' (abolished since then), which started when I was around 13½ year old, but I had studied Latin words earlier, and I had also started to learn Italian and Spanish concurrently from textbooks before school mercifully deigned to teach me French. Romanian only came during the late 80s where I studied French, and then suddenly we got an external lector (i.e. assistant professor) from Romania who arranged some courses - I couldn't resist that temptation. I also learnt Catalan, Old French and Old Occitan at the university, but apart from it being represented in one special meta-Romance course I only studied Portuguese from 2006 and onwards (I needed it for a trip to Cabo Verde).

I bought books for Greek and Russian around 1980, but didn't use them before I quit language learning in 1981, and right now in my ripe old age I'm trying to add the more or less the whole Slavic group to my list of languages - and the strange thing is that I don't feel that they harm each other, I just relish in the plethora of common Slavic vocabulary. Russian was of course the first (since I already had some books), and then Serbian, Bulgarian, Polish, Slovak in that order - plus some less serious learning activities in the rest of the group . I can more or less read those I mentioned at the Wikipedia level (not hardcore novels or poems), but don't speak them in public yet. It's logical that Russian came first, being the largest one (and the first for which I bought books), but Serbian came next due to a vocabulary learning experiment in 2014. And then Bulgarian because I tried to read an archeological text about the Copper age and found it surprisingly easy.

Sorry that I couldn't come up with a concise formula...
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby iguanamon » Sun Jan 23, 2022 1:22 pm

One at a time. I had learned Spanish to C level before I tackled Portuguese. Despite my level of Spanish being high, Portuguese was difficult for me. I kept seeing it through a Spanish prism. The "Spanish to Portuguese" books reinforced this hindrance. It wasn't until I started to see Portuguese as a language within its own right that I began to progress. I was then able to leverage my Spanish to help me rather than hinder me.

I wasn't trying to learn Portuguese passively. I wanted to be able to speak, listen, read and write. That's why approaching learning the language as a "variant" of Spanish "and this is how it differs" was not helping me.

Learning Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino was easier after having high levels in both Spanish and Portuguese. Speaking Ladino, (though I can) never really entered the equation. I write sparingly in the language. It was more of a passive activity.

Catalan was a language I jumped into by reading translated novels in the beginning- like "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"; "Gulliver's Travels"; "Robinson Crusoe", etc. While I could read and gain vocabulary and some idea of grammar, I couldn't speak and write very well. I then realized I needed to to do a course, so I did Assimil's "Le Catalan". The course helped me consolidate my acquired knowledge and taught me conversational skills, which is what I needed.

Haitian Creole, is a mostly French-lexified creole language with an African grammar. After a lot of reading; listening; conversation and writing. I had reached a high level. I then turned to "down-island" creole (Lesser Antilles {St Lucia, Dominica, Trinidad} French Creole). The Caribbean French Creoles are more mutually intelligible than the Romance languages, in my experience, but still, they are distinct languages. Given my experience with learning the Iberian romance languages, I was better able to notice the differences and leverage my knowledge with Haitian Creole to reach a conversational level.

What I could not have done was try to learn them all at the same time. Learning a language, and by learning I mean being able to incorporate it- to manipulate it, means taking on board a lot more than just vocabulary, it means absorbing and being able to use the grammar, prosody, syntax. That's a lot to take on board from just one language. I can't do it with two at the same time, given what I want to be able to do with a language.

Of course, if one just wants to be able to read and listen, that's a lot easier than mastering productive skills. Similar languages, despite their similarity are still separate languages. I have witnessed native Spanish-speakers communicating with native Portuguese-speakers(and native Italian-speakers) many times to varying degrees of success with each other. If the conversation involves a significant amount of complexity, it becomes significantly more difficult for both parties. If the conversation is between second language-speakers of one of these languages with a native-speaker of another similar Romance language, the result is much less certain... at least in my experience. The thing is Italian, Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese are different languages for a reason. There is a massive discount for those who have learned one of them to a high level when learning another one of them, but it still takes a lot to get them right and avoid interference from the other. It takes a lot of time and effort. Of course, there's nothing wrong with "good enough" to communicate, if that's an acceptable situation to the learner.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby Le Baron » Sun Jan 23, 2022 4:05 pm

Since I watched that video between Scandinavian language mutual intelligibility. I think: Icelandic and then work eastwards.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 23, 2022 4:15 pm

When I read Le Baron's message I thought: learn High German first - then you know what cases and subjunctives are, and then take the trip to Icelandic where the resources are less plentiful, but the structure is similar in many ways (though not when it comes to moving verbs to the final position - the Icelanders do invert, but keep their verbal movements within reason). And with both German and Icelandic under your belt it shouldn't be much of a problem to add the remaining Nordic languages that have simplified their morphology to such an extent that they compete with English and Dutch.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby zenmonkey » Sun Jan 23, 2022 5:14 pm

iguanamon wrote:One at a time. I had learned Spanish to C level before I tackled Portuguese. Despite my level of Spanish being high, Portuguese was difficult for me. I kept seeing it through a Spanish prism. The "Spanish to Portuguese" books reinforced this hindrance. It wasn't until I started to see Portuguese as a language within its own right that I began to progress. I was then able to leverage my Spanish to help me rather than hinder me.

I wasn't trying to learn Portuguese passively. I wanted to be able to speak, listen, read and write. That's why approaching learning the language as a "variant" of Spanish "and this is how it differs" was not helping me.

Learning Djudeo-espanyol/Ladino was easier after having high levels in both Spanish and Portuguese. Speaking Ladino, (though I can) never really entered the equation. I write sparingly in the language. It was more of a passive activity.

Catalan was a language I jumped into by reading.

Oh!! This post ten times.

I’m not particularly interested in passive acquisition of languages.

I speak French and Spanish fluently. I understand Portuguese, Italian and Catalan enough to read novels and poetry with a small struggle and a bit of research. I’ve studied Ladino (but can’t decipher handwritten). Spoken understanding in these languages is very hit or miss. Anything fast and I’m lost (especially Catalan).

I know German and get 80%+ of Yiddish (which is both a lot and very little and I can decipher written forms at a turtles pace).

Getting to the point of seeing the language as a different language is the key. But how?

I can tell you how I failed.

If you already master a language in the family, don’t use beginner material. I found this boring and poor return on my time.

Don’t think you can activate the language with 10-15 minutes a day. 3 days a week. I know I’ll have be very active when I get back to Italian and Portuguese. My last efforts waffled. Next efforts will be intensive, 3 month drives (lots of speaking time).

If you’re looking for active mastery don’t just spend your time listening to podcast and watching movies. I did lots of that and next I’ll need to practice mostly speaking … in order to speak.

Understand that you really need to master one or “encapsulate” your languages before you attack the next one. My German is ok, B2. The bleed over to Yiddish and back is tremendous and counter productive. Treating them as separate languages is very hard and I know I have to stop comparing them.

One tool to think about is prosody. All these languages have very different rhythms and pronunciation. Focusing on that may help.

I still feel I’m stumbling in the dark acquiring family members so I’m all ears to better “how to’s”.

It takes a lot of time and effort. Of course, there's nothing wrong with "good enough" to communicate, if that's an acceptable situation to the learner.


Can’t underline the above enough.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby reineke » Sun Jan 23, 2022 6:12 pm

Xenops wrote:If you wanted a B-C level of fluency in a family of languages that are quite similar to each other, how do you go about it?

I was thinking specifically of Norwegian-Swedish-Danish, but this question could also be applied to the BCMS languages, or smaller languages in France and Spain (I honestly feel like I'm more likely to get Catalan confused with either French or Spanish, than Spanish and Italian)

Would you first focus on one until the B-C levels, and then poke around into the sister languages? I've also read the argument for learning two simultaneously (though not as often).


You're asking about languages that are quite similar. That's of course debatable but I think it's pretty clear what you mean when you mention BCS, Norwegian/Swedish, Catalan/Spanish and maybe Spanish/Portuguese/Italian.

Indo-European > Germanic > North Germanic > West Scandinavian/East Scandinavian
Indo-European > Germanic> West Germanic> High German dialects

High German is usually a fancy way of saying "German" i.e. Standard High German and is generally an unnecessary and potentially confusing flourish. "High German" having originated in and around southern Germany (south vs "low" being another distraction to your average reader) is "not to be confused with High German" (Wikip) - referring to the difference between standard modern High German and other High German dialects.

Anyway, do you want to travel 20 miles and train as a strongman or would you prefer to go to a local gym? Because that's the difference between German/Norwegian/Swedish and Icelandic. Icelandic has fewer resources and is appreciably harder to acquire than Norwegian, Swedish or German. After a year or two at the Swedish...gym? it will be appreciably easier to roll Icelandic truck tires. You'll still have to go through the hassle of finding the right place etc. Icelandic is still Scandinavian. Assuming you have Norwegian and Icelandic "under your belt" you can turn your attention to other languages. Not sure how much you will be adding coping mechanisms vs. actual languages.

Universities have produced generations of Romanists and somehow it worked. Also I can recall an example where someone close to me started mixing German when attempting to speak English. The interesting detail is that there was a 50 year break between the two and German was completely abandoned and "forgotten". After a while French started popping up. That language was active, however. I am generally skeptical about people's interference phobia. I'm also not sure interference/transparency has been sufficiently researched or understood.

B or C? Because there's a substantial difference between the two. B - what? I presume it would be a mixture of B1 - C1 across several languages. Where's PM? Because he may have a thing or two to say about it.

BCS - Dear lord. You can sustain a Croatian or Serbian language learning bubble and you will automatically gain comprehension in others. Assuming you get to C level in one of the two you'd be working on cloaking and conversion mechanisms. I'd personally go with ijekavian base and supplement with Yugoslav movies and media which should accomplish a blended result. Your main polluter will be your foreign junk and not having learned one thing vs the other.
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Re: How do you study a family of closely-related languages?

Postby Iversen » Sun Jan 23, 2022 9:31 pm

"High German" may be the only kind people know - or they know that there are dialects of 'German', but don't care about them. But I wrote "High German" to separate it from "Low German", and the two are separated not only by the second Germanic sound shift, but also by the fact that Low German has skipped much of the morphology which is retained in High German, and that was actually the point of specifically mentioning High German in this context.

Apart from that I don't think the detour around Icelandic is practical, mostly because the Nordic languages are easier to learn than Icelandic due to the abundance of materials. But if you do intend to learn Icelandic then you you will stand a better chance if you already know High German (plus one or more of the other Nordic languages).
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