Learning Three Languages

Geoff_One   Fri Nov 11, 2005 11:51 am GMT
Basically self-explanatory, but more information may follow depending on interest.
Guest   Fri Nov 11, 2005 1:37 pm GMT
Learning three languages is as easy as 1, 2, 3.
Tiago   Sun Jan 01, 2006 12:34 am GMT
its as easy as 1, 2, the third one better be much differnet or ur skrewed...as long as they are differnent ur okay...dont learn three romance languages at the same time...you might go brain dead
Mitch   Mon Jan 02, 2006 3:03 am GMT
I'd also like to hear from anyone who has attempted (and succeeded) in studying three (or more) languages at the same time.

My experience confirms what Tiago wrote. I've had little or no problem with two or more unrelated languages studied at the same time. But I could not handle French and Spanish at the same time, even though they are my best foreign languages. If I tried to return to studying or using French after a period of using Spanish, my mind what go right to the Spanish. Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese never messed with each other or with Spanish or French.

However--and this is why I'd like to hear from people who have done this successfully--what about the time and effort? It's hard enough doing one at a time successfully. Steve K thinks you should concentrate on one at a time--he's all for "intensity." But there are times when one's situation may require learning more than one. Any input from our successful polyglots?
Kabayan   Mon Jan 02, 2006 4:30 am GMT
One of my friend speaks (actively) Arabic, Dutch, English, Japanese, Mandarin, Germans, French as well as Bahasa Indonesia and Sundanese.
I think he has a talent to learn more than one languages at the same time. He is a languages learner.

I don't remember what my real mother tongue is...Is it Sundanese or Bahasa Indonesia ? Sundanese is my ethnic tongue while Bahasa Indonesia is my national language. I think I am a native speaker of both.
Is there any possibility that one can have more than one mother toungue ?
suomalainen   Mon Jan 02, 2006 7:24 am GMT
A person certainly can have more than one mother tongue. I have learnt as child at the same time Finnish and Swedish, first I even used mixed-up sentences. But later my parents began to speak more Finnish, and as the environment was Finnish-speaking, the kindergarten and school were Finnish, then Finnish became the stronger one. We were five children, and we three oldest decided early to speak only Swedish with each other in order to counterbalance the situation - we felt that Finnish takes in any case care of itself. Now I speak Swedish to my seven children, and my wife speaks Finnish.
Kabayan   Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:15 am GMT
Nice story Suomalainen ! :-)

I think what is happening in your family now, was happened in my mother's family.
My grandpa talked Sundanese and Bahasa to my Mom, while my Grandma talked Javanese and Bahasa to her.
The funny thing is, that my grandpa spoke Sundanese to my Grandma while My Grandma used Javanese when speaking with him. Of course, They undestood each other since they both spoke those two languages.

I'm just curious, do you speak Swedish to your wife while your wife speaks Finnish to you ? ( It should be very interesting since finnish and swedish belong to different language family.)
Or do you both speak same language to each other ?
Kabayan   Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:16 am GMT
sorry ===> was happened = was happening
Easterner   Tue Jan 03, 2006 8:28 pm GMT
Kabayan: >>Sundanese is my ethnic tongue while Bahasa Indonesia is my national language. I think I am a native speaker of both.
Is there any possibility that one can have more than one mother toungue ?<<

Suomalainen: >>A person certainly can have more than one mother tongue. I have learnt as child at the same time Finnish and Swedish, first I even used mixed-up sentences. But later my parents began to speak more Finnish, and as the environment was Finnish-speaking, the kindergarten and school were Finnish, then Finnish became the stronger one. We were five children, and we three oldest decided early to speak only Swedish with each other in order to counterbalance the situation - we felt that Finnish takes in any case care of itself. Now I speak Swedish to my seven children, and my wife speaks Finnish.<<

My experience is similar to that of Kabayan and Suomalainen. I grew up in an ethnic Hungarian family in Northern Serbia, and although we spoke Hungarian in my family, I also mastered Serbian quite early, so much so that I became practically native in it. Still, my mother tongue is definitely Hungarian, although I can speak in both Hungarian and Serbian on a native level.

I think you basically have one mother tongue, the one you usually communicate in within your family. If your family is bilingual, then it is the language your parents use the most often. I know of a mixed family in which the father is American and the mother is Hungarian, but both parents speak exclusively in English with their children (by the way, at present they live in Oman, the father being a diplomat accredited there). The mother tongue of those children is definitely English, in my opinion, even if they may speak in Hungarian with some of their relatives from their mother's side, and even if Arabic is the language used by their environment.
suomalainen   Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:23 pm GMT
Kabayan,
I think I speak more often Swedish than Finnish to my wife but she speaks almost always Finnish to me, only occasionally Swedish (she learnt only Finnish at home as child; her parents didn´t even know any other language). If I explain a longer and more complicated thing to her, she asks me to tell it in Finnish, especially if she feels tired. Anyway, very often we speak so that I speak Swedish and she Finnish. Therefore, our children have learnt to answer to me in Finnish according to the example of their mother.
After learning Livonian I began 15 years an experiment with our children (there were three of them then): since then I have used everyday even Livonian when talking to them. They understand me perfectly, and even use sometimes Livonian themselves, as a funny joke.
By the way, how much do Bahasa, Javanese and Sundanese differ from each other? I know that they all belong to the Malay-Polynesian languages, like hundreds of other languages in your country. To which extent does a speaker of one of these understand the others if he hasn´t studied them? I suppose that all young people in your country learn Bahasa at school but among elderly people there perhaps are those who can´t Bahasa, right? Is it common that people know other Indonesian languages than their mother tongue and Bahasa? Is Bahasa gaining ground as home language at the cost of other languages?

Easterner,
I agree with you that even multilingual people tend to have one language that is stronger than the others - usually the language of their mother is their MOTHER tongue. But I could imagine that if both father and mother use their own languages with their children, and the environment supports more the language of the father (who usually spends less time with children), it might be difficult to say which language the children know better.
By the way, thank you for correcting my translation of German poems in an other thread :), köszönom! Ûdvözlet itthon Finnországból és boldog új evet! (Is this now correct?)
Easterner   Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:12 am GMT
Suomalainen: >yBy the way, thank you for correcting my translation of German poems in an other thread :), köszönom! Ûdvözlet itthon Finnországból és boldog új evet! (Is this now correct?)<í

Almost correct. :) Only it is "köszönöm", and "Üdvözlet, itthonról, Finországból, és boldog új évet!" (Did you mean "Greetings from home, Finland"?)

As for the "thank you" part: Olkaa hyvää! :) Actually, we say in Hungarian: "Szívesen, máskor is", which roughly means "You're welcome, any time". Is there an equivalent for this in Finnish as well?
Kabayan   Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:43 pm GMT
Easterner
>>I think you basically have one mother tongue,<<

I think you're right.
I can say that my "real" mother tongue would be Sundanese, but the funny is that My mother's mother tongue is not Sundanese but Javanese. One more thing, I prefer to use Bahasa in a formal situation because It is more simple to be used in that


Suomalainen
>>By the way, how much do Bahasa, Javanese and Sundanese differ from each other? I know that they all belong to the Malay-Polynesian languages, like hundreds of other languages in your country. <<

Javanese and Sundanese have a bit more complex structure than Bahasa, while Bahasa as a fast growing language has flexibility in structure.
Javanese and Sundanese share more cognates to each other than each of them to Bahasa.
Javanese and Sundanese have "Levels" which means they have different words for different Level of subject/object, while Bahasa has not. Then, Bahasa is perceived as more "democratic" language.
Sundanese has a special type of words called "Verb deliverer" (This is a word to word translation !), while Javanese or Bahasa has not.
Javanese has more levels (5) than Sundanese (3).


>>To which extent does a speaker of one of these understand the others if he hasn´t studied them? I suppose that all young people in your country learn Bahasa at school but among elderly people there perhaps are those who can´t Bahasa, right? <<

It is believed that learning Bahasa/malay or other Indonesian languages is much easier than learning Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, or Balinese. According to linguists The four last ones are the most complex among other austronesian languages.
It is very difficult for us to understand other languages, but we don't need to spend much time to learn them. We don't even need a formal class to learn, just go to certain community and do not hesitate to ask as many questions as you can.

>>Is it common that people know other Indonesian languages than their mother tongue and Bahasa? Is Bahasa gaining ground as home language at the cost of other languages? <<

Yes, there are some people who learn to speak other languages for economic reason ( they want cheaper prices ) or Romantic reason.
In big cities, Where people from different etnicity meet and fall in love, It is becoming more and more common to use bahasa as family language. I use Bahasa when speaking to my children because my wife's sundanese is so poor, she always use wrong word for wrong subject/object.


BTW : I have several questions for you Suomalainen.
Is there any special thing/s in finnish compare to Indo-european languages ?
Are Swedish speakers understand Dannish or Norways (Is that right ?) ?
Give me a glimpse about livonian, please !
thanks ! :)
suomalainen   Thu Jan 05, 2006 9:19 pm GMT
Easterner,
"you are welcome" could be in Finnish "eipä kestä" which means approximately "no reason to thank". Btw, we say "olkaa hyvä" ('hyvää' is partitive case, it would be used for instance in this sentence: "Kala on hyvää" (Fish tastes good, cfr. "kala on hyvä" = (the) fish is good = a hal jó (= igaz?).
I had imagined that 'itt' means 'here' and 'itthon' means 'from here'. Is there any difference between the meaning of 'itt' and 'itthon' (if you have to add the case ending -ról in order to make the meaning 'from').
Sometimes you shorten in Hungarian the long vowel when you add the case ending, don´t you? Therefore I thought it would be 'evet' in stead of 'évet'. Is there any rule for this?

Kabayan,
thank you for information concerning Indonesian languages. Can you give examples of the "levels" of Sundanese/Javanese?
Yes, Swedish speakers understand Danish and Norwegian, especially when they are written. Norwegian is basically pronounced in the same way as Swedish, but there are lots of dialects in Norway and some of them can be first rather difficult for an untrained (Swedish )ear. Spoken Danish demands more exercise because many letters are not clearly pronounced, and otherwise the pronounciation is rather weird (in Swedish/Norwegian ears). I understand when I can speak with Danes face to face but rapid radio speech can be rather difficult, but reading of Norwegian/Danish is no problem.
Finnish is totally different from the Indo-European languages though longlasting contact has given us lots of loanwords, mostly from the Germanic languages and especially from Swedish. Also the syntax (sentence structure) has been modified by the Germanic languages to some extent. Finnish is an agglunative language, which means that we add endings to the words (as also Hungarian), e.g. we have 15 cases.
Livonian is a Finno-Ugric language that has about 25 speakers (2 fluent native ones). It was spoken before WWII in NW Latvia in 12 villages.
Liv: Mina um lívli bet äb múoshta jõvist rõkandõ entsh kíeldõ.
Fin: Minä olen liiviläinen mutta en osaa hyvin puhua kieltäni.
Eng:I am Livonian but I not can well speak my language.
Easterner   Fri Jan 06, 2006 10:32 pm GMT
Suomalainen: >>"you are welcome" could be in Finnish "eipä kestä" which means approximately "no reason to thank". Btw, we say "olkaa hyvä" ('hyvää' is partitive case, it would be used for instance in this sentence: "Kala on hyvää" (Fish tastes good, cfr. "kala on hyvä" = (the) fish is good = a hal jó (= igaz?).
I had imagined that 'itt' means 'here' and 'itthon' means 'from here'. Is there any difference between the meaning of 'itt' and 'itthon' (if you have to add the case ending -ról in order to make the meaning 'from').
Sometimes you shorten in Hungarian the long vowel when you add the case ending, don´t you? Therefore I thought it would be 'evet' in stead of 'évet'. Is there any rule for this?<<

Thank you for the corrections. I learnt the little I know of Finnish at university, where we could take free language courses. Unfortunately, I'm afraid I'll have to re-learn nearly everything, although I could perhaps form some very basic sentences if I really tried.

Concerning your points:

1/ Actually, "itt" does mean "here", but "from here" is "innen". Therefore, what you meant can be said as "innen Finnországból" ("täästä Suomesta"<?>) . On the other hand, "itthon" means "here at home", and "itthonról" means something like "from here, my home" (it's just rather difficult to put all this the right way in an analytic language like English). In Finnish, it would be "täällä kotissa" and "kotista", respectively.

2/ As for the shortening of vowels, it does happen in Hungarian, but usually in the case of monosyllabic words ending in vowels, and as I know, only before the plural nominative suffix and accusative suffix "-at, -et, -öt". Thus, "ló" ("horse") becomes "lovat" with the accusative suffix. However, in the case of "lónak" ("to the horse", dative suffix), and 'lóé" ("of the horse", genitive suffix) there is no vowel shortening. In the plural nominative, the shortening occurs again: "lovak" ("horses"), and is kept for all suffixes, because they only follow this plural nominative suffix. Thus, "lovakat", "lovaknak", etc. In each case, the consonant /v/ is inserted before the suffix for monosyllabic words ending in vowels.

Sometimes the shortening also involves change of vowel quality, as in the case of "tó" ("lake"). The suffixed forms of this word look like this:

Sg. nom.: tó
Sg. gen.: tóé
Sg. dat. tónak
Sg. acc.: tavat
Pl. nom.: tavak
Pl.gen.: tavaké
Pl. dat.: tavaknak
Pl. acc.: tavakat
etc.

Actually, there are some words with two syllables ending in consonants that undergo this shortening, but only a few of them. The only one I can think of is "madár" ("bird"). The corresponding suffixed forms of this word are as follows: "madár", "madáré", "madárnak", but "madarat", "madarak", "madaraknak", etc. This is not the case for "tanár" ("teacher"), which has a regular accusative and plural nominative form: "tanárt" and "tanárok". The word "év" ("year") is also perfectly regular: "évet", "évek", etc.

Summing up, this vowel shortening only affects a few ancient words of Finno-Ugric origin, and may be the trace of an earlier inflectional system. It is somewhat the same as the modification of the "-i" to "-e-" in suffixed forms in Finnish, although this latter is perfectly regular and uniform. I mean words like "järvi" ->"järven", "talvi" ->"talven", etc.
Kabayan   Mon Jan 09, 2006 2:02 am GMT
Thanks for your information Suomalainen !

Here are Examples of sentences in various levels in Sundanese :

High level - Bapa Nuju Tuang (Father is eating ) -
is used when reffereing to respective person (parents, teacher, senior citizen, society leaders, boss, president...etc)

Medium Level - Abdi Nuju Neda ( I am eating ) -
is used when reffering to ourselves while talking with a respective person.
This level is used because we want to be humble.

Low Level - Kuring keur dahar ( I am eating ) -
is used when we are talking to close friends, parents to children, boss to employee....etc,

beside those levels, there is a very low level that is specially used when referring to Animal. If you use this level to your friend, your friend will hit you, because he thinks that you are insulting him.

very low level - Anjing keur Nyatu ( Dog is eating ) -


set of some words in various levels :

High Medium Low Meaning

Tuang Neda Dahar To Eat
Bumi Rorompok Imah House
Mastaka Sirah Hulu Head
Sae Sae Alus Good
Kulem Mondok sare To Sleep
Angkat Miang Indit To Go
etc...etc..etc...etc...........

You have to memorize those words set. And don't forget to know with whom you are speaking.
When speaking with my parents, I am using high level for them and medium level for myself, on the other hand, my parents will use Low level, in the same time.

Unfortunately, I speak Javanese in one level only, since I use Javanese only to my Javanese close friends. I think I have to ask my mother about this. But as far as I know javanese has a kind of Highest level that can only be used when we are speaking with Noble person (king, queen, princess, president...etc.). Very funny isn't it ?

I know, Javanese and Sundanese will sound a bit feudalistic compare to Bahasa.