Languages are humanities, aren't they? Right, let's have a language thread. Discuss the languages you're currently learning and talk about anything language or linguistics related.
Currently learning German, it's been good so far but the cases are giving me absolute nightmare.
Currently studying French here, the grammar (especially things like relative pronouns) is really fucking me up. Currently have about 4000words in anki and can read things like the stranger np. Recommend me some french lit on a similar level please someone :
>>283536
Applying TDD to OOP languages stops rigorous testing which prevents user oriented development.
Without an eye on the user the end result may be functionally clean but user retarded.
>>283536
Ana kee hamzimen soorit
I speak Syriac-Aramaic
A dying language from a dying race. I can also write in it.
Grammar will always be the most difficult thing in any language, I don't get all the pejorative particle predicate tense auxiliary modal marker relational verb jargon as well as I should.
Languages learning: Chinese (not bad), Japanese (bad), German (bad), Arabic (really bad), Nahuatl (not so bad, yet), Tojol- Ab'al Mayan (not enough resources but I am getting by with basic sentences), French, Portuguese, pretty similar, not bad either.
I've always wanted to be a polyglot and translator, but recently I have been focusing more of my time on Native American languages, and I mean American as in the whole continent/landmass. From Cree, Inuit and Ojibwe and Navajo to Nahuatl, K'iche, Mapudungun and Quecha.
>>283536
I'm learning about the fine structure of articulated phrase domains.
Salâm beh hameh, learning persian here. I'll probably jump to arabian once I have more time and I feel I already know enough persian.
I would also like to learn french, since I can more or less read it but can't talk it for shit.
Cases a shit btw, do they even have a clear useful or needed purpose?
>>284232
How complicated is syriac? And how similar to another semitic language like let's say arabic?
>>284365
Similar to Arabic but what's interesting is that some of our words come from Akaddian, not just Aramaic. The alphabet is probably similar to Arabic but pronunciation is different. I don't speak Arabic so I don't really know how similar the two are.
How many languages does one must know to be a polyglot?
I'm learning Japanese. I hope to learn Mandarin or Cantonese, then Latin.
I really want to learn Dutch but I have no idea where to start (I'm an American)
>>286220
I heard it's fairly easy to learn Dutch as a native English speaker, compared to other languages.
http://4chanint.wikia.com/wiki/Dutch
I KNOW SPANISH, AND ENGLISH, AND AM CURRENTLY LEARNING GERMAN, AND HAVE BEEN INTERRUPTEDLY LEARNING IT FOR APPROXIMATELY TWO YEARS, BUT I AM STILL A NOVICE.
>>286202
AT LEAST THREE.
>>284349
>Cases a shit btw, do they even have a clear useful or needed purpose?
To trim away excess words and be brief, for most cases other than the accusative and the nominaitve
>>284232
I know that feel, I speak irish
I speak English and Scots and am currently learning Irish. I speak English natively, but some of my family members talked amongst themselves in Scots so it wasn't hard to pick up. Irish is way more difficult but I'm struggling on with it. It's hard to find the time and resources.
>>286265
Wie geht's?
funny i know spanish and english and have also been studying german for the past few years yet still need to step it the fuck up. i wish you luck on your studies of course.
>>286316
But long sentences and words are cool and beautiful. Maybe I'm biased with spanish being my language though.
>>286265
Do meme irrelevant languages count?
>>286363
Klingon and Esperanto do not count, but Sumerian and Basque do.
>>286326
I did these a while ago for a thread on /int/
>Scots
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1tGnX7VdxAX
>Irish
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1lahUQNIt18
Pronunciation on the Irish is probably a bit fudged but w/e
>>286386
>>286342
>Wie geht's?
ES GEHT.
>funny i know spanish and english and have also been studying german for the past few years yet still need to step it the fuck up.
I HAVE NOTICED, HERE IN "4CHAN", THAT SOME PERSONS OF APPROXIMATELY THE SAME AGE, OR WITHIN A CERTAIN AGE DEMOGRAPHIC —EARLY TO MID TWENTIES OF AGE— ARE ALSO STUDYING GERMAN WHILST ALREADY KNOWING ENGLISH, AND SPANISH; I INFER THAT THIS IS DUE TO THE PARTICULAR SUBCONSCIOUS COMBINED EFFECT OF BOTH, THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ON THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SOME PERSONS, THAT MAKES THEM ATTRACTED TOWARD THE GERMAN LANGUAGE.
>i wish you luck on your studies of course.
DEFINE "LUCK".
>>286369
We polyglot nao
>>286411
I speak both english and spanish and the german language disgusts and scares me, t.b.h.
If one can be disgusted and scared by a language, of course.
>>286363
What memes do you study anon? I am trying to learn all the Iberian languages to study and later research for school(linguisitcs/cs degree).I am going to start basque first while i improve my castellano then go into gallego,catala,etc
>>286433
I don't study a meme language, but my mother tongue is catalan. Curious fact: I have nobody in my close family with spanish as his native language, but this is extremely rare. Pretty much everyone who speaks catalan also knew spanish before school.
>>286448
Oh really? That is petty neat. Yeah I have heard about some people trying to make catala priority over castellano in schools like in the basque country.So do most people in catalonia grew up bilingual or with castellano as their mother tongue?How common is catala spoken really? Like outside of your family do you use it often?
>>286411
>ES GEHT.
es gut lol
>I INFER THAT THIS IS DUE TO THE PARTICULAR SUBCONSCIOUS COMBINED EFFECT OF BOTH, THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, ON THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SOME PERSONS, THAT MAKES THEM ATTRACTED TOWARD THE GERMAN LANGUAGE.
seems speculative and not very open to testing, this theory of yours. for me i chose german because i love it and because it has a rich history of literature, but it was in the running against french, czech (not enough resources), japanese (seemed too much of a commitment and hence gamble).
>DEFINE "LUCK".
i just meant that i hope you succeed with your studies.
>>286478
>Yeah I have heard about some people trying to make catala priority over castellano in schools like in the basque country.
In Catalonia it's already like that, public school is 100% in catalan except languages. I think that not even the basques do that. In Valencia and I think Baleares you can choose if your kid is educated in spanish or valencian/mallorquine.
>So do most people in catalonia grew up bilingual or with castellano as their mother tongue?
I'll say mostly bilingual, nowadays. It was probably different in the past, though, and I'll say that 50% of the catalans grew speaking spanish at home (I remember a poll,, but I forgot the details).
>How common is catala spoken really?
Depends a lot. For starters, what you speak at home and what you speak outside are not necessarily related. As a general trend, catalan is more common in rural areas and spanish in the urban ones, but inisde the city spanish is traditionally more common in poor/worker areas. Some cities and towns are identified as typically spanish or catalan speaking, depending on the area the people will know (but it's often biased or inaccurate). The urban area around Barcelona is well known for having a lot of spanish speakers. Immigrants tend to speak spanish rather than catalan, mainly because catalans themselves use spanish first with them for whatever reason.
>Like outside of your family do you use it often?
At school and during my first years of secundary education, I used catalan more because I went to schools in the center of the city. A little posh if you want it. My last years of highschool I was in a more "peripheral" neighbourhood so it was spanish all day everyday. In college I used mainly catalan again, but it also depends on my interlocutor. Like a lot of catalan speakers, I have the hangup of changing to spanish if the other guy starts the conversation in spanish or doesn't but clearly speaks spanish at home.
I speak fluent German. I even teach in it. :P
Seriously, though, i've learned a bit of French (3 half-assed semesters at university) and then an intensive course on Serbo-Croatian. Holy shit I underestimated how hard a Slavic language could be.
>tfw locative case
>tfw they could just do what German does and have it be the same as Dative
>>284292
cuix mitzmicti' motatzin?
I've taken some French through High School, but never applied myself very well. I hope to learn it at the same time as Dutch, and then pick up German once I have a decent level of mastery of the first two. What is the best (preferably cheap or piratable) method someone can recommend to me? My major goal is to be able to read philosophical texts in their original language and possibly be able to live in France, the Netherlands, or Germany.
>>283609
Zone is breddy good, also Petit Prince, basically all the highschool french class tier stuff.
>>286411
Are you Death?
>>286775
what does that mean??
>>286433
Yo same on the Iberian lanuages thing. I speak conversational Castillian and am learning Portuguese and Galician. Where are you learning Basque from?
>his native language is Indo-european
ITT; plebs
>>287055
nice senpai.uh i have found some basque textbooks on libgen and using some basque corpus resources online. I might try to find a pen pal because there isnt much for conversational basque you know.I know that the basque gov has a online test you cant take but i haven't been able to get in it yet.
How is gallego?Would learning Portuguese first or together help?
>>287077
>he doesn't speak dead languages with his parents
what's it like being raised by normies
>>287097
I'm learning them together and it's working out so far, you can definetly spot the similarities. If you got a Skype I'm down to practice any of those languages with you. I haven't been studying Portuguese and Galician for very long though.
>>287118
ah that makes sense.I tried starting Portuguese but gave up. Have you started anything with basque?I have only been looking at vocab so far. The grammar is a little off compared to castellano so I am not actually that far in it yet and same for gallego.But sure I wouldn't mind practicing.
[spoiler]natbuns119[/spoiler]
>>287164
Well now I know spoilers don't work on his. Sent btw
Iv currently been doing studies (I'm a history teacher with a masters in history and a bachelors in social studies) about how the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis can be used as means of better understanding races.
>>287226
oh?can you explain a little more, sounds interesting.
I've been learning Mandarin since highschool (just graduated from university this year). I used to be able to hold a very basic conversation but I haven't practiced in so long that my pronunciation (tones especially) are complete shit. I never really could read fluently, either, but with Google Translate assisting me I can communicate at a medium proficiency level.
One thing I absolutely love is that verbs are not conjugated (not even for past/present/future tense). The verb "to go" ("qu") is the same, regardless of whether the actor is I/we/he/she/they/it.
I've found Old English to be quite fun so far. It both looks nice, and sounds nice, like German, but less shit.
>>283536
Learning اللغة العربية at uni, it's alright once you get into the language a bit more, but reading is incredibly slow, and learning new roots of words is literally only reliant on memory. Also, the grammar is quite annoying. Native Dutch speaker, obviously speak English as well.
I am latvian. Latvian and Russian are the two languages that i freely use every day. Have a bit problem with English, but its not a priority for me at the moment.
Tho I have a need for help - could anyone tell me a way to learn German easier (books that you recommend, or stuff like that). Had German language classes in 5ft to 8th grade (didn't do a shit in those classes I know that's retarded).
Feel free to ask advice on Latvian or Russian as well to me. :)
>>288451
>Proto-Nostratic
>Proto-Altaic
>>286600
>>>tfw locative case
>>tfw they could just do what German does and have it be the same as Dative
If you want common sense and streamlined reasoning you should never even come close to the Balkans
About to start learning Japanese. I also have elementary knowledge of German and Spanish.
Any tips/tricks? I'm giving myself 5 years (1000 hours at ~30 min every day) to git gud.
Native german speaker here, learned english and french in school. Unfortunately forgot most of french due to rarely using it. My english got better since I discovered 4chan.
Learned old greek in university for two years, also mostly forgotten because of the same reason.
I'm learning sanskrit for five years now. I will never be able to speak it fluently, but nobody really expects this from me. It's a love-hate realtionship with this language. Sometimes it's great to disentangle these long-winded masses of text, because it's actually pretty precise and you can pat yourself on the back when you find those rare verb-roots. Lyrical sanskrit can be a pain in the ass, though. Sometimes they throw order and structure out of the window.
Oh, and eight cases, three numbers, ten verb-classes, different kinds of participles, its own writing system and numerous rules for phonemes to change in a word or sentence so it's easier to read but more difficult to translate.
>>288669
>Sanskrit
Neat.
>>287317
你现在还会说中文吗?
Just started German, no wonder the Germans say Deutsche Sprache, Schwere Sprache; I'm coming from a language with no formal tense, ambiguous sentence structure and so forth.
>>286455
It looks like funky English too
>>288857
Because it is english
>>288867
I'd say it's more of a dialect.
>>288917
Yes... an English dialect...
Any resources on learning Frisian?
Seems like it would be interesting to learn, considering it's the closest living language to English.
>>286455
Scots language, spoken (originally) mainly in the Lowlands, is descended from Middle English and is really similar.
Scottish Gaelic, spoken mainly in the Highlands and the Hebrides, is a Celtic language closely related to Irish and Manx.
I've been reading about the mixed-languages of Belarus and Ukraine. Both countries got a widely used dialect that mixes with Russian.
>>286411
Holy shit, I also speak english and spanish, and I'm learning german.
-Also learning portuguese and will start with arabic next year-
Currently learning Italian. Can anyone recommend a good Italian TV series and/or books to read.
>>288451
Lenguaje also exists in spanish t.b.h.
>>289163
Ab urbe condita
>>283609
>Recommend me some french lit on a similar level please someone
ayyy
>Louis Ferdinand Céline - Voyage au bout de la nuit
Disregard both the people telling you his work shouldn't be read because he was a nazi AND everything LFC said after 1930. That novel is the best thing ever written about WWI.
>Georges Perec
A lot of his work is short, but the style and subject can make it a bit hard to get into and has been known to annoy people who think the whole "nouveau-roman" movement is lazy, self-indulgent uninventive shit. If you feel like a big guy, try reading La vie : mode d'emploi. It's huge but oddly satisfying to go through.
>Nathalie Sarraute - Enfance
Interesting autobiography written like nothing else yoy will find. The style stays close to oral language making it easy and pleasant to read, but it can be a little tedious at points and the dialog-like structure can be misleading.
>Montesquieu - De l'esprit des lois
Really accessible and understandable for a text of this period. Montesquieu's writing feels way less dated than that of most of the other Lumières philosophers and writers. Also an important reading to understand some of the ideas of the XVIIIth century.
>Marcel Pagnol - La gloire de mon père + Le chateau de ma mère + Le temps des amours
The only writer to do justice to southern France.
>Scarron - Le roman comique
THere are some modernized version that are worth a look, although it won't be the easiest thing to understand unless the text is heavily modified.
Still the oldest and toppest kek in french litterature.
>>288653
1 : don't learn your list of kanji. Memorizing cold data is almost counter-productive when it comes to learning languages.
2 : don't tell yourself you will "git gud" in 5 years
3 : don't let stagnation get you down
I'm currently researching in Myanmar on language policy there.
While Burmese is the official language of the country, there are at least 50 other languages and many of the people who speak them hate the Burmese.
two questions for people here interested in your opinions regarding language in schools and whether you have any experiences to relate
What happens when one area has more than one ethnic language. For example, the Karen have S'gaw and Po languages and some towns and villages can be a mix of those speakers (as well as Burmese). How do you work that out logistically? Does anyone have experience of living in a place with multiple languages?
>>289380
Not really that similar but here's how it goes in Finland:
Swedish speakers and Finnish speakers have different schools. Both learn the other language as a mandatory subject. Among Finnish speakers this wrecks the learning motivation because it's mandatory whereas other you can choose which other foreing languages you learn (though English is de facto mandatory).
Note that Fennoswedes live in quite specific areas (on the coast) and that's why you most of the time have enough kids in the area to have their own school. This also the other reason a lot of Finnish speakers don't have motivation to learn Swedish: A lot (most?) of them are never going to meet a Fennoswede. I don't really know what happens when there's a Swedish-speaking kid in a unilingually Finnish area.
Hope this was in any way interesting
>>289518
I should add that both languages have constitutional status as national languages
>>289380
>What happens when one area has more than one ethnic language?
Shit happens in many cases. You have a couple possible courses of action :
>the communities have been neighbours for a long time and can coexist separately and have necessary contact but not much more
>the communities have some overlaps and many individuals learn the language of the other community in order to conduct business, talk to the neighbours, you name it. This can, believe it or not, lead to a stable situation though may or may not lead to one community "eating" the other if larger demographically speaking
>the two communities do not get along all that well and the language becomes a discrimination factor (see the Khmer Krom in Vietnam for instance)
>the two communities do not get along but one of them has institutional power, which can lead to the "lesser" language being either given up because not recognized by the authority and the administration, or preserved as a factor of ethnical identity or social/political resistance
>both communities are overruled by a larger one that has power over hte national instances in which case both languages can keep on living is the power in place does not care enough to impose the national language OR it can disappear due to political insistance and centralized education (what happened in China with the uniformization of culture)
>>289518
So in school you automatically learn three languages (one as medium, two as second)?
How do finnish feel about English. Do you feel like you own it, or are borrowing it?
>>289802
I'm not that anon, but as a fenno-swede 8 consider english to be very useful for bridging languange gaps. You have no idea how hard finnish is to learn.
What's your favorite language, /his/?
>>289976
Latin or old Norse
Which language is money beneficial, French or German?
>>290158
Depends.
French has potential if you want to do business in Africa, and there are more and more opportunities for that.
German can be beneficial if you plan on working in Europe, especially with the EU.
>>289976
Isolates, because they're often last remnants of some gone, mysterious cultures.
Take Saami substrate for example, a language of hunter-gatherer, native populations of Lapland. While since Medieval times Saami speak Uralic languages and are pastoralists, the linguistic evidence points to hunter-gatherer aborigines present as late as 300-800 AD. Just think about it, we had a Mesolithic nation in Medieval Europe. Fascinating subject and studying their language is equally fascinating (also putting aside isolates and just concentrating on this substrate, it's pretty cool on its own: it's ridiculously detailed, with words for such things as "a hard lump of snow, which e.g. sticks to animal's foot", "to sink and get stuck in soft snow", "ice with a hollow space under it", "short river between two lakes", "thicket with young pine trees", "female salmon with roe" or "calm after a storm").
>>290168
I meant more for things like poetry and literature? I know that Germany is considered to have some of the greatest philosophers but I know that there is good french literature too.
>>289380
In Spain, regional goverments are in charge of linguistic and educative policies, so the situation varies a lot from place to place, they are also used as
Catalonia follows an immersive model, in which all subjets but Spanish Language and Literature is given in Catalan, as >>286538 explained.
In Basque Country there are different options, Basque as mandatory subject while the rest of the clases are in Spanish, the opposite model and a mixed one in which some subjects are in Spanish while others are in Spanish. The "Spanish system" is less and less frecuent and its not offered anymore in a lot of places.
Navarre follows a similar system, but teaching in Spanish is way more common.
Not so sure about how it works in Galicia, but I have read news about the Galician speakers complaining about the Government trying to reduce the % of clases that are given in Galician (so we can asume a mixed model here).
Apparently, they tried to strenght the English in the Balearics in detriment of the Catalan. The government had to face tonns of strikes cause of that.
I dont know shit about whats happening in Valencia, but I dont have great hopes in their linguistic policies.
I have heard that they teach the whistle language in the school in Gomera, Canary Islands.
Aranese has her place in the Aranese school too.
The other languages (Aragones, Asturian/Lliones) are in worse shape, and not really taught in the school at all.
And last, but no least, English is a mandatory subject everywhere, other languages (usually French) are optional subjects in lots of school.
>>290190
>money beneficial
>poetry and litterature
well then
I'm too french to be fair on that topic, but we do have some good poetry, overall litterature and XVII - XVIIIth century philosophers and thinkers are worth a read even if it could be considered "outdated"
I've taken a break on language learning for now, but I've found that you get some incredible results if you use language learning techniques with traditional knowledge. By that, I mean reading every night and using flashcards with SRS systems like Anki for memorization. It's a simple concept but has helped me learn like never before.
>he's European
>doesn't know Lithuanian
Swiss here (German speaking part), I know english thanks to videogames and stuff, i also speak french and italian. Currently studying polish at an uni course, i can get behind the grammar but im having problems with the vocabulary since i have no basis for comparison with other slavic languages because it is complete new to me.
>>286528
Autism.
>>289518
Does this harm finnish identity, by creating a division?
>>289163
>good Italian TV series
Boris.
Watch first the series, then the movie. They're both great.
>>286322
What the fuck is going on in Ireland that your own national language is dying?
Ive been learning italian on and off for a couple of years because my nan is Italian and i thought it would be cool to speak to her in her native language.
My problem is i just dont like the language, i dont like the sound of it, i have no interest in spending more than a holiday in italy and the dont produce any interesting media and non of my /his/ and /pol/ interests are about/in italian.
But whenever i stop learning it and start learning another (french or russian) i feel guilty about not learning my heritage language. Any advice?
>>283536
Just started latin and old icelandic, probably going to try middle irish too. Guess my major.
post shit.
Old English really is quite neat. It's crazy what a conquest can do to a language.
>>288802
是的,我还可以说一点点中文,但是很久不练习了。我的语法运用很低水平的和忘记很多的措辞。你觉得我说中文说的好不好?
>>291629
They are keks
Is there a secret to learning a language in 1-2 months?
>>292172
immersion
>>283609
What do you find hard about relative pronouns ? As a native French speaker I'm always interested in the difficulties that arise for people studying the language. The worse for me was certainly the past participle conjugation rules we learnt in late middle school.
Also, I highly recommend 'L'étranger'. Camus used a simplified form of the language to convey a special sense to his novel and thus would make it easier for learner to read it. If can be boring if you're not interested in this kind of stuff. Also as recommended earlier 'Voyage au bout de la nuit' uses oral language and is overall one of the best piece of French literature.
>>291629
They'd rather speak English.
>>286316
Cases are used to indicate the function of a word in a sentence. At least as I personally see it.
>>288445
Unfortunately I had to learn German through classes so I can't help with that, but I'd like to know what books you'd consider good for studying Russian? I've always been interested by this language.
>>288653
Look for the guide in the Daily Japanese Thread on /a/, this will help you start out. Contrary to popular beliefs Japanese isn't so hard. What you really need is consistency, patience and motivation. Especially motivation.
>>288653
After wasting my life on thousands of hours of anime, I still can't speak Japanese, but I know a couple words/phrases. Good luck!
>>292454
Watching anime =/= learning japanese.
>>292494
Re-read my post you ignoramus
>>289202
>That novel is the best thing ever written about WWI.
''no''
''All quiet on the western front'' is
>>292501
I understand your point, but if the guy trying to learn japanese is just in for the animes, he's gonna have a hard time, that's why I posted this. I wasn't trying to be aggressive or anything.
>>284292
This reminds me of Tumblr/Facebook language community that I follow. You have such a desire to learn languages that you go in all directions. In a few years you will look back and realize that you hadn't learned anything other than trivia and basic grammar for twenty or so languages.
This isn't the way to success. Focus and learn one (maybe two) languages at the time.
>>292510
"All quiet on the western front" is great, but "storm of steel" is still superior.
皆さん!日本語を話しましょだよ
>>291774
it's a great language tho, watch Italian movies (the old ones) and Italian documentaries about food, art and history of the country, if you're into literature you'll be able to read one of the best written works of all time
>>286322
I know that feel, I speak Swedish.
>>294459
にぷなんぐにっぴ
>>286220
It's very similar to English and sentence construction is very similar too. If you speak it people will tell you it sounds made up though.
>>288971
You gotta learn dutch first. It's hard af to understand even for native dutch speakers.
I'm learning Korean and it's pretty fun. I can read almost anything but my vocabulary is pretty low. It's so easy to learn to read though since the alphabet is all phonetic and it syllable blocks. The consonants are shaped the same way your mouth makes when you pronounce the sound. Ex. M is ㅁ since your lips end up in that position.
I always find it funny that people here claim to 'know' like 5 languages. Talk to me in language level, can anyone here speak 5 or more at above an A1 level?
>>295103
Also learning more than one language at a time doesn't work and just makes you look like a language "collector"
If the Catalonian is still here, do you have any ideas on study material?
I bought Teach Yourselr Catalan but it seems a bit all over the place.
Also, is b the same as v? Also, when do you not pronounce certain lettrrs like h?
>>295103
I speak Dutch natively, English at native level, German not quite native but quite well, I can understand Niederdeutsch/Low German/Plattduutsch well enough, understand Frisian and various Flemish dialects as well. I had French at school and know a few phrases.
All in all I know 3 languages, with rudimentary knowledge of 2 others. I think most people think being able to introduce yourself means knowing a language.
when are people "fluent" in a language, /his/?
>>295342
i think when you can carry a sustained conversation in the target language with any native of that language.
>>290190
One then the other. I'm a native English speaker and one found that I like French literature as much or more than that of my own language. I just started German and so far I dig it. Since I've only just started, I can hardly understand it. That being said, what I can understand of German poetry and music is bretty choice. The rules of the sentence structure make emphasis easier, meanings more direct, and more overall freedom. There are a shitload of cognates between the three, so vocab isn't that bad.
>that feel when America's education system institutional inhibits language learning
>>284232
Preserve Syriac.
Native English speaker. Learning Czech (I'm currently living in CZ). Took a year of Latin in High School but would like to learn more. Eventually will learn Russian because my fiance with half Russian, half Ukrainian, and speaks both fluently.
Czech is a pain in the ass, but I think it'll be a good intro to other Slavic languages. From what I'm learned already, the eastern languages all have a ton of loan words from each other.
je bumpe
>>292372
This. Also the education system failed them there and apparently a lot of Irish speakers are elitist cunts.
>>287077
Arab? Jew?
Learning Spanish and Japanese, albeit nowadays rather passively as uni is taking up my time. Thinking of going to Buenos Aires for a month to study Spanish next summer. I used to study Arabic but gave up because I had no real use for it. I do wanna come back to it though because I find it very beautiful and it's probably the most fun language I've encountered so far. It's so different from anything else, but also very sensical.
>>286326
>Scots
Ceased to be a language when the Scottish academics decided to kill it off
>>286499
>es gut lol
No, he did mean "es geht", it means "it goes"
2 years into Ancient Greek here.
It's the hardest thing I've ever done and still have a fair way to go before I can read without a fuckload of gloss or a dictionary on hand. But it is definitely the best thing I've ever done.
Also have a year of Latin under my belt, but don't know if I'll continue at uni anyway.
Also brushing up on my Italian which I learnt on and off at school for 7 years, also did a year of Modern Greek.
I'm aiming at fluency in Italian.
>>295212
>If the Catalonian is still here, do you have any ideas on study material?
No idea, sorry. Maybe in the web of the Generalitat they have something online for immigrants? They love teaching catalan to immigrants. But I don't really know, it never came to my mind that someone could learn catalan without moving to Catalonia.
>Also, is b the same as v?
Slightly diferent. But most spaniards pronounce them like they're the same (I think that it's even correct to do, though I literally can't do it) and this is extending to a lot of catalans. No big deal if you can't see the difference.
>Also, when do you not pronounce certain lettrrs like h?
In the case of h, literally never, it's mute. It's even more mute than in spanish where combined with h you have the "ch" sound. In catalan, ch (present mostly in some surnames) is just a c.
I can't think now of another mute letter that isn't h, apart from the u in que and qui.
>>297679
>No idea, sorry. Maybe in the web of the Generalitat they have something online for immigrants? They love teaching catalan to immigrants.
I'll check it, thanks! Memrise also has a few Catalan courses.
>But I don't really know, it never came to my mind that someone could learn catalan without moving to Catalonia.
Well, I love the sound of it, plus I've been to Barcelona when I was a kid and I fell in love with the city.
Spanish is somewhat ugly and as a Dutchman making Spaniards butthurt is always fun. While French is nice when half of the words are 90% silent it made no sense to me.
>Slightly diferent. But most spaniards pronounce them like they're the same (I think that it's even correct to do, though I literally can't do it) and this is extending to a lot of catalans. No big deal if you can't see the difference.
So, the v is like an English v in words like Valenciennes, but it changes a bit with the location of the v and the word in particular? Or am I wrong?
>In the case of h, literally never, it's mute. It's even more mute than in spanish where combined with h you have the "ch" sound. In catalan, ch (present mostly in some surnames) is just a c.
>I can't think now of another mute letter that isn't h, apart from the u in que and qui.
Ah, that's great. Doesn't e drop in words like Come Estas too?
>>291629
>>291629
It was practically dead before we got independence and it would take a monumental effort to reverse that trend, which we are not bothered to undertake.
In fairness there are more speakers now than 20 years ago but a lot of the dialects are being watered down in favour of a "modern" "urban" alternative which sounds like absolute shit.
>>294459
だ is used for a state-of-action therefore you can't use use it directly after a verb, よ is enough. For instance:
いい友達だよ。 (Subject) is good friend.
いい友達と遊ぶよ。 play/hang out with good friend.
Learning about the development of language and various writing scripts makes my dick hard, but all I know is from Wikipedia.
What should I read?
Native speaker of Standard English and European Portuguese.
I speak German at C1 level, French at B1 and get by quite well in Spanish.
Currently learning Russian and Farsi (still at a very basic level).
I'm 18 years old, so I've still got a long way.
>>287055
How do you even learn Galician and Portuguese and not mix the two?
>>284349
Salâm âqâ, koja hasti?
>>298505
What materials for German did you use to bridge the gap between B1+/B2 to get to C1 ?
>>297565
Do you mean Koine Greek? What resources did you use?
>>294248
Yes, it was worse when I was younger, haha. Recently I've been focusing more on native American languages. I have been taking Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic classes and speak with some native speakers. The other languages I am afraid I will have to not put too much energy into, because a large amount of my family are native Americans (mostly in Mexico, but also Southwest United States), and I would like to do nothing more but learn more. It's a lot to remember but I am getting there, hopefully practice will help more than just reading and writing. It's what I devote almost all my time to though, so there's that
>>298517
Being in a German-language school :P
Right now I'm doing C1.2 German in the Goethe-Institut, after 2 years of not speaking German.
>>300338
Thanks for the feedback, I might just do that.
Im Brazilian, I know English and French.
Next year planning on starting to learn Spanish and maybe German/Russian.
>>298102
>So, the v is like an English v in words like Valenciennes, but it changes a bit with the location of the v and the word in particular? Or am I wrong?
Yeah I guess.
>Ah, that's great. Doesn't e drop in words like Come Estas too?
Dunno what you're talking about, it's com estàs, the com has no e to begin with. Catalans will say comestás because in the end of the day we're iberians and speak fast.
You made me remember about another mute letter in catalan though, specially important for verbs. The r at the end of the word is almost always mute. Estar sounds està, dormir sounds dormí, pintor sounds pintó, etc. Mar (sea) sounds mar though. You have to know what words have or not a mute final r.
>>296924
Kinda wanna learn Arabic to get arab qts like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30jlURASJQA
>>283536
I'm in the early stages of Arabic, my background in Mandarin didn't prepare me for conjugation, but it could be worse.
>>301865
Dear god, she is cute. But learning Farsi is also good for that.
Why did Macedonian go from a Hellenic language to a Slavic one?
Y'all will enjoy this
http://strawpoll.me/6099620/r
>>302159
When Slavs moved into Macedona they started calling themselvs Macedonians
>>302159
Modern macedonia has no continuity with ancient Macedonia.
What do you guys think of Duolingo? Do you use it?
>>302176
It's good if you want to drill the vocabulary into you, but you are not going to learn grammar properly.
>>292110
I just found my Old English books from college. Really need to dive back into it. I had forgotten how cool a language it is.
I'm still struggling to salvage 12+ years of Spanish through the school system that made me think I disliked it. I picked up a copy of Harry Potter in Spanish that I'm reading with only some difficulty. What's most disappointing is that I realized it was the first Spanish book I had picked up on my own. Hopefully I'll transition into some actual literature soon. Anyone have a recommendation?
>>283536
I'm thinking of learning Latin, where do I start learning.
>>289976
russian
spanish accent is nice but i can't roll r
>>290168
yes, if you pretend france, belgium, switzerland etc. don't exist
>>302546
>France
>important
Also:
>Belgium
>Switzerland
>speaking French, except for a small minority
>>302569
Yes it is pretty important
Also forgot Quebec
Spanish/English native speaker (moving from a South American country to the USA at age 6 made it easy mode, it's at just the stage of a child's development where it made them both basically my native language). Learning Japanese (pretty good, will be living there next year), Chinese and Vietnamese. Viet is actually a really fun language.
Grammar is always a problem, but I find it specially fun to study. Depending on the language it is a challenge, that's something I like.
Actually I'm studying German, Swedish, Russian and Japanese. When I finish learning those I'm planning to learn Polish, Arabic or even Finnish.
Also, who wants to be a polyglot?
>>302644
me
but im a lazy fuck
plox help wid lerning ladin
>>302537
Remember: the tip of the tongue is flicking the back of your two top front teeth. t. Я cлaвянин, нo я знaю yкpaинcкий лyчшeй пoтoмy чтo пoльcкий мoй пepвый язык. >>302537
>>302176
Great for German, French, and Ukrainian. But a stepping stone and daily refresher more than a meaningfully pedagogical "immersion". Technology can't fully do that, m8.
>>284232
Didn't know this language until now. I searched for some things about it and that is really interesting. It's sad such a nice language is dying, Syriac should be kept.
kanHawl nqra ntkllm ddarija welakin ana mashi mujtahid. wash kayn mghribi Hnaa?
>>303657
Is this a conlang?
>>303957
I picked out mujtahid (diligent (maybe prefix related to mujahedeen?)) and Maghrebi, or Arab North African. Das some kinda heavy dialectical Arabic. Pic related: Sharia in the streets, but jihad in the sheets.
>>286411
All capital letters, confirmed for Latin scum.
>>302673
You're slavic, but you know Ukrainian best because Polish is your first language
t. someone learning Russian for one month
this was so fucking exciting thanks bro
>>304352
Looks like a crackwhire 2bh
>>302176
I think the immersion method is ridiculous because all language learning methods that claim they teach based on immersion are just simple as shit. Real immersion comes when you are surrounded by a language in real life and thousands of lingual stimuli can attack you at one moment, like when you are a very small child. Not a picture of a guy eating an apple with the text "l'homme mange une pomme" repeated 15 times. You're better off just getting a thorough textbook, watching TV series in the language you're learning and chatting with people on Interpals.
>>302537
But... they roll R's in Russian too.
>>304352
Mujtahid comes from Arabic اجتهاد, "diligence". Jihad means strife, essentially I think
My first languages are English and Spanish, while I'm also fluent in Portuguese (although it's HUEHUEHUEHUE-monkey tier Portuguese). I also know Bable, thanks to my father. Sadly if I also had met my biological maternal grandfather, I might've had the opportunity to learn Russian or my maternal great-grandfather could've had taught me Sephardi.
>>302512
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1TEZORKhj0
Anyone here learn song lyrics from other languages?
I know so much Brazilian music I could learn Portuguese fluently if I committed only 2 weeks to studying it.
Quite possibly the most relaxing way to learn a language.
>>283609
Romain Gary is great IMO.
La vie devant soi (As Émile Ajar), La promesse de l'aube and Éducation Européenne are great books. La vie devant soi and Education européenne might be harder to understand than La promesse de l'aube, though.
>>302512
Cambridge Latin Course, mVIII
>>286265
There are countries where knowing 3 languages is the norm, surely that doesn't make one a polyglot.
I'm currently studying Classical Greek, and I'll probably later do some Latin for the lulz.
I'll move on to living languages later though.
>>301865
Nah son. I've seen white dudes learn Spanish thinking it'll get them laid. Betas transcends language. Or as the Dominicans call them, "pendejos" or "paraguayos."
I've been learning German for roughly a year (living in the US). I can't speak much, but I understand most, or understand the gist, of most conversations I watch on German tv/radio. My reading is meh.
Does anyone know what's the best service that you PAY someone to chat with you in the language your learning?
I've signed up for a few language exchange websites but it's almost always people learning English or people flake out. I'd love to pay someone to chat with me for an hour 3 times a week.
I'm a native Bosnian speaker, But I would love to learn Finnish. I can take classes in a couple years, but I would love to learn the basics online. Anyone know how I could go about doing so?
>>308496
contact your local school's german department. There'll be native grad students there most likely. This is what I do with French and Serbian.
>>309104
"Your local school" means the school in your area, not necessarily one you're enrolled in.
Learning russian. Got a shit vocab and read really slowly.
>>283609
You shouldn't think about it ... you must learn the grammar at first so that you can make constructions. What you want to do is hear so much French that to make a sentence that is ungrammatical just sounds off, it doesn't have the right music. People misconstrue the value of input when learning a language, they focus on output, but when your ability to comprehend a language is proficient, your ability to produce it must follow.
>>284292
>>294248
The problem isn't learning too many languages, the problem is not devoting enough time to each. I think 3 hours is approaching the upper bound of how much time you can spend practicing a language per day and reasonably apprehend what you covered. Using this as a metric, and assuming that one had no other responsibilities besides the maintenance of health and sanity, one could easily master two or three languages a year, but one at a time is much more reasonable and efficient.
>>288653
Study more than that per day, don't give up and always look for ways to improve how you study. If you do this, one day you may.
There are no shortcuts when learning a language. It's a straight path from here to there with no public transport.
>>295342
>>295349
When the main impediment to your self-expression is your intellect rather than your language ability.
Usually this translates to having studied the language for a few thousand hours, knowing more than 98% of the most commonly used words, and having an accent that doesn't make natives consider voting for nationalist parties.
>>296780
tres bien, mon amis.
>>296924
Stick to one for now unless you can devote at least three hours to each per day. It will be much more efficient. Learning a language is time critical. Why do you think parents take their kids to the doctor if they don't start speaking after a year? You're not just adding logical chains to your memory, you're slightly restructuring your neuroanatomy everyday, and any hesitation on your part will have long-term and compounded consequences to your language acquisition.
>>302176
I think it's shit. Use a textbook for grammar, and authentic materials for immersion.
Can we all admit that we picked up our language in choice in part because of qt3.14s?
>>310014
same. I'm especially finding it hard to read words I don't know because of stress.
>>310154
im a fag but yes
>>310130
>mon amis
>mon
>amis
I speak German (mother tongue), English (C2 at least according to TOEFL) and French (B2). I am currently learning Italian at university. It's a nice language but all these exceptions especially regarding the prepositions always are somewhat weird.
>>289380
They don't hate the Burmese
t. Burmese
>>308444
>paraguayos
My fucking face
>>310154
Nah, im doing it for career aspects.
>>310154
Nigga, I don't need a whore to realize how beautiful the german language is.
>>308533
yslautta if I'm spelling that right is THE Finnish imageboard.
Ask on /int/.
Starting with Japanese. Gonna spend a month or two learning pronunciation and training my ears for Japanese sounds before I learn a word of vocabulary. I'm also starting with Kanji right away so I don't use the kana as a crutch and fuck myself over later so I'm learning the 80 radicals thst make up the most common couple thousand Kanji right now too.
After that I'm learning the 625 most use words. That should get me to 80% literacy or so. Them I'm going to carve through a grammar book before I start reading. I have a conversation partner at work so I'll use her liberally.
I'm giving myself 5 years working at it half an hour a day. If I succeed here I'm gonna do German and Chinese.
>>310154
Of course. Pic related, one of said qt3.14s.
as a whitie english+french speaker I have to admit I feel proud of myself reading Japanese in public, even though I am still intermediate level.
Understanding Chinese characters is pretty fulfilling.
>>311831
you're retarded is this a joke
>>302076
Farsi is fucking ugly though. Arabic too but it's the right kind of ugly. Farsi just sounds like an abortion.
Hey there. French fag, can easily speak English, and I have few notions of German. I want to learn Polish. I have a Polish name, and my grand grand father came from Poland. Any method for learning Polish?
Any recommended resources for learning Greek? Heritage language, if that makes any difference.
give me some shit to read in french.
So far I've been reading the french wikipedia, so I need some more material.
>>310154
Id be lying if i said i wasnt learning russian partially because of the women.
>>284232
There is an Assyrian girl at my school and she got big titties and is fucking gorgeous.
今、日本語を勉強しています。
大学の卒業の後でフランス語とロシア語を習いたい
>>288357
>learning new roots of words is literally only reliant on memory
How is this different from learning stems in other languages?
>>302031
The annoying thing about Arabic is the number of conjugation classes. Each class is simple on its own, but the number of them is annoying.
Okay, there are 5 moods (with indicative, subjunctive, and jussive being almost identical; imperative has so few forms you can count them on your hands; the imperfect is seperate from the rest and acts as the past tense), each having 3 persons, 3 numbers. and 2 genders (but in really, there is less than 3*3*2=18 forms; and again, the imperative has very few forms; plus in modern arabic, dual forms aren't used that often and neither are feminine plurals). I can deal with that.
But then there is the unusual way of making passives (it's not that hard to learn though), all the extra rules regarding weak roots and germinnated roots, and then the 10 verb classes (darasa, darrasa, daarasa, etc).
And then the most annoying thing to me, that Form I, the most common verb form, has an unpredictable medial vowel and that vowel can be different between the present and past tense, so you have to memorize them.
And another slightly annoying them is the occasional assimilation went you get an infixed -t- in form VIII that changes if an emphatic consonant or a coronal plosive or fricative is near it.
----
I would be fine with all this if at least the Form I acted more normally and roots with "weak" consonants or dubbled consonants acted just like regular verbs (i.e. like if m-d-d was madada, not madda)
I speak both English and German fluently without a hint of a foreign accent. I'm gonna start learning Spanish starting December 1st. I hope my knowledge of English and German will make learning Spanish a little easier. Did Spanish for years in school too as a kid but didn't learn anything.
im fluent in arabic, english, and french and im learning german
stay away from arabic; it is an absolute nightmare
it's my mother tongue and im still shit at it
OP here, nice to see this thread's still up
duolingo hungarian when
>>314931
How useful is Duolingo anyway? Can you truly learn a language with it?
>>314555
>stay away from arabic; it is an absolute nightmare
Maybe your dialect maybe. Standard Arabic is logical ~ the only issue is that there are many rules. The many verb forms of one root is the biggest obbstacle I'd say, along with the additional rules caused by weak roots and germinate roots.
The nouns are not hard ~ even the broken plurals are really nothing once you get used to the language ("Oh, I see a noun that looks like cvcc? The plural is either accaac or cucuuc, or more rarely cicaac. Sometimes multiple plurals are acceptable"). The declension is a joke ~ easiest declension I've seen in any language other than maybe Scandenavian ones.
The syntax isn't hard either. Making a sentence in Arabic is no big challenge. It;s just getting the right verb form
>>314967
It shouldn't be your only resource. In conjunction with other things, it's useful. At the very least I find it pushes me to come back every day to continue my streak.
>>298468
Mario Pei has many good books on langauges and their development.
>>308496
italki is good for that.
bumpo
>>295103
It's not that uncommon if you are dutch/luxembourgian/swiss really
>>284292
>grammar is the most difficult thing
In order to learn a language to a truly professional level, the hardest thing to do is to memorize the words spoken.
It's way easier to learn even 1000 grammar rules compaired to more than 50.000 words
>>316572
True.
Belgians know at least two languages natively with two learned languages more, a Dutch student can know two languages natively depending on their region along with three others in school.
Honestly nearly everyone on the continental European mainland knows at least their native and English, plus a learned language or two from school like French or German. And if you're from a minority (native like Frisians or Catalans, not immigrants) you usually know another one.
It's only the Anglo menace who cannot into languages.
>>287109
Irish?
>>311793
ylilautta
>>314967
its garbage imo and youre just working to make them money
much like shitposting on 4chan
Whats everyone's favourite script?
Im learning russian but i think Cyrillic is fugly (and cursive cyrillic is unreadable)
>>316664
>Honestly nearly everyone on the continental European mainland knows at least their native and English
you have a pretty low standard for knowing a language, most of you can't speak english very well
>>288451
>Nostratic
>>283536
>and talk about anything language or linguistics related.
Ok, am I the only one who gets incredibly bothered by how native English speakers completely butcher foreign words when they try to pronounce them? They're certainly not the only ones guilty of not being able to pronounce names like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychgwynfrobwllllantisiliogogogoch, but when it comes to relatively simple words from other languages it certainly feels like English speakers, more than any other group, completely refuses to even attempt to learn how sounds are pronounced in that particular language and will just read the words out loud as if they were English words. And even when effort is put into attempting to sound more correct, which you notice because the speaker tries to correct himself, it still just sounds like an alternative English pronounciation.
>>319479
latin desu
>>319479
I like cyrillic script. Cursive in general is an abomination, and should not be held against any specific script.
Which my favorite is, I don't really know. Ever since I got into langauges I've found that I have a really hard time grading the things that I like against each other, even if there are other, cmparable, things that I don't like or actively dislike.
>tfw no one online to help me learn my irrelevant language
上げる
>>319904
which language anon?
>>321344
Thai
Currently only bilingual if I count fluent languages
>Fluent: English, American Sign
>Learning: Russian, Latin, German, Spanish
Also ask a mute person raised with American Sign as a first language anything about language
