Hey Polyglots!

[Tab'le De'Bah-Rye]

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. 

 

Amazing. I thought there connected. Maybe the latin priest i talked to wasn't looking hard enough or something.

Edited May 29, 2013 by Tab'le Du'Bah-Rye

[EmilyAnn]

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.

 

I don't know! It's so strange. I learnt Spanish a few years ago, but I have always been able to understand it without even trying. I don't know how it works at all.

 

Yeah, French is in a different classification. Its Gallo-Romance whereas Spanish and Portuguese are Ibero-Romance. I think they are all influenced by the pre-Roman languages of the areas that were unconnected.

Portuguese is better than French or Spanish. And will be very useful in the future. :)

[TheLordsSouljah]

Defs skip to the chase. Learn what you want to learn. Mother languages I think would only be helpful if they are substantially easier than the language in focus and don't differ a lot. It can be really confusing learning new grammar rules and then learning a new set on top of that for a mother language. What exactly were you thinking of learning? Romanian was it?

[CrossCuT]

Picking Up a Second Language Is Predicted by Ability to Learn Patterns

 

May 28, 2013 â€” Some people seem to pick up a second language with relative ease, while others have a much more difficult time. Now, a new study suggests that learning to understand and read a second language may be driven, at least in part, by our ability to pick up on statistical regularities.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130528143800.htm

 

[Nihil Obstat]

Learn Esperanto instead. :|

[Luigi]

When I die and go to hell, I will be forced to communicate in Esperanto for all eternity.

 

Or Latin.