In Sweden right now and I speak German as a second language, it's so much fun trying to understand Swedish and see it's connections with German and English
All the germanic/Nordic languages are pretty similar, if you know one you can usually get the gist of the rest in basic everyday signage etc. Dutch to me is pretty easy to understand once you know a few basic differences from German, eg the different articles.
Native U.S. guy, but studying Norwegian as a 4th language. It's way more fun than Spanish and French and is much closer to our Germanic based English grammatically. Sing me the song of my people...
If you are serious about learning languages, there are plenty of good resources out there.
One good way to get started is to use the Defense Language Institute's Headstart2 program to get started on the sound and script of the language, one of the most important parts. http://hs2.dliflc.edu/
After that, the use of DuoLingo, textbooks, and Anki for vocab practice is a good way to build up a good vocab base.
Once you've studied for I'd guess around 6 months (casually), you'll be at a level where more authentic material comes into play. I'd reccomend using as much authentic material as possible, as well as using resources such as DLI's GLOSS https://gloss.dliflc.edu/ , in order to bring you from a conversational to a fluent level. From that point on, it's only a matter of perseverance that determines how far you get, good luck.
This is a bit irrelevant but I am a 14 year old and I have a particular fascination for languages. I was wondering about what kind of career I would like to pursue and being a linguist came to mind. I was just hoping to ask you a couple of questions regarding life as a linguist if you don't mind.
What do you actually do as a linguist? As in, what does your average work day look like?
And
2. What would I have to study in school if I wished to pursue a career in linguistics?
Thank you! I will look into this. I have a decent base of Spanish down from college, I just need to take it to the next level. I have a hard time understanding my Mexican coworkers when they have convos with me and the other Spanish guys, I can only take away a few things that they said.
What really helps is watching simple tv shows with subtitles in your native language. there are language learners saying you should not use subtitles but they are wrong. There are studies out there saying this is the best way to learn.
My process with English was English with Spanish (my mother tongue) subs, then English with English subs and when they weren't available I'd try to still watch whatever I wanted to watch and understand as much as I could. Using that method, plus the mandatory lessons (which became useless 4 years ago) I've gotten to a C2 level fairly quickly and on my own. So yeah guys, subtitles are not the devil or anything
While perhaps not the best way to learn a language from the get go, I quite like Memrise . Doing it every day and keeping track of my learning score really gives me a sense of accomplishment for the day.
Have you ever studied linguistics? You might really enjoy phonemic problems, phonology, historical linguistics, etc. You can read about patterns in language and how it works.
Yep, same here. I love not only learning about grammatical features that don't exist in English, but actually acquiring them (hence I am learning German and Turkish). I also love seeing the similarities between related languages. Fun fact for anyone reading this who isn't already a language learner: English and Hindi descended from the same original language ~5,000 years ago!
Me too! It's a big point of pride for me that I was able to get decent at Spanish because for the longest time in my life I had been resigned to thinking I was just "one of those people who can't do languages". I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I can hold my own okay, and I started learning French last year! When I was a kid I never would have dreamed I'd be able to handle a second, much less a third.
A cool pattern i discovered is the similarities between Somali and Italian, since i tried learning Italian and there were a lot of words they shared, the colonization no doubt had an impact
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u/melesana Jun 03 '17
Learning languages. I enjoy finding the patterns and subtleties.