Hey Polyglots!

[Byzantine]

I'm wondering: Have you found it easier to learn a child language (say, Spanish) and then learn the mother language, or vice versa? Or, if you haven't done it either way, what would you recommend? I've got some extra time, a Russian textbook-type-thing, and an Old Church Slavonic grammar.

Edited May 28, 2013 by Byzantine

[EmilyAnn]

What do you mean by child or mother language? I'm not sure I follow.

[Luigi]

Work on the language you want to learn. Knowledge of the antecedant language won't really help much - langauges lose about 15% of their vocabulary every century, so the farther removed Russian is from Old Church Slavonic, the less knbowledge of OCS will help in learning Russian.

 

And that's to say nothing of changes in meanings of words, syntax, verb conjugations, pronoun usage, and a myriad of other changes.

 

Skip to the chase.

[FutureCarmeliteClaire]

What do you mean by child or mother language? I'm not sure I follow.

 

Mother Language = Latin

 

Child Languages = Spanish, French, Italian, etc.

[EmilyAnn]

Mother Language = Latin

 

Child Languages = Spanish, French, Italian, etc.

 

Ah that makes sense. I've just never heard those terms used before.

 

 

I don't think it really makes a difference. Knowing one from a family will help with the others, although it's stronger for some than others. 

Edited May 28, 2013 by EmilyAnn

[Byzantine]

Work on the language you want to learn. Knowledge of the antecedant language won't really help much - langauges lose about 15% of their vocabulary every century, so the farther removed Russian is from Old Church Slavonic, the less knbowledge of OCS will help in learning Russian.

 

And that's to say nothing of changes in meanings of words, syntax, verb conjugations, pronoun usage, and a myriad of other changes.

 

Skip to the chase.

 

Hehe and then we could add in that there are different recensions (I think that means version, right?) and I want to learn the Ruthenian one, which is probably not the center of academic study.

 

Mother Language = Latin

 

Child Languages = Spanish, French, Italian, etc.

Yes. And curiously enough Romanian falls in there too. English, however, is actually Germanic, though we have lots of Latin words.

 

 

 

I don't think it really makes a difference. Knowing one from a family will help with the others, although it's stronger for some than others. 

Yeah, though it turns out the Slovak for "to be" seems to me to resemble the Italian more than the Italian resembles the Latin!

[EmilyAnn]

Yeah, though it turns out the Slovak for "to be" seems to me to resemble the Italian more than the Italian resembles the Latin!

 

Yeah languages can be funny. Like I am a native Portuguese speaker, so before I learnt Spanish I could actually understand it pretty much perfectly - but a Spanish speaker wouldn't be able to understand me. And even though French is Latin-based too, it's not like Spanish or Portuguese at all! Yet when I learnt some Latin, I can see all three languages in it. It's so interesting. 

[Amppax]

I should try reading the thread before I respond.  

Edited May 29, 2013 by Amppax

[Byzantine]

Yeah languages can be funny. Like I am a native Portuguese speaker, so before I learnt Spanish I could actually understand it pretty much perfectly - but a Spanish speaker wouldn't be able to understand me. And even though French is Latin-based too, it's not like Spanish or Portuguese at all! Yet when I learnt some Latin, I can see all three languages in it. It's so interesting. 

 

Fascinating! How does the Spanish thing work?

 

For French, aren't the influences different? If I remember right, Spanish (and Portuguese?) is influenced by Arabic, while French is more Germanic.

 

French and Latin spellings are pretty similar. Especially once I found out from my Italian teacher in high school that a circumflex is where an s dropped out, that made it a lot easier going from Latin to French.

 

I'd like to study French and Spanish at some point, but that might have to wait a while.

[Kia ora]

I'm wondering: Have you found it easier to learn a child language (say, Spanish) and then learn the mother language, or vice versa? Or, if you haven't done it either way, what would you recommend? I've got some extra time, a Russian textbook-type-thing, and an Old Church Slavonic grammar.

 

Um...I learned Latin in high school and learned French and Spanish on my own. Latin did come in useful, but I think a lot of that was mostly incidental. When learning any foreign language, it's the first time many people are introduced to 'grammar', and dealing with that sort of stuff in Latin prepared me for French and Spanish. But I think that would have been true if I learned any other language, there's nothing special about Latin.

 

IMO, it's not worth it to learn another language in order to learn the language you really want to learn. Actually it might even hold you back because Latin is very different from French and Spanish and it takes up a lot of your time. Better to start on a modern one.

[Amppax]

Not much help myself, but my Dad was a classics major, and he said Latin made French, Spanish, and Italian a breeze.  

[Winchester]

Hey nerds.

[Spem in alium]

Definitely. Familiarising myself more with Latin definitely helps in terms of understanding Italian better. Studying Italian and a little French and Arabic has helped a little with my Maltese reading too. 

[ChristinaTherese]

I was able to understand Italian when I heard someone speaking it the other day almost perfectly because of my knowledge of Spanish (pretty good) and Latin (extremely limited). Of course, my understanding went about as far as just thinking: "Word! Word! Word! Hey, I know what all of those mean! This is cool! Wait, what was even talking about? I was too busy being happy I could understand almost every word easily...." And the guy didn't have an Italian accent either.

 

As to which to learn first if you want to learn both? I wouldn't know. It might not make much difference, but it could be fun to compare the second to the first as you learn. And studying the history of the language(s) would be fun too, of course. But I've had no success when I've tried to learn languages on my own. (That doesn't mean I'm not trying it with Latin again this summer, though.)

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

I ask a latin priest about this. He said he thought latin would help him understand italian,spanish,french etc when he first started. And he found it was totally different, latin didn't help him understand these languages better at all.