Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2007 March 8

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March 8

New Language?

Hi everyone.

I would like to learn a new language. At first, I wanted to learn Mandarin Chinese. After reading some replies from Wikipedians and others, I determined that, at my age, learning Mandarin well would be next to impossible. Being 15 and a high school student, I cannot just be immersed in the language 1-2-3. So, I said that Mandarin will have to wait until college. I would still like to take a language though. I am already taking German in school, and am in my 2nd year. I would like to learn an interesting European language. I am not looking for usefulness as the first criterium. I am looking for an interesting linguistic and cultural experience. I would be an absolute beginner in any of these languages of Europe. I was thinking about Bulgarian, Romanian, or Russian, but other languages are certainly options. I am very interested in central and eastern Europe, but not limited to a european language. I am also interested in some African and southwest Asian languages. I am also not sure which ones would be too tough for me, with this being my first language with which I would like to achieve fluency (even before German). Which would be the best language for me with my credentials? (I know this is not a straight-forward question, but I can't make an educated decision without the help from experienced people.) Also, in the language, which would be the best way to learn it, and which course would be optimum? Thank you very much for the help.

MAP91 01:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

This seems like the wrong way to go. I have a hard time to see how you could reach fluency in a language that you don't even seem particularly interested in, to begin with. Anyway, all major languages have Wikipedia articles, just search for "XX language" and you could pick up the basics to see if they look interesting... No language is impossible to learn, but all are difficult to attain fluency in. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 02:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm very biased, but I will advocate Japanese. The sounds they have are relatively native to English, with some small differences. If you want to learn an Asian language, I'd suggest that. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 02:44, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Although it's been claimed that it's the hardest language of all for an English speaker to learn... [1] Granted, pronunciation is rather easy, but everything else (grammar, vocabulary, writing system) is alien you'd basically learn from scratch. Also, if you'd consider Chinese too difficult, Japanese shares the same problem with thousands of imported Chinese characters to learn by rote. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 05:15, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm very biased too, but I will advocate focusing your language-learning energies on mastering German, which you've already begun, rather than trying to juggle two languages at once. At least until you get to college and have more opportunities to branch out. —Angr 05:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, as a native Chinese speaker, I think that Chinese is significantly harder to learn compared to Japanese. If I didn't speak it as a kid, I don't think I'd know more than 100 words. Even though I'm more or less illiterate in Chinese now from the lack of use, what I do remember makes Japanese a ton easier. What I mean to say is, even though I'm (more or less) illiterate in Chinese now, Japanese is still a little comprehensible to me. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 05:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I am willing to personally tutor and instruct anyone willing to learn Norman, a lesser-spoken Romance language. It is not terribly difficult for an English speaker to learn, but introduces several elements which can facilitate learning other languages. It is fairly easy for English speakers to learn because Norman was the ruling language of English for centuries, and a huge portion of English vocabulary are borrowed from Norman (words like "mug", "castle", "war", "pork", "warden", "garden", etc.) It's a great introduction to a Romance language, and it has tons of character. In addition, it has a huge web presence for a lesser-spoken language, and there are books, dictionaries, and even multimedia CD-ROMs available in the language. However, finding a local speaker outside of greater Normandy is next to impossible. If you are okay with an online tutor, however, I'm willing to offer (free) tuition in Norman to anyone interested.

Other things to try—Welsh. It's got some very interesting, bizarre quirks, like mutation, but it's actually pretty easy for English speakers to learn (it's highly regular, unlike many languages). Tolkien's Sindarin language was based loosely on Welsh.

If you want African, go Swahili. It's the most spoken indiginous African language, and probably one of the easiest (it's nearly a Creole, kind of like English).

I can't help too much with other (non-Indo-European) languages, though I personally find Japanese much more difficult to learn than Chinese (though Japanese is, without question, easier to pronounce). I take a particular interest in lesser-spoken languages, however, and would be glad to discuss anything about them with you further. The Jade Knight 06:34, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Another possibility for you, which will be aided by your interest in Central and Eastern Europe, your existing knowledge of German, and your proximity to New York City is Yiddish. —Angr 11:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Icelandic would be intresting and a real challange. I've always wanted to learn. Check out [icelandic.hi.is] and [2] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Think outside the box (talk • contribs) 11:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

One thing to think about is whether you will have the chance or the interest to practice. If you can't practice conversation at least practice trying to understand real stuff. For example, do you have an interest in Spanish literature? Spanish may be good, as you will be motivated to try to read the stuff. How about Japanese manga or anime? Ok, consider Japanese. Gourmet cooking? There's a lot in French available. Nothing in particular? Well, take a look at the TV channels available in your area. I've found a French TV channel to be absolutely invaluable in trying to improve my French. Take a look at the programmes too: it's no good if the diet is entirely something you couldn't watch (game shows, soaps, or religious tracts perhaps). Notinasnaid 12:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

You'll be pleased to know that a 1978 study by Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle found that adolescents learned a second language more efficiently than adults or pre-adolescents, with the glaring exception of phonetics (little kids seem to have an advantage in this department).

It's important to remember that every language in the world is learnable, otherwise it wouldn't have any speakers. Two major factors (among others) will affect what it will take for you personally to learn any given language. First is how similar the language is to English. Some of the areas where languages can be different include phonetics, grammar (morphology and syntax), pragmatics, and orthography. The more different a language is from English in any of these respects, the more difficult it will probably be to learn. Here is an article addressing language learning difficulty; it includes the FSI language learning difficulty scale, which you may find useful. The second factor is access to the language, incuding access to courses, books, speakers of the language, etc. If learner resources for a language are too hard to find, it will be hard for you to learn that language.

Your course of study will depend to a great degree on what your goals are. Are you curious about grammatical features not found in English? Are you hoping the language will help you travel? Are you learning the language as a marketable skill (and if so, what market are you interested in)? Once you identify your goals, you can evaluate potential language learning routes based on how likely they are to serve your needs.

You also need to have reasonable expectations about language learning. Fluency takes a lot of time, no matter how you're learning a language. By the same token, you really can learn a lot without/beyond a classroom or "immersion" setting (it's called autonomous language learning and lots of research has been done about it).

As far as specific languages go, here are my recommendations:

• Mandarin. You seem motivated to learn it, and motivation is a key predictor of success in language learning. If this is the one you want to learn, then this is the one you should study. My understanding is that Chinese grammar is reasonably intuitive for English speakers. And the Chinese govt. is trying to create opportunities for foreigners to learn Chinese [3].
• Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian. If you're a native English speaker and want a language where you can quickly achieve a high level of competence, a Scandinavian language is a good choice. Their grammar is similar to English and feels straightforward to an English speaker (especially compared to German), and a lot of the vocabulary is clearly cognate with German, and to a lesser degree, English. These are fun languages.
• Basque. If you want something that's both far-out and European, Basque might fit the bill. As far as linguists know, it's not related to any other living language. It has some fascinating grammar (including ergativity). Best of all, there is a distance learning program available through the University of Nevada, Reno.
• Along similar lines, Finnish is worth a shot. Features that might interest you include a rich noun case system, the absence of an individual word meaning "to have", and the fact that negation is expressed using a special negative verb.

One place to look for programs in these and other less-commonly taught languages is the CARLA website. --Diacritic 14:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

"I am not looking for usefulness as the first criterium. I am looking for an interesting linguistic and cultural experience." To my biased ears, this screams out, "I want to learn Ancient Greek." I can vouch that it offers some extremely interesting linguistic and cultural experiences. It will certainly force you to reflect on and understand English grammar to an extent beyond most commonly studied languages. There are even groups that teach themselves the Greek of the Iliad and Odyssey online, and one autodidact who uses that site read the whole Iliad in Greek before finishing high school. Of course, your local university or liberal arts college may offer Greek, or your local Latin teachers may share any knowledge of Greek they possess. But otherwise, help is available online (besides textkit, GreekStudy). Wareh 16:57, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

For that matter, you might also consider Latin. Latin is a richly inflected language, though not as inflected as Greek. It has the advantage of being helpful if you want to go on and learn any of the Romance languages. On the other hand, if you are looking for "an interesting ... cultural experience", you might want to stick to a living language. If you want a European language, I recommend branching away from Germanic languages, since you already know English and some German. Spanish happens to be useful, but it is also in my opinion the easiest of the Romance languages for an English speaker. Given the prevalence of Spanish broadcasting and Spanish-speaking people in the New York area, you have a shot at fluency. You say that you are interested in eastern and central Europe. You might just consider Polish. Slavic languages are not easy, and it isn't the easiest of the Slavic languages (that might be Bulgarian), but for me, at least, it has an aesthetic appeal. If you want your language to be appealing, you might listen to tapes for a few (from a decent library) before settling on one that appeals to you. Moving beyond Europe, I second the Jade Knight's endorsement of Swahili. I found it fun and surprisingly easy, yet quite different from any European language. And, having traveled in East Africa, I can attest that speaking Swahili opens you to a rich cultural experience. Marco polo 20:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I would recommend Esperanto. Esperanto is a planned language, making it extremely easy to learn: the grammar was kept small, there are no irregular verbs or the like, the spelling is 100% phonetic (1 letter per sound, 1 sound per letter), the pronunciation is comparable to Croatian though some would confuse it with Spanish, too, and the vocabulary is also very intuitive, based on European languages and very easily extendable. I mean that having learned one word root, e. g. "health" in English, you can only form "healthy" in English based on that root, but in Esperanto you could make lots of words based on this root, for example: ill, illness, hospital, doctor, to cure, medicine, healing, etc. . This all works together to make Esperanto really easy to learn, especially if you already know English, German or a Romance language (French, Italian, Spanish...).

I believe that Esperanto would be particularly helpful to you because:

• you can achieve fluency in it very quickly;
• you will find that it's a good basis for learning German and other languages;
• there are lots of free courses and people willing to tutor you for free available online (see www.lernu.net for the most comprehensive resource), so you wouldn't need to find classes in your area or pay anything; I assume that as a student you don't have much money to spare;
• since Esperanto speakers are spread all over the world, you can probably find an Esperanto club in your town or the next biggest city where you can practise;
• at the same time if you ever want to go backpacking across Europe, South America or Asia, Esperanto will be immensely helpful because other Esperanto speakers will be ready to give you a place to stay for free and at the very least they can translate for you and show you places that the average tourist doesn't get to see;
• Esperanto provides some great youth meetings and language festivals for people from all over the world. If you're really that interested in other languages, this is the best way to meet youths from other countries who think alike. And the Esperanto youth parties are the best I've participated in.
  

I'm German and I first studied Esperanto when I was 15. I took a correspondance course where you receive lessons via e-mail and send in the answers and any questions you might have to a volunteer tutor. This course consisted of 10 lessons. I did them at a leisurely pace of about one lesson every two weeks. After 2 months I knew all the grammar and after 5 months I was able to read and write just about anything in Esperanto. I could have completed the lessons earlier of course, but I was in the middle of exams and just used them as a distraction. After those lessons my conversation skills in Esperanto weren't quite up to par yet since the e-mail lessons were just written (but now lernu.net offers multimedia lessons), but I spent a weekend at an Esperanto meeting in Berlin and chatted a bit online and was soon able to fluently use Esperanto in conversations. Right now I speak it almost every day because I found an American Esperanto-speaking boyfriend. -- Junesun 21:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think Esperanto might be interesting, although I can't see the comparision to German, myself. The similarities seem basically limited to part of the vocabulary. 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 23:32, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Thank you very much for all of your help. I didn't expect so many replies! I still am not sure which language to pick, and will go over everyone's suggestions very carefully before I choose. I can see just studying German, but I do this in school, and am really just doing it for the grade at this point. It is very tough to become fluent in a language with 28 other people in the class. I am going to work on German fluency after I've learned the basics (after high school). I like the sound of the Scandinavian languages. I am interested in Norwegian and Finnish, and am going to try and find more information about each one. I see that Norwegian is the easier of the two, but Finnish has that very interesting verb situation. One of these two will most likely be my choice. Regarding Esperanto, I am doing the 10-part by mail beginner's course, and am progressing nicely. I am hoping to achieve fluency in the language fairly quickly (<1 year). I am on lesson 3, and it is quite easy, but I am enjoying it. Once again, I appreciate all the help everyone has given me.

MAP91 00:11, 9 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

After careful consideration, I've decided that Norwegian would be the right choice for me. It is not as tough as Finnish, and, according to many, the easiest first Scandinavian language to learn. Would anyone happen to have any course advice? I am thinking about starting with "Learn Norwegian in 10 Minutes a Day, by Kristine K. Kershul and Troy Storfjell. I plan to then move on to Beginner's Norwegian (Hippocrene) by Laura Ziukaite-Hansen. Does anyone have any other suggestions before I go and order the first book? Thanks again for all the help!

MAP91 00:42, 9 March 2007 (UTC) Mike

Teach Yourself Norwegian by Margaretha Danbolt Simons in the "Teach Yourself" series has a higher average buyer satisfaction on Amazon.com than Learn Norwegian in 10 Minutes a Day. (It is incredibly pricey on Amazon, but cheaper directly from the publisher). I don't know either course and have not read the actual reviews.  --Lambiam^Talk 10:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually this Amazon entry is cheaper, and you can also buy "Used – Like New".  --Lambiam^Talk 10:49, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Får ønske deg lykke til, da... 惑乱 分からん * \)/ (\ (< \) (2 /) /)/ * 11:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

How is "Nupedia" pronounced?

I wonder how Nupedia is pronounced, especially about "Nu". First, I thought it is pronouced /nu:/, but /nju:/ (like "new" or "ν") is also probable. -Sketch 13:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Probably /nu:/ since it was founded by two Americans, and American English doesn't distinguish between "noo" and "new" anyway. —Angr 13:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

What Angr said, with the proviso that many American speakers in their echt American dialects do distinguish between "noo" and "new." Wareh 16:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I thought people who pronounce noo and new similarly nevertheless pronounce noo and new slightly differently. I read it was discovered by articulatory phoneticians in the early age of phonetics, before the introduction of spectrographs.
I read it in an introductory chapter of a book on the history of the English language. (Either Pyles & Algeo or Baugh & Cable, IIRC.) --Kjoonlee 21:20, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say nu-pedia. [Mαc Δαvιs] X (How's my driving?) ❖ 18:49, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

And of course if you want to annoy enthusiasts (but it serves them right for neologising without a license), nupe-diah. Notinasnaid 09:31, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean something akin to noop-dee-ah? Hahaha! — Michael J 18:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Leonard Orban

Would someone be willing to tell me how this name is pronounced in Romanian? Michkalas and I are trying to add an IPA transcription of the name on the page, and we both know IPA but not the name. The ikiroid (talk·desk·Advise me) 19:27, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Languages that are so difficult that not all native speakers can speak them correctly

Its a kind of urban legend that there are languages that are so difficult that not even every native speaker can speak those correctly. And this is not about retard people but totally normal healthy persons. Legend says some per cent of native speakers never learn to speak these languages correctly. Is this true? Majji 19:48, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

That would include English, actually...Skookum1 21:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, it depends on your definition of "correct". There may well be languages that not even native speakers speak according to what prescriptivists call "correct", although the reason for that would be not be that the prescriptively correct variety of the language is too difficult, but rather that it's a completely artificial construct. It logically cannot be the case that a language is so difficult that native speakers can't speak it correctly according to a descriptivist's definition of "correct", because what a descriptivist calls "the correct form of the language" is the way native speakers speak it. —Angr 20:06, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I would say that there is no language that people can speak correctly according to prescriptivists because prescriptivists' whole purpose is to catch people in error. If speakers didn't persist in speaking and writing so horribly, prescriptivists would, after all, go out of business. Of course there are languages without prescriptive traditions, but I'm sure that no self-respecting prescriptivist would consider them to be real languages. So there. The urban legend is more true than even its inventors imagined. mnewmanqc 20:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Any language can fall into this category. Poorly educated native speakers are frequently unable to speak their language "correctly" (i.e. they have a limited vocabulary and cannot construct grammatical sentences). But again, it depends on what you mean by "correctly". There was a time, for instance, when only so-called BBC English was considered correct in the UK and regional accents and dialects were never heard at all on air. People who spoke with strong accents or dialects were considered to be speaking incorrectly. That is no longer the case, but many dialects, which are perfectly correct and understood in their own regions, use words, syntax or grammar that would be considered extremely odd or even incomprehensible to most other speakers. This is true of almost all languages. -- Necrothesp 22:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

All of this depends on whether we're talking about "correct" usage from a prescriptivist standpoint, or competency in terms of the ability to express a full range of concepts, understand other speakers, and be understood. For native speakers, no language presents serious inherent difficulties or complexities for use among competent native or near-native speakers, save for pathological cognitive or sensory impairments. However, difficulties sometimes do arise for many native speakers in the use of their language's writing system, especially in cases where the writing system is especially complex (Japanese or Chinese) or doesn't map well with the spoken language (English and Arabic). Why else would literate English speakers need so many years of schooling to write in a competent manner? What we as speakers of English perceive as "complex" tends to arise from the "complex" language's differences in relation to English. Japanese and Arabic have fundamental structural differences from English. But Spanish and German, as fellow Indo-European languages, don't, and tend to be perceived as "easier". When taken in isolation, and without regard to the written language, no language is "harder" than another in terms of native speaker competency. szyslak (t, c) 22:33, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Technically, all languages fall into this category—if a language was not spoken "incorrectly" by its own speakership, languages would never change, and I'm not aware of a single language that's never changed. The Jade Knight 22:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I would take issue with a remark of Necrothesp above: excepting small children and certain neurological conditions all native speakers of any language can and do construct grammatical sentences nearly all the time. Of course their grammar may not correspond in many ways to that promulgated by prescriptivists, but it will generally be just as rich, complex and expressive: just different. --ColinFine 00:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that what I said? -- Necrothesp 00:33, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

When people say "our language, you know, is so difficult that even we native speakers can't speak it correctly!", they are bragging about their language, hence themselves. They're giving a compliment to themselves, not making a compliant.--K.C. Tang 01:24, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

If a native speaker can't meet the standards for 'correct speech' then maybe the problem is with the standards. Duomillia 19:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

How about educational standards being raised in order for people to meet the correct speech standards. JackofOz 00:30, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Some languages just have many homonyms. Mandarin Chinese, for one, has a lot of words for a single sound, so there are often mistakes in pronunciation and word use. bibliomaniac15 00:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is it important to be yourself?

Why is it important to be yourself? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.12.93.58 (talk) 21:17, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

Because if you don't do it, someone else will have to, and they will probably just botch the job, requiring a messy Do Over. dr.ef.tymac 22:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Who else do you think you should be? ObtuseAngle 00:00, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Pertinent preliminary question: why did you post this to the Language Reference Desk? -- Deborahjay 00:37, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Why is it important, you ask? "Be yourself, because you have to be someone, and everyone else is already taken." Quoted from the LZip EULA. --Kjoonlee 21:13, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What is it polite to call a yogin?

I am writing a play, and I want to know, from anyone who knows any Indian languages, (preferably Pāli), what it is polite to call a yogin in that language if you literally translated the Indian expression into English. Master? Sir? Teacher? Or what? David G Brault 21:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)