learning languages in a logical order

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learning languages in a logical order

Postby ancient forest » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:22 pm

For a language learner that has the goal of learning multiple languages, is there any reason to learn those languages in a particular order?

For example, let's say that someone wants to learn Spanish, French, and German, but that person has the same level of interest in all three languages. Would there be any benefit in studying any one of those languages first?
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby DaveAgain » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:40 pm

ancient forest wrote:For a language learner that has the goal of learning multiple languages, is there any reason to learn those languages in a particular order?

For example, let's say that someone wants to learn Spanish, French, and German, but that person has the same level of interest in all three languages. Would there be any benefit in studying any one of those languages first?
There was a Professor Arguelles video where he recommended Spanish, French, [Italian], German.

The key thing in his scenario was to separate italian and spanish as they sound very much alike, and can cause confusion.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby David1917 » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:46 pm

This is something that gets discussed a lot, and Prof Arguelles in particular has devoted many posts on HTLAL as well as some Youtube videos on this topic.

For your three languages I would probably recommend going: Spanish, German, French. This is because you would be introduced to some good comparative lexical work by studying Spanish after Arabic, and at least orthographically Spanish is the simpler of the 2 Romance languages selected. Moreover, living in the USA you have plenty of opportunities to practice using Spanish. Rather than diving into French immediately after, I'd say to study German, which would provide again another stimulating comparative exercise, this time in comparison to English. This will also give you time to consolidate Spanish, before ultimately adding French to your list. At this point, being a) a native English speaker b) grounded in one Romance language and c) having engaged in 2 such explorations outlined above, learning French might be the "culmination" of all these efforts.

On the other hand, if there is any reason that one of these is tugging at you more than another, by all means begin with that first. This could be a vacation, an interest in the national literature/film/music, etc. Even with all the "logic" in the world guiding you to undertake this study in one order or another, if you're constantly wanting to study one of the others then your productivity will suffer.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby David1917 » Thu Jan 17, 2019 10:49 pm

DaveAgain wrote:There was a Professor Arguelles video where he recommended Spanish, French, [Italian], German.


Great minds think alike.

I'd actually also like to add that studying all 3 simultaneously would be a very interesting and rewarding exercise, especially if using the courses recommended in the above video. This is because they all follow the same scripts, so you would be comparing them the entire time. This would be more of an intellectual endeavor (though since you study Classical Arabic, maybe this would suit you?) and its short-term returns for speaking, etc. might be considerably diminished with the way you'd have to divide your study time. Also, only knowing one language aside from English right now, you may not have the "skill" of separating the languages very well developed so, proceed with caution here.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby Iversen » Thu Jan 17, 2019 11:15 pm

Assuming that you already know English and don't intend to spend the next couple of years in Latinamerica or Spain, I would normally put Spanish last among the three languages mentioned by the OP - simply because of the number of textbook systems, languages guides etc. in German and French. From a purely linguistic point of view the order is fairly unimportant, and you can get lot's of books and magazines and films in all three languages so that shouldn't affect your choice. However your location in USA would definitely point into the direction of Spanish first.

I can't say much about the ways you can profit from knowing Arabic in the study of Spanish, except that some words in Spanish come from Arabic and that may add a tinge of nostalgia to Spanish, but that won't give you enough words to outweigh the large number of English loanwords in all three languages.

Maybe you should use an old test: throw a dice and let 1,2 mean German, 3,4 French and 5,6 Spanish. And don't accept the outcome blindly, but roll the dice and ask yourself: did I REALLY like the result the dice pointed to? Sometimes it is easier to evaluate a decision when it seems it already has been taken.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby Sayonaroo » Fri Jan 18, 2019 12:59 am

I learned Japanese before Korean since they use Kanji and there are more resources for Japanese than Korean ie yomichan pop-up dictionary, kindle (there's no korean dictionary for the kindle), japanese subs, japanese blogs that transcribe stuff (they have so many bloggers in Japan), etc etc. I recently found out about this site hanjaro which inserts hanja/kanji/hanzi (depending on what you choose) into korean text you paste Korean text so I plan on reading a lot more Korean this year since that site makes reading that much easier for me. The output is not 100% correct since there are homonyms in Korean. I still find it extremely helpful since it's usually obvious when the hanja is wrong based on the context. I can't help but complain about reading hangeul when I am very literate in Japanese (read over 160 books and a lot of internet) in terms of reading for meaning (as opposed to reading stuff out loud). one of the advantages of Kanji (Chinese characters) is that it's effortless to read it for meaning since it's so automatic. As a lazy person, I love that characteristic of Kanji.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby 白田龍 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 1:21 am

Othewise, the odds that someone sets out to learn 3 languages actually sticking to the plan consistently for the years to come is actually pretty slim. You should ask yourself if you were to learn only one of these languages what would probably be more useful?
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby David1917 » Fri Jan 18, 2019 2:27 am

Iversen wrote:Assuming that you already know English and don't intend to spend the next couple of years in Latinamerica or Spain, I would normally put Spanish last among the three languages mentioned by the OP - simply because of the number of textbook systems, languages guides etc. in German and French.


Agree, if the OP intends to learn more languages than just these three, then I would definitely recommend French / German for accessing good resources. But in the case that there are no current designs on other languages, then it's not as important a consideration.

I can't say much about the ways you can profit from knowing Arabic in the study of Spanish, except that some words in Spanish come from Arabic and that may add a tinge of nostalgia to Spanish, but that won't give you enough words to outweigh the large number of English loanwords in all three languages.


I don't think it would be a great benefit as much as it would be interesting to see that connection in addition to the more obvious Latin/Germanic roots English shares with these 3.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:56 am

For someone with Arabic and English language background, I'd suggest German first, then French and then Spanish.

German is likely to be the harder of the three, an earlier focused start will get you along further, while not having to do maintenance and/or further learning of the other two languages concomitantly. My order was the exact opposite. :shock: German is taking forever...

Every other order can also make sense, but that's my logic above.
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Re: learning languages in a logical order

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 18, 2019 10:19 am

You ask for a logical order then it is obvious that it should be french then german then spanish because that is alphabetically correct. :D

EDIT: Wait there is actually a problem with that. It's just occurred to me that in French it would be German first then Spanish then French in order to be alphabetically correct. I think I see your conundrum
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