Learning a New Language

McLovin · 15 January 2014

pavilion103 said:
Yes. It's all about opportunity cost. Limited time.

You've gotta enjoy these sorts of things and not do them for the sake of doing them.

I have no desire to do things to have a good CV or to look impressive. I just want to have fun and be stimulated.

I love learning.

Others that I was considering.....
1) Chinese - will be big in the future. But why do I need it? I don't want a career. I don't need to impress anyone. Plus the effort required would be too much for too little reward.
2) Spanish - Practical, widely used language. Probably my second choice.

When I am making some real good money I am going to spend some time in Italy. Go all over. And spend some time with family in a nice little village. Would be awesome to speak Italian over there.

I think Spanish is easier to pick up than Italian. Infact I think Spanish is one of the easiest languages to pickup from English, some of the words are so similar. I have family in Spain and Italy, and I struggle with Italian but can have a basic conversation in Spanish. If I was to learn Italian I might try and pickup Spanish first and then Italian, the gap between those two is quite minimal. Or you could just learn Latin, I did 4 years of that at school.

Tink · 16 January 2014

Spanish probably does have alot of words similar to English, but there is not much difference between Spanish and Italian or French, Portuguese for that matter.

Does your mum speak any italian, Pav?

Good on you, if you learn one, its easy to understand the others.

McLovin · 16 January 2014

Here's an interesting map of the distances between the various languages of Europe...

bellenuit · 16 January 2014

McLovin said:
Here's an interesting map of the distances between the various languages of Europe...

View attachment 56337

McLovin. Very interesting chart. Do you know what the numbers at the bottom mean in relation to lexical distances?

% words that are different wouldn't make sense, as Dutch/French are very low and are quiet different languages, yet Dutch/German is also low and they have a lot of similarities.

Tink · 17 January 2014

It is an interesting chart.

I dont see any lines between French and Dutch, bellenuit.

One thing though, I cant find Scotland in there.

bellenuit · 17 January 2014

Tink said:
It is an interesting chart.

I dont see any lines between French and Dutch, bellenuit.

One thing though, I cant find Scotland in there.

Quite correct, Tink. I didn't look closely (aka ageing eyesight) and thought that was French at the end of that solid line at 10 O'Clock from Dutch, just above the dotted line to English. I didn't notice the big Fre among the Romance languages. It is in fact Fri which I am assuming to mean Frisian (sometimes called Frisia), spoken in the north of Germany and The Netherlands (Friesland is a province of the Netherlands).

I assume Scotland is Ga (for Gaelic) among the Celtic grouping. Not quite correct IMO as Gaelic also refers to Irish as spoken in Ireland, so Sco would be better to distinguish the variation of Gaelic spoken in Scotland. Both are very similar. Manx (Isle of Man) should also be there alongside Welsh and Breton.

Tink · 18 January 2014

Thanks bellenuit, for explaining that to me.

I thought it may have been one of those abbreviations.
Seeing (Ir) there was confusing, and agree, should have been (Sco).

pavilion103 · 31 January 2014

Italian textbook arrived on the weekend.

I give myself to years because I'll go to Italy near the start of 2016.

Plenty of time!

Learning a New Language

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