Ussherd From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2000, 328 posts, RR: 0 Posted (9 years 8 months 8 hours ago) and read 1574 times:
A question for all you multilingual people out there.
Is it easier to learn a language that is similar to a language already spoken or is it better to go for one that is completely unrelated? You'd think that as a Spanish speaker it would be easier to learn, say, Italian or Portuguese, but would the similarity between the languages mean that you'd end never learning the new language properly? Also, if someone were to learn a completely unrelated language, how possible would it be to achieve a "true" accent?
TWFirst From Vatican City, joined Apr 2000, 6346 posts, RR: 53 Reply 1, posted (9 years 8 months 8 hours ago) and read 1534 times:
Good questions...
I think learning a related language is much easier. If another language has similar grammatical constructions, rules, etc., then it's easier to just focus on vocabulary without trying to remember vocab AND proper grammar. I don't think you'd "stop" learning the new language properly if you continued to make the effort.
I think it's difficult to acheive a "true" accent, but not impossible. There are always going to be some words you speak that people will be able to hear some traits of your native tongue, however slight. I also think it has to do with how much effort you put forth... I don't understand how people can live in a country for years/decades and speak the local language, yet still have an accent as heavy as when they first landed.
Pacificjourney From New Zealand, joined Jul 2001, 2698 posts, RR: 9 Reply 2, posted (9 years 8 months 7 hours ago) and read 1528 times:
You may be interested to know that generally speaking native-spanish speakers are highly successful at learning new languages. The same is also true of Russian speakers.
This is due to the way you learnt your own language - a grammar based education - which you can more easily tranfer to any language than say and English speaker most of whom have only the vaguest understanding of how their language works.
S.p.a.s. From Liechtenstein, joined Mar 2001, 954 posts, RR: 3 Reply 3, posted (9 years 8 months 7 hours ago) and read 1528 times:
As per accent, once I was told that it is much easier to get a perfect accent if you learn a language as a child, as your vocal chords aren??t that stiff... with age, they get "harder" and learning new sounds becomes more difficult..
Albeit being a Brazilian by birth, my family is of Austrian immigrants, and we speak in German among us, so I learnt this language as a child...other people here have many problems learning to speak German, as some sounds doesn't exist in Portuguese, like the "CH" combination on Ich..
Lindy From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 6, posted (9 years 8 months 6 hours ago) and read 1502 times:
In my elementary school I had German and Russian, beside my regular Polish class.
For me Russian was much easier to learn because there is lots of a similarity in Polish-Russian language. Alphabet is different but pronunciation is similar. With German I had some problems.
In general: I have studied Russian for 5 years in school and German for 8 years and I can say that the only things from both languages I remember are just basic stuff. If you don’t use it you lose it.
Kilavoud From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 11, posted (9 years 8 months 5 hours ago) and read 1472 times:
Dear Ussherd
“ Qui apprend une nouvelle langue acquiert une nouvelle âme ”
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Translation : "who learns a new language acquires a new soul"
Every language is difficult, but easy if you like it. The choice is personal, as for the decision to open yourself to y new culture, a new civilization.
DesertJets From United States of America, joined Feb 2000, 7676 posts, RR: 18 Reply 12, posted (9 years 8 months 4 hours ago) and read 1471 times:
Also as you learn more and more languages it becomes easier too, especially if you begin at an early age. Basically your brain learns how to adapt to the new structures the more you make it struggle through foreign syntax.
As for accents, much of your ability to make certain sounds is formed during childhood. As you grow up you are only exposed to the 40 something sounds that your language makes and your vocal chords get used to making only those sounds. I am not certain about the idea that your chords get less elastic as you get older, but somehow I can believe it.
Take for example native Spanish speakers speaking English, and ask them say the word stop. I guarrentee you it will sound like "estop." Reason being that Spanish does not have the "s" sound by itself without a procedeing e. Hence Espana, instead of Spain.
Stop drop and roll will not save you in hell. --- seen on a church marque in rural Virginia
Csavel From United States of America, joined Jan 2001, 1335 posts, RR: 4 Reply 13, posted (9 years 8 months 4 hours ago) and read 1460 times:
Aaah, my favorite topic other than airliners and sex!
Accents are hard to lose, because as many people have pointed out, once you hvae your mouth and tongue trained to certain sounds, it is difficult to change. Plus it is natural to try to substitue what sounds like the closest sound. For example, in English, most vowels are diphthongs, i.e. the long "O" in hose is actually, depending on which variety of English you speak, (We'll use my New York accent for this) sort of a short uh sound (like the a in about) followed by an oo sound. Try it now, class.
So for a native Spanish speaker, his or her o is a "pure" O. No value judgement, it just means it isn't a diphthong. he or she, unless it is explicitly pointed out, and how often do people as adults take that intense a class, will likely substitute the pure O, and thus you have an accent. English speakers will substitue a diphthong for a pure O. Plus there seems to be a small set of sounds that are difficult and don't appear in a lot of languages, non-native speakers always have trouble. Examples are the French uvular R, took me almost five years to do it! both Th sounds in English (you know 'zeese one'). I don't know, but I imagine it is very difficult to pick up a tone language if you don't already speak one.
Grammar probably works the same way, I'm assuming. The closer a grammar is to yours, the easier and more natural it will seem.
As a native English speaker, I find it difficult sometimes because English is so universal. Those whom I meet in business, even if working in foreign coutries and in a language that I can reasonably get by in, we'll almost invariably converse in English. I went to a hotel Front Desk in Paris and asked for a room and prices in what I thought was presentable French. She answered me in English. Asked more questions in French and she answered all of them in English. I guess she was being helpful, but i was crestfallen. I couldn't have had *that* bad an accent, her answers showed she knew exactly what I was saying. So, aside from any stereotypes of the "Ugly American" sometimes even those English speakers who try have no one to play with.
I may be ugly. I may be an American. But don't call me an ugly American.
Ual747 From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 14, posted (9 years 8 months 1 hour ago) and read 1441 times:
I speak English, Mandarin Chinese, and French. Chinese was BY FAR the most difficult thing I've tried in my life. It is so different from English. French was very easy for me.
Ussherd From United Kingdom, joined Feb 2000, 328 posts, RR: 0 Reply 15, posted (9 years 8 months ago) and read 1428 times:
I read somewhere that our brains get wired for language in childhood as we listen to the speech patterns of those around us, which would explain why I speak English with a Northern Irish accent and Spanish with a Venezuelan accent. An adult who learns a new language has to use the existing brain "language circuitry" to approximate the sounds of the new language and can't produce the unfamiliar sounds instinctively. Presumably, the more languages learnt in childhood, the more chance you have of already being wired for the specific sounds of any new language you might learn as an adult. I like this theory better than the arthritic vocal chords idea!
Stratofish From Germany, joined Sep 2001, 1019 posts, RR: 6 Reply 16, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 23 hours ago) and read 1409 times:
As to the question if it's easier to learn a question similar to your mother tongue or different: logically the similar ones are easier but based on my experience I (as an example) am much more eager and successful in learning something completely new.
You'd be surprised how fast you can learn a language if you really want to, I once knew this russian girl who...
B747skipper From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 17, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 22 hours ago) and read 1422 times:
Well - I am multilingual as can be, many of you know...
Thanks to my family origin, former residences and present location...
I speak fluent English, French, and Spanish...
I speak some basic Dutch (Flemish actually), Portuguese and German...
I can read and understand Italian, and can read the (Russian) Cyrillic alphabet.
xxx
I was born in USA, father was an Irish-American, mother was Belgian...
I spoke English to him, French with my mother...
Then we moved to Paris, dad was an Attache at the US Embassy...
Mother insisted I went to the French public schools, not the US school...
xxx
In school, I also learned Latin and Greek... forgot all of it, but I remember a lot.
My mother was daughter of Russian refugees, I was in the Russian Orthodox Chuch.
I learned to pray in Russian, my grand'parents often spoke Russian to me...
xxx
Then NATO moved to Belgium, my dad went there, Brussels, my mother's home town...
Went to school there, learned Flemish (Dutch) and German in school...
At 18, went back to USA, university then Air Force...
xxx
After I lost my job with PanAm, I went to Argentina 1993...
Got married there, my wife does not speak English, so at home, it is Spanish.
My wife was a refugee as a kid in Brasil, during the "dirty war" 1976-1983...
She speaks fluent Portuguese... we have a beach house in Brasil... I learned Portuguese...
xxx
What I would suggest to all of you...
(1) Learn English... it ends up as being the "international language" after all.
(2) Learn a language related to your own, i.e. if you speak Spanish, learn Portuguese, or French...
(3) Select the languages you wish to speak based on the number of people and nations speaking it...
xxx
Learning languages is not difficult... "exposure" to one is where the secret is.
Babies learn to speak like the people around them, not grammar rules or correct spelling...
Make it fun, magazines, television, lyrics of songs and music...
xxx
My only regret, I wish I learned Japanese, a business language in Asia...
Or Mandarin, a future industrial "powerhouse" that China will be...
xxx
Happy contrails - a smile works in any world language...
Thanks, merci, gracias, obrigado, welbedankt, danke sehr, spasiba, grazzie, mange tak, shukria, shukram, domo aligato...
(s) Skipper
LOT767-300ER From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 18, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 22 hours ago) and read 1396 times:
Im content on knowing English and Polish perfectly + Fluent in French.
Skipper: thats rough...I like knowing that I dont have to move every 6 months like you did and learning a whole nother language. If my parents moved from country to country that much at 18 I would screw it and sit on my ass in the US where the best opportunities lie.
Shawn Patrick From United States of America, joined Jan 2000, 2588 posts, RR: 18 Reply 19, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 19 hours ago) and read 1387 times:
Wow, that was loaded, Petey.
I think I'd actually like to be in a family that moves to other places like that.
Regrettably I only speak English. But I'm working on French, which is really easy. I just wish I could go to France for a couple of months and become fluent so that I could start learning another language. Oh well.
Lan_Fanatic From Chile, joined Sep 2001, 1071 posts, RR: 7 Reply 20, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 18 hours ago) and read 1383 times:
I am chilean, therefore my language is spanish, and I can easily read and understand portuguese and italian without having ever studied them. also I began studying english when I was 4 and learnt it almost entirely. But I began studying french when I was 12...and I have only vague knowledge about that language.
But I think that if I had learn english and french in a parallel way, I guess french would have been much easier, as it is a latin language. (just like my native spanish)
B747_A340 From Canada, joined Dec 2000, 196 posts, RR: 0 Reply 21, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 16 hours ago) and read 1370 times:
My first language is Spanish. I started learning English when I was like 3 years old, so I have an extensive vocabulary, but I never really cared about the language that much, so I have an accent, not very thick, but you can still tell that Spanish is my first language. I started learning French 6 years ago and I can speak it and read it very well, last week I had a very nice conversation with a French lady and she said that my accent was very nice. I can read and understand both Italian and Portuguese, but I cannot speak them, I'm trying to learn both of them because one of my best friends speaks both of them, so she is teaching me. I can also understand Catalan and Gallego which are Spanish dialects, but again, I cant speak them. Right now I'm learning German, which is not a complicated language, but it has a lot of weird rules... And some of them don't make any sense to me.. Eh well. My goal in life is to fluently speak 10 languages by age 25. Why? Because I love languages... And if you learn a different language, you learn a different culture.
Swissgabe From Switzerland, joined Jan 2000, 5265 posts, RR: 36 Reply 24, posted (9 years 7 months 4 weeks 1 day 12 hours ago) and read 1345 times:
Yeah, in Switzerland there are 4 (FOUR) national languages on only 41'000 sq/km ...
I'm speaking German, learned French and English and I'm thinking of Spanish or/and Japanese to learn...
Smooth as silk - Royal Orchid Service /// Suid-Afrikaanse Lugdiens - Springbok
25 Shawn Patrick: Yeah that's a good question. I'll be in Switzerland for a few days during the summer - where in the country is French most widely spoken? Also, I assu
26 TWFirst: Nein, Deutsch is spoken in Liechtenstein.
27 Seb146: I have spoken English my whole life. The reason I chose to learn Spanish is most of my childhood friends spoke Spanish. It was very easy to learn. I a
28 Petertenthije: It is easier to learn a language related to your own. I have found my German classes easier to remember then my French. Purely because a lot of German
29 Iamcanadian: Try learning Canadian eh? Tougher than you think, with all that wierd slang and stuff eh? Excuse me while i put on my touque and my mukluks...its pret
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- a smile works in any world language...
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