1. Kevin Teichman

    Kevin Teichman Active Member

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    Can’t pick language to learn

    Discussion in 'The Lounge' started by Kevin Teichman, Jun 16, 2018.

    I have studied German for some time now (standard High German and Bavarian), and some Icelandic. I want to pick a third to study now, and I cannot decide between Finnish, Afrikaans, Russian, or Mandarin. Which is most interesting?

    I look at the “coolness” factor of a language rather than usefulness. Which is why I’ve studied German and Icelandic (both useless in Texas) over Spanish. Not bashing it, they are far more interesting to me.

    I love learning languages and hope to one day be able to speak 10 or more.
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I'm going to prejudicially pick Russian of the list you gave, but it was, admittedly, the language in which I worked as an interpreter while in the USAF. It has all the juiciness of learning a fully inflected language (a concept with which you will have already come into contact in German and Icelandic, though the Russian system is much less reduced than in the Germanic tribe), is still part of the Indo-European spectrum so you will be able to trace some word roots, but is outside the Germanic tribe of languages, which, at least to me, means all the yummy exoticness one could ask for. And you get to learn a new alphabet!

    It's like a staycation... if one were to employ that idea as a really brutalized simile. ;)
     
  3. BayView

    BayView Huh. Interesting. Contributor

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    I think it'd be interesting to learn Afrikaans because it's of such recent origin. And if you're shooting for learning 10 languages, learning Afrikaans would take you a long way toward learning Dutch, so... double whammy!
     
  4. Dragon Turtle

    Dragon Turtle Deadlier Jerry

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    I have studied both Finnish and Mandarin, and while both are incredibly cool, both of them beat me senseless and robbed me blind, leaving me frail and full of sorrow.

    What I mean is, they're frickin' hard. If you've never ventured outside Indo-European before, prepare to cry a lot. Mandarin will seem easy at first until you reach early intermediate and then you will cry constantly. Finnish will never seem easy but you will feel like an elf when you speak it. A crying elf.
     
  5. Moon

    Moon Contributor Contributor

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    "If you study Finnish, you're sanity will be Finnish-ed" - My Norwegian teacher. :p

    Out of those, I'd pick Russian.
     
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  6. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    I've never seen her videos before, but she reminds me of Nicole Arbour :blech:. I think it's her presence and facial expressions - very ADD. She's right about the language stuff, though. There's really no reason to learn Finnish. Only about 5 million people speak it and you can only use it in a country that's dark and depressing 9.5 months a year and incredibly, annoyingly drunk on beer and the sun for 2.5 months. If it was an easy language to learn, then I'd tell you to go for it, be an elf IRL, but it's not worth the headache unless you're actually planning to live in Finland (and if you are, get help).

    Learn Russian. It's going to be more useful, a lot of people speak it, and if you ever decide to visit Russia, you'll make much more out of the trip if you speak the language cos it's really not a given people there speak English. Plus it's a beautiful language and you get to learn a cool new alphabet. :agreed:
     
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  7. Kevin Teichman

    Kevin Teichman Active Member

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    What would be the best route to go for learning it? I can't submerge myself since I live in the U.S. and the apps are only useful for so much.

    What drew me in to Afrikaans was the accent of the speakers. I think its super cool and pleasant to listen to.

    Yes I have seen some of the Finnish words through a sample study source, they are nothing like what I am use to with German and Icelandic. No easy way to remember certain words (particular words were easy to remember in either German or Icelandic because of English similarities). Although Finnish is difficult, it does have a wow factor to knowing it. If I learned Finnish, I may be the only person in Texas to know it. And it would really stand out. That's fun and all until I get to the intermediate level.

    Knowing Chinese would be amazing and would impress others, but its so difficult that I would probably be best off dropping Icelandic and going all in on it. Chinese would also be extremely useful. As it is with achieving anything of great difficulty, the person must really want it. I think i'll wait a little longer before diving into Mandarin. In the meantime, i'll still be reading about ancient and modern China. Rich history there.
     
  8. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    My love affair with languages is an invested one. In learning Russian, I committed to it is my full-time job, literally, at the DLIFLC, and then on into service as a military interpreter and translator. My engagement of Spanish is genetic and organic. It's part of my history and is the language that is spoken where I presently live and work, again, as an interpreter and translator (those are two different jobs), now in the service of the USDOJ. I don't really have an answer for how to learn a language when one lives a life where it will see little use. My personal experience is limited to the aforementioned. o_O
     
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  9. Kevin Teichman

    Kevin Teichman Active Member

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    I have been thinking about this almost non-stop since yesterday. How about this for a study plan...

    I drop Icelandic and keep it on the sidelines as a conversational language (only 330000 speakers or so in the world, hard to justify investing serious time into this, as cool as it is), and maintain German, add Russian, and fill the final gap with something else (I chose not to say "Finnish" because that and Russian together is cumbersome). I feel I can make this work.

    Here's a question I have for y'all, its not language-related but something that maybe I can get insight on to get this off my mind. I have this problem where I feel certain family members (the family members of mine who think they know me and see me as mentally average and have NO idea about my interests in foreign cultures and languages) need to know that I can speak other languages. Maybe its from a low self-esteem, but they think they know me and see me as a simple individual with limited interests. What would be the best way to drop the matter, and to realize " I know what I know" and not worry about what they think or don't about me? I hope this question makes sense.
     
  10. Dragon Turtle

    Dragon Turtle Deadlier Jerry

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    :rofl:

    In my case I chose Finnish because I was majoring in linguistics and Finnish gets a lot of buzz among ling majors. When I registered for the course it had come down to a choice between that and Korean, but Korean was full. In hindsight I should've tried harder to snag a spot in the class anyway; Korean's a much more practical language for my life, since my husband's family is Korean, and I'm studying it independently now anyway, but at the time I was a silly undergrad who wanted something "cooler." I lost Finnish so fast once I stopped actively studying it. I took a whole academic year of it and I only remember like four words now, lol. Ah, the follies of youth.

    Anyways, @Kevin Teichman, I have a lot to say about studying multiple languages at once, but right now I have to run off to D&D so I'll pick this up later!
     
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  11. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    Well you only need four words to get by, come to think of it.

    1. Niin [neen]
    2. Perkele [pur-kay-leh]
    3. Kaljaa [kalyaaaaa]
    4. Perkele [pur-kay-leh]

    And if you must learn one sentence, learn this: Mistä lähtee ruotsin laivat? (= Where do the boats to Sweden leave?)

    Ok, you're good to go. To the OP as well, don't bother with Russian. Finnish is actually the easiest of them all!
     
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  12. Earp

    Earp Contributor Contributor

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    I"d go with Russian. I thimk Mandarin would be fun, but if I'm going to learn a new language, I'd want to be able to write in it, and I have no artistic ability at all.
     
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  13. Dragon Turtle

    Dragon Turtle Deadlier Jerry

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    lol, you don't need artistic ability to write Chinese. It's handwriting like any other.

    The writing system is very taxing on your memory, but that's its own issue. :meh:
     
  14. Kevin Teichman

    Kevin Teichman Active Member

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    I’m interested in your thoughts on this.
     
  15. Dragon Turtle

    Dragon Turtle Deadlier Jerry

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    Oh yeah, I forgot to come back!

    So, I'd seen a ton of advice to focus on only one language at a time, but I ignored it because I was so determined and because in high school I'd studied two languages at once (French and Mandarin) with no problem. Well, my teenage brain was more up to the challenge, it turned out, because last year when I tried to study Korean (beginner) and Mandarin (intermediate) at the same time it did not go well. I tried various ways of going at it, like having a Korean day then a Mandarin day, or a Korean week then a Mandarin week, or a Korean morning then a Mandarin morning... all of it was slowing me down in both languages. I'd spend more time than was worth it in each study session just trying to get into the right brainspace and remember what I was doing.

    Now, Korean and Mandarin are really different, despite a fair amount of borrowed vocabulary (which was helpful). It's possible the transition would have been smoother if I were studying related languages, but then again that might have increased my changes of mixing them up. Which is another thing that never happened to me in high school and I could never fathom how people would mix up totally different languages, but then I started doing it. Hell, my English syntax will get all wonky if I've been balls-deep in Korean for a few hours. :p Ah, how I miss that nimble teenage brain! ...okay, not really, it had a lot of downsides.

    So, I think you're making the right call to put Icelandic on the back burner while you study something else. Ultimately I ended up putting Mandarin aside because, as I've mentioned, I get more use out of Korean in my daily life. I want to revisit Mandarin someday because I love it, but I think for most adults, your investment of time is better spent actively learning just one language at a time. You just get more out of it each day.

    What level is your German at? Maintaining a language is a little different... or so I've heard but never experienced because I've never been fluent in anything because I can't commit. Damn it.
     
  16. JLT

    JLT Contributor Contributor

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    I'd pick the language with the richest literature, or the one that reflects the culture that interests you the most.
     
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  17. Kevin Teichman

    Kevin Teichman Active Member

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    That’s an interesting story. I can see where you’re coming from on the “brain space” side of it. I feel like I’m switching from file cabinet to file cabinet when saying words in the languages I know. And right after switching from one to another, it can take a few seconds to remember how that word/sentence is said.

    And yes Icelandic is on the back burner. I think it’s a super cool language that makes one stand out (like Finnish) and I may be the only guy in Texas who knows Icelandic. The problem is that there are very few speakers and that unless I go to Iceland or talk to someone on social media from there, I may never use it. And I must ask myself if its worth chasing fluency when it’s going to take a ton of hours (because it is a tough language to learn). At this point, it’s not. That is time that can be invested elsewhere.

    My German is probably somewhere along the intermediate spectrum. I know that I could be near fluent had I stick to my plan months ago of an hour a day of total submersion plus three to four lessons consisting of grammar rules and new words. So because of my failure to follow that, it’s still sitting at the mid-level.

    I have been studying the Russian alphabet, it’s coming along easier than expected.

    So that will make it to where I’m studying both German and Russian. I would like to have that third language (one that is very uncommon). Is this where I could bring in Icelandic? Or even Finnish? Or is it just too cumbersome?
     
  18. KaTrian

    KaTrian A foolish little beast. Contributor

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    What makes learning a language a little less cumbersome, for me anyway, is to read books/comics or watch TV shows or movies in the language I'm interested in. The latter is easier in the beginning as you can put on subtitles. I did this when I started learning French: I read French and Belgian comics ("BDs", they're closer to visual novels, hard-backed, amazing art) and watched TV shows like Wakfu, or Disney movies I knew by heart - but in French. I've also watched French let's-plays (though that can be boring if you aren't a gamer). Basically I immerse myself in something light that still keeps the target language fresh on my mind.

    I don't know much about Icelandic entertainment. There might be a show or two on Netflix, maybe? Though there might be regional boundaries to skirt around first. There is at least one Finnish crime show (Bordertown - not to be confused by other TV shows of the same name).

    Might be worth trying while you're immersed in the technicalities of Russian. Unfortunately both Icelandic and Finnish are very different from Russian. Grammar and vocabulary might get mixed up. There was a time I was intensely taking French and Swedish classes in uni. My brain became a weird vocabulary blender and often when I tried to think of a French word, my brain just offered a Swedish equivalent - or vice versa. It was weird and annoying.
     

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