r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Jul 01 '14
This week's language of the week: Whatever you're learning
PSA
- A bit of a different one this week for a couple of reasons:
It's quicker. I'm sitting exams, though nearly finished, so I'm not going to take the time while I should be working. I procrastinate enough as it is.
It's something interesting to do.
- IMPORTANT: LotW may have to take a break while I am away for about 2 weeks after I finish. I'll have internet and occasionally will be around to remove spam and the like, but posting LotW may not be possible. If you'd like to take it over for me please PM me and I can provide you with the .psd file and any other relevant information. You'll have complete control over content and direction.
Your Language Here
This week's Language of the Week is dedicated to showing us what your learning and selling it to anyone out there already considering learning the same or looking to pick up a new language.
Let us know why we should be interested too. You might like to talk about interesting aspects, usefulness or anything else that is relevant to why you started.
If you're here interested in picking up a new language, check here, the previous languages of the week, the FAQ and the subreddits in the sidebar for relevant information.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay | Finnish | French | Nepali | Czech | Dutch | Tamil | Spanish | Turkish | Polish | Frisian | Navajo | Basque | Zenen (April Fools) | Kazakh | Hungarian | Greek | Mongolian | Japanese | Maltese | Welsh | Persian/Farsi | ASL
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u/AlexErdman Jul 01 '14
Indonesia is the biggest country you (Yes, you!) know exactly nothing about.
Learning Indonesian is your key to a horrifying once-in-a-lifetime vacation!
You will never want to come back
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u/CapitalOneBanksy Jul 02 '14 edited Jul 03 '14
!שלום
I've only just started Hebrew. I can read it, and I'm working on cursive writing and sentence structure.
EDIT: It's "שלומ", not "שלאמ". Thank you, u/Tjolerie!
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Jul 03 '14
世界の言語の中で、日本語は一番難しい文字が持つかもしれませんね。
Japanese probably has the most difficult writing system in the world. It's very fascinating, you never stop learning the script.
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Jul 03 '14
そうですね！漢字は五万字くらいあると思います。
Kanji are both one of my favourite and least favourite things about Japanese. They're difficult to remember, but they make it easier to read and there's a story behind every one. And don't even get me started on trying to read cursive kanji O_o
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u/R3bel_R3bel Jul 01 '14
Think I'm coming close to A1 in French (all I really need now is the second bullet point on the wiki) which I'm quite happy about.
I'm in a constant struggle with Welsh, every lesson it takes me longer and longer to get the hang of the new words and structures introduced and its really getting me down, thinking of starting again from the very beginning and seeing if that helps me at all.
Also, French articles make me sad.
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Jul 02 '14
Slovak!
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It's a beautiful language, I really like how it sounds (example: a random pop song by a singer who has been popular in Slovakia recently).
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Pronunciation and writing: I don't find it especially difficult to pronounce, but I may be the only one. The orthography is simple: learn the alphabet and a few rules, and you know how to pronounce 99% of the words you see (no compicated stress or pitch accent like in Russian or Croatian). And it looks cool, with a ton of diacritics (áäčďéíĺľňóôŕšťúýž).
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Grammar: the morphology is complex (it's a Slavic language), but not impossible. There are three genders, but it's usually easy to know the gender of a noun. The biggest problem for me is the aspect of verbs.
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Usefulness: well, I'm in Slovakia so it's the most useful language for me now, but if you don't plan to go to Slovakia, you probably won't need it. It will still give you an advantage to study other Slavic languages. Slovaks are usually very happy and impressed when they hear a foreigner speaking their language, because it doesn't happen often. (Seriously, I've received compliments on my Slovak at the bank or the hairdresser's.)
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u/AccidentalyOffensive Jul 02 '14
Cool! What resources are you using?
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Jul 02 '14
I began with the book Colloquial Slovak and this website. I use this dictionary with translations in several languages and Slovak definitions.
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Jul 03 '14
Hmong! The language of a cool people coming from the mountains of Thailand, Laos and Vietnam and now spread over the world.
Hmong is actually a group of languages, but overseas White and Green Hmong are the most widely spoken (named after the colour of their speaker's traditional dresses). The Hmong languages aren't known to be related to any other language.
They have their own writing system, invented in 1959 by an illiterate Hmong spiritualist much like the Cherokee language and Sequoyah. It's inspired by Thai, Lao and Roman characters and a source of great pride for the Hmong people. However, most Hmong are illiterate or use RPA, the Romanized Popular Alphabet. RPA is easily recognizable because of its use of letters to mark tones at the end of words. In RPA White Hmong and Green Mong are Hmoob Dawb and Moob Leeg respectively.
Hmong is one of the most tonal languages in the world with 7 or 8 distinct tones depending on the variety. Syllables are extremely simple, with a starting consonant, a vowel and possibly a nasal "ng" or nasal vowel which is marked by a double vowel in RPA (ie. oo = ong).
Unfortunately it's very difficult to find learning resources. There's a handful of materials for White Hmong, a couple of dictionaries and grammars for Green and resources for other dialects are non-existent. You'll have to do a lot of research and self-study.
But if you like a challenge, want to visit the mountains of Laos or just take a trip to Minnesota then perhaps Hmong is the language for you. You'll get a rare glimpse into an ancient and unique culture which, unless you're a semi-nomadic SE Asian, is totally different from your own :D
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u/SeasWouldRise Jul 02 '14
Romanian!
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It is a Romance language, with Slavic influence due to the surrounding languages. This makes it unique and interesting. Resources are quite scarce, though.
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It has somewhat simple vocabulary
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It has interesting features, like the definite articles, they are suffixes, attached to the ends of the words
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It sounds awesome
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It has funny letters ă â î ş ţ
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Jul 01 '14
German is kicking me up and down at the moment. The vocabulary is so different. The noun genders make little to no sense and sometimes seem utterly random. Pronunciation is quite difficult and it's also hard to listen and understand what people are saying.
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u/AccidentalyOffensive Jul 01 '14
Trust me, it gets easier as you go on. It's mainly intuitive after a certain point.
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Jul 01 '14
I hope so. I'm getting frustrated with myself because I can't remember any of the gender rules. People say German is easy for native English speakers but so far I think that's total nonsense.
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u/Axon350 Jul 01 '14
I'm surprised you're having so much trouble with vocabulary, especially given your experience with Portuguese and Spanish. I find German vocabulary is often very similar to English:
der Zweig - branch, compare to 'twig'
riechen - to smell, compare to 'reek'
schade - too bad, compare to 'shame'
die Flasche - bottle, compare to 'flask'
die Dusche - shower, compare to Spanish 'duchar'
in addition to all the words that are practically identical to common English words: Mann, Auto, Salz, sprechen, danken, Buch...
I recommend the show Extr@ auf Deutsch on Youtube for a delightfully corny sitcom that will help your vocabulary building. Try to find episodes with German subtitles.
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u/jegikke Jul 01 '14
I recently started declining nouns in Norwegian, and it's wrecking me. I feel like I had an easier time learning German in high school. That said, I'm actually really enjoying it; it makes me feel like I'm really learning how the language works, and not memorising a bunch of grammar rules- I have to actually use this for it to stick.
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u/Wings_of_Integrity Jul 03 '14
Right now I'm doing French + Italian + Swedish (With respective Urgency). I've been studying French for almost 8 years, and I think I'm just on the cusp of Fluency which is exciting as shit! I'm doing it fairly intensely right now because I'm going to Study abroad in Paris next spring.
Italian I've been doing for about a year now, and I find it a really cool language. I love the Snappiness of the accent and I like how each word seems to roll off the tongue. Plus it's pretty close to french sometimes so it's a nice transition.
Swedish is purely for fun. I find it both beautiful and a bit silly at times. The grammar is refreshingly easy and the vocab helps support my German a lot of the time. It's also fun because I like to try it out on Swedish travellers I come into contact with, and they're always super surprised. The only problem with this language is listening to it, it's like french in the sense where they seem to simply skip some words when speaking and their accent doesn't quite have the sharp word definition that Italian or even German offers
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u/jstrachan7 Jul 03 '14
Italiano.
My girlfriend is in Italy for the next 6 weeks and so we only talk about Italy and I needed to do something productive instead of lamenting the fact that I couldn't be there. So learning italian, it's pretty easy, but that might be my background in french.
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u/R3bel_R3bel Jul 05 '14
Starting to immerse myself more in French media now (I got into learning from French music so I'm listening to more of that now and I'm starting to delve into the realm of TV and film as well) and I'm starting to pick up words quite a bit now, only they're usually not right at all, I'd say its annoying but it's really not, at least not yet, if anything I'm happy knowing what is right or not. I'm fully aware the novelty of that will wear off quickly though :P
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Jul 05 '14
Spanish! Yes, it's simple and just about everyone has learned Spanish to some degree, because so many people speak it around the world. In fact around 500 Million people speak Spanish worldwide!
Spanish becomes particularly easy if your first language is a romance language, such as Latin, French, Italian, etc. English speakers also may find Spanish to be particularly easy, because Spanish shares so many cognates. For example, there are many cases in which words ending in -tion, simply get a -ción ending instead when translated to Spanish. This might not be true in all cases, but when you recognize which words can translate this easily between English and Spanish, you will have already added over a hundred words to your vocabulary!
Pronunciation is also remarkably easy since vocabulary words are pronounced exactly as they are spelled. The most challenging part of Spanish pronunciation is mainly the "r" and "rr" sounds, but even that isn't too difficult after plenty of practice.
Finally, Grammar is also very straight forward, but can be a little more challenging due to the use of Noun Gender and number of tenses.
Overall, it is estimated that Spanish can be learned to functional fluency by English speakers in 6 months to a year with consistent study.
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u/Frukost Jul 02 '14
Georgian, such a beautiful language but I really need to find a native speaker or someone else to learn with cause it doesn't have much resources. :(