I started learning Danish

[RedemptionZeni]

What an awesome language. I'm picking it up so quickly because it shares so many etymological roots with English, so really it's just a matter of differences in pronunciation and learning vocabulary. 

My best languages

1. English- Native Language
2. Middle English (even took a class on Chaucer in college because the Medieval English of the Gawain poet, Chaucer, and Gower fascinated me)
3. French- excellent, would like to become a true master and be able to write research papers in French.
4. Old English- Very bad (didn't have time to learn it whilst in college, now have all the time in the world to at least learn it on a reading level)
5. Danish- Elementary (I just started lol) 

 

🤠

[stilgar]

Why you always lyin?

[RedemptionZeni]

11 minutes ago, stilgar said:

Why you always lyin?

Pimsleur

Worth the money, but it might take you some time to learn it. It's coming easily for me! 😄

[mthor]

Unless you're going to Denmark, why? Any language that you don't have a chance to use, you'll forget it. (Unless maybe you planned on reading The Little Mermaid in its original form?)

Edited May 9, 2021 by mthor

[scoobdog]

4 minutes ago, mthor said:

Unless you're going to Denmark, why? Any language that you don't have a chance to use, you'll forget it ( and I wasn't aware that there are that many Danish speakers in New Jersey.)

You probably won't ever speak Mandarin either.  Not that Zeni can actually speak any other language, but learning different languages is a valuable exercise in its own right.

Learning different languages, even Danish, is valuable in understanding modern English both by comparing the languages to common roots and also in seeing how each language evolves (it's one of the reasons why a word's etymology is more important than its definition).  Learning languages with different root structures also is a valuable exercise in learning the ways with which we process spoken and written word and can be immensely valuable to artists like songwriters, poets/prose writers, and even musicians.

Additionally, learning any language can be a gateway to learning multiple other languages.

[mthor]

3 minutes ago, scoobdog said:

You probably won't ever speak Mandarin either.  Not that Zeni can actually speak any other language, but learning different languages is a valuable exercise in its own right.

Learning different languages, even Danish, is valuable in understanding modern English both by comparing the languages to common roots and also in seeing how each language evolves (it's one of the reasons why a word's etymology is more important than its definition).  Learning languages with different root structures also is a valuable exercise in learning the ways with which we process spoken and written word and can be immensely valuable to artists like songwriters, poets/prose writers, and even musicians.

Additionally, learning any language can be a gateway to learning multiple other languages.

 From a standpoint of studying language as a phenomenon, you're right. But if you actually want to talk to people, you need to have the chance to use it, even just a little. For example, my grandmother, although born in America, was raised in a home where they mostly spoke Polish (her mother never learned English), so as a child and young woman, she was very fluent in both languages. After her mother died, she and my grandfather  would speak Polish only when they didn't want the kids to understand, and after my grandfather died, she didn't use it because she had nobody to speak it with.  Fast forward about ten years, to when I was taking Russian in college, and she couldn't understand a word I was saying. She admitted that twenty years before, she'd have probably understood just fine, but without using it, she lost it. (You're right about one language being a gate to others -  the Russian and Bosnian interpreters used to sit in the kitchen at the office speaking Russian and Bosnian to see how long they could maintain a coherent conversation in two languages, and we sometimes had to shoo them back to work. )

tl;dr: The study of language can be fascinating in its own right, but if one wishes to communicate with it, one must talk to other people using it on a fairly regular basis. 

[bnmjy]

2 hours ago, mthor said:

 From a standpoint of studying language as a phenomenon, you're right. But if you actually want to talk to people, you need to have the chance to use it, even just a little. For example, my grandmother, although born in America, was raised in a home where they mostly spoke Polish (her mother never learned English), so as a child and young woman, she was very fluent in both languages. After her mother died, she and my grandfather  would speak Polish only when they didn't want the kids to understand, and after my grandfather died, she didn't use it because she had nobody to speak it with.  Fast forward about ten years, to when I was taking Russian in college, and she couldn't understand a word I was saying. She admitted that twenty years before, she'd have probably understood just fine, but without using it, she lost it. (You're right about one language being a gate to others -  the Russian and Bosnian interpreters used to sit in the kitchen at the office speaking Russian and Bosnian to see how long they could maintain a coherent conversation in two languages, and we sometimes had to shoo them back to work. )

tl;dr: The study of language can be fascinating in its own right, but if one wishes to communicate with it, one must talk to other people using it on a fairly regular basis. 

Why would your Polish grandmother understand spoken Russian anyway? The languages are not mutually intelligible.

Second language acquisition is quite different from native language acquisition. I really just think your grandmother relied much more on English than Polish if she forgot it. My mother's native language is Japanese, and I know she'll never forget it even if she becomes completely isolated from the culture. She does certain abstract things almost exclusively in Japanese, like counting numbers.

[scoobdog]

2 hours ago, mthor said:

The study of language can be fascinating in its own right, but if one wishes to communicate with it, one must talk to other people using it on a fairly regular basis. 

Yes, you do lose your ability to speak a language when you don't use it regularly, but you also don't learn a language in a classroom (or a language lab... hated that lab).  The thing your story doesn't describe is the process your grandmother used to switch between English, Polish, and Russian.  The likelihood is that she would be able to speak Russian again if it was ever a necessity because she had learned early how to compartmentalize.

[tsar4]

15 hours ago, bnmjy said:

Why would your Polish grandmother understand spoken Russian anyway? The languages are not mutually intelligible.

Second language acquisition is quite different from native language acquisition. I really just think your grandmother relied much more on English than Polish if she forgot it. My mother's native language is Japanese, and I know she'll never forget it even if she becomes completely isolated from the culture. She does certain abstract things almost exclusively in Japanese, like counting numbers.

Depending on the timing, Poland fell under the Soviet Union post WWII.  Also, people in Europe are taught other languages.  My paternal Grandfather spoke 12 fluently, according both to my Dad & an Aunt that confirmed it.  I know that Ukrainian was his native language, which is not too different from Russian, and he spoke both Polish and Hebrew (Ukraine was subjected to Polish rule when he was a kid and there were numerous Jews in the area).  I'm guessing that Hungarian might have been one as well, since Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for a time.  He learned English when he came to America.  My Dad didn't know what the others were, Grandad didn't want his kids speaking anything but English.

[RedemptionZeni]

This sparked an interesting discussion.

I personally think the two languages that offer native English speakers the best chances of being learned quickly while having the most utility in the world are French (France, Belgium, Canada, many other places) and Dutch (Netherlands, Belgium, Curacao, etc)

Danish does not have better utility than Dutch, but I like it much better as a language as Dutch is more like Old English with its rough intonations and inflections whereas Danish has a very smooth and relaxed element to it. Although French is a romance language, I think it should be taught as a second language for all Americans because of the Anglo-Norman connection and its subsequent connection to modern English (see Chaucer and the shift from early Middle English to Shakespearean English). It's no accident that French, although a Romance language, comes more easily to us than Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc because of the strong French influence in the Middle Ages on English language and culture. 

I've been trying to be able to speak Old English since college, but it's comparatively much harder to master than French was (in spite of all my formal education in French) because, although Old English was the earliest version of our language, it was the national language of England for a much shorter amount of time in an age with fewer people who didn't interact with foreigners often, if it at all in many cases.

 

[bnmjy]

1 hour ago, RedemptionZeni said:

I  personally think the two languages that offer native English speakers the best chances of being learned quickly while having the most utility in the world are French (France, Belgium, Canada, many other places) and Dutch (Netherlands, Belgium, Curacao, etc)

Danish does not have better utility than Dutch, but I like it much better as a language as Dutch is more like Old English with its rough intonations and inflections whereas Danish has a very smooth and relaxed element to it. Although French is a romance language, I think it should be taught as a second language for all Americans because of the Anglo-Norman connection and its subsequent connection to modern English (see Chaucer and the shift from early Middle English to Shakespearean English). It's no accident that French, although a Romance language, comes more easily to us than Italian, Spanish, Romanian, etc because of the strong French influence in the Middle Ages on English language and culture. 

 

Um, I think Spanish is the the language that offers the most utility and ease to the average American. Yes, French has massive influence on English, and it is probably the easiest language to gain vocabulary. However, I feel it helps mainly in the written form, as French also has liaison, which takes a while to get used to hearing. Spanish, on the other hand, does not have liaison, and the spelling of words actually matches the pronunciation, unlike French. Plus, there are Spanish speakers just about everywhere in the US.

5 hours ago, tsar4 said:

Depending on the timing, Poland fell under the Soviet Union post WWII. 

She said it was her grandmother who was born in the US and learned Polish from her parents, so this was before World War 2.

If you guys never heard of mutual intelligibility: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_intelligibility

[RedemptionZeni]

When I first started learning French in HS, I used to think that the Spanish tilde (the accent you make when you make a "yah" sound for a word such a nina (girl) on the second "n") and the liaison were equivalents of each other and then I stopped mistaking the liaison for the cedilla and felt really silly (I was 14) for not knowing the difference as it was taught. 

[bnmjy]

7 minutes ago, RedemptionZeni said:

When I first started learning French in HS, I used to think that the Spanish tilde (the accent you make when you make a "yah" sound for a word such a nina (girl) on the second "n") and the liaison were equivalents of each other and then I stopped mistaking the liaison for the cedilla and felt really silly (I was 14) for not knowing the difference as it was taught. 

um, what. Liaison is when words like "les hommes" become pronounced "lay zohm." Its's something English fortunately never picked up despite the heavy French influence.

[RedemptionZeni]

3 hours ago, bnmjy said:

um, what. Liaison is when words like "les hommes" become pronounced "lay zohm." Its's something English fortunately never picked up despite the heavy French influence.

Right, I know what the liaison is, and it's not really that hard, it's just that in English we don't connect words like that so at first you feel you have to think it through before you connect while speaking French, I guess I didn't word that unambiguously enough. What I meant to say is that when I was 14, I mistook a Spanish pronunciation device for one which is exclusively French because I figured English was the best so foreign languages couldn't be so tricky or unique. 

Edited May 10, 2021 by RedemptionZeni

[Sir Teddybar Gut Fullung]

He’s still trying to get in some girl’s panties. At least he’s not being a creep about it. Bravo, I guess?

[PhilosipherStoned]

On 5/8/2021 at 9:01 PM, mthor said:

 From a standpoint of studying language as a phenomenon, you're right. But if you actually want to talk to people, you need to have the chance to use it, even just a little. For example, my grandmother, although born in America, was raised in a home where they mostly spoke Polish (her mother never learned English), so as a child and young woman, she was very fluent in both languages. After her mother died, she and my grandfather  would speak Polish only when they didn't want the kids to understand, and after my grandfather died, she didn't use it because she had nobody to speak it with.  Fast forward about ten years, to when I was taking Russian in college, and she couldn't understand a word I was saying. She admitted that twenty years before, she'd have probably understood just fine, but without using it, she lost it. (You're right about one language being a gate to others -  the Russian and Bosnian interpreters used to sit in the kitchen at the office speaking Russian and Bosnian to see how long they could maintain a coherent conversation in two languages, and we sometimes had to shoo them back to work. )

tl;dr: The study of language can be fascinating in its own right, but if one wishes to communicate with it, one must talk to other people using it on a fairly regular basis. 

I mean I never really get the chance to use japanese in conversation either, but I can't say it's been pointless to learn for me. It's opened up a lot of doors music wise. I've definitely found it to be valuable for more than just watching anime without subtitles. I don't even watch anime anymore anyway.. Also there's a brand of old japanese literature I want to check out. Rakugo. (Traditional Japanese comic storytelling.)

The one I want to read involves a prostitute that wants to kill herself because of money troubles..but suicide due to money troubles is frowned upon so she tricks one of her dimwitted clients into making a love suicide pact..😆

Well..believe it or not it's meant to be funny. Which is why I think I like Japanese culture.. 

Edited May 11, 2021 by PhilosipherStoned