studying a similar language to your native language

What's it like to study a language which is closely related and to a degree mutually intelligible with your own native language. Us English speakers don't really have this opportunity.

Would you say it would be similar to, say, a Texan learning to speak some obscure Scottish dialect?

I can't help that think, although there would be interesting points, that it would be kind of boring in general. Everything would already be familiar and nothing 'really' new... So what's it like? Spanish/Portuguese? French/Occitan? Russian/Ukranian? etc

I'm an Spanish speaker and to study Italian was a pleasure, easy and with no much effort I have one more language in my curriculum vitae.

<<What's it like to study a language which is closely related and to a degree mutually intelligible with your own native language. Us English speakers don't really have this opportunity.>>

I suppose you could try studying Middle English. You'd be lmiited to studying the written language, of course, but there's considerable "mutual intelligibilty".

Would a Modern English speaker studying Middle English be comparable to a Spanish speaker studying Italian?

I'm a native Spanish speaker, would French be easy for me to learn? they are both from the same family branch!



Thanks in advance :-D

>>What's it like to study a language which is closely related and to a degree mutually intelligible with your own native language. Us English speakers don't really have this opportunity.

I can understand a lot of Mandarin without ever trying to speak it. That's what many of my relatives have been doing despite being largely/totally monolingual.

I think the fluent speakers of both Germanic and Romance languages would rule in many regions for their notorious discounts of learning these 2 types of languages which influence most of the others with some popularity, except... no, even East Asians can mangle a bit of English which has a lot of Latinate vocab. The Germanic and the Romance are the perfect pair of languages, and you can claim polyglottery with the least time by being native in at least one of them and learning every related ones right away.

What's a native speaker of English going to study? Frisian? Not very practical, imo. I listened to some Scandinavian languages recently and thought, "Dang! I can understand this!" Okay, I'm not monolingual, but now I know why it's so easy for Scandinavians to "master" English. Norwegian doesn't seem like much of a challenge-so maybe it would be a good match for an English speaker who wants an "easy" to pronounce language. Didn't RW (of Antimoon) go for Norwegian after English. Good choice.

<<What's a native speaker of English going to study? Frisian? Not very practical, imo.>>

I suppose there's always Scots, provided you consider it a separate language, and not just an extreme dialect of English.

Scots sounds like great fun, but since I can understand a lot of it, it isn't much of a challenge.

<<Scots sounds like great fun, but since I can understand a lot of it, it isn't much of a challenge.>>

Ok then, I challenge you to learn Scots, go to Scotland, and get people to take you for a local... Still think it'd be easy?

It would be hard for an American to move to England and pretend to be English. Does that mean that American English is an entirely different language rather than just a different dialect?

No, it's just cultural differences aside from language.

So then how do you know it's the language that would make it hard in Scotland?