Would "French+German" classes be the best ones in

L‘italofilo   Sun Jun 01, 2008 2:44 am GMT
Can German and French be a combinated package for Chinese people to learn at the same time? Or they are usually supposed to learn "French+Italian/Spanish", instead of German? Thanks!
Skippy   Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:07 am GMT
Combined? If you absolutely HAD to learn two languages at once (which I would recommend you don't), I would pick two that are not related, or at least languages that are only distantly related (I suppose like French and German).

The reason I say French and German together may be ok is because they are related, so vocabulary learning would be helpful as would syntax structure (both only to a certain extent) but they are far enough apart to where they wouldn't be confused with one another as would French and Italian or German and Dutch.
L'italofilo   Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:40 am GMT
Skippy:

Thank you for your suggestion. Do you mean that, the more distantly two languages relate to each other, the more helpful for people to learn them severally in order to prevent any confusion between these 2 languages? And if people learn some close languages such as French and Italian/Spanish, it would be more difficult to tell apart the similarities and it may cause more confusion as the time goes by?
K. T.   Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:52 am GMT
I can read and speak all of these languages to some degree. If you are able to see connections between languages without confusing them, then you are ready to take on two related languages, but if NOT, then this is what I suggest:

German and one of the following languages:

Italian
French
Spanish

OR

French and Spanish
OR
French and Italian (possibly)

I would not recommend learning Italian and Spanish together unless you are good at BOTH compartmentalizing information AND able to see connections. For me, one of the best things about languages is making the connections between languages-using them as tools for each other.

I wish you the best.
L'italofilo   Sun Jun 01, 2008 4:01 am GMT
K. T. :


Thank you very much for your patient explanation. I wish you the best too.
Xie   Sun Jun 01, 2008 8:43 am GMT
My friend, I'm doing this exact thing. I'm trying to gain a free hand to learn loads of languages by starting with German AND French, but as you may know about our Chinese market (and the Anglophone), French is actually linguistically and practically easier and gives you quicker access to other languages. That is to say, I should have started with French first, but that doesn't matter much now, now that the English books have helped me go into the halfway...

>>The reason I say French and German together may be ok is because they are related, so vocabulary learning would be helpful as would syntax structure (both only to a certain extent)

I wonder whether there is anything called Western European linguistic affinity. They and English form the 3 biggies of the region and all are somehow related... and since they are all biggies, they are easier.
greg   Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:02 pm GMT
L'italofilo : « Do you mean that, the more distantly two languages relate to each other, the more helpful for people to learn them severally in order to prevent any confusion between these 2 languages? ».

On peut parfaitement apprendre deux langues apparentées simultanément. Et l'apprentissage conjoint de deux langues réputées "similaires" ne pose pas de problème particulier.

NB : parenté et "similarité" ne vont pas forcément de pair → voir le cas de l'allemand et de l'anglais par ex.

On peut apprendre à faire du vélo et de la moto simultanément. On peut apprendre l'algèbre et l'analyse en même temps. On peut apprendre l'histoire de France et l'histoire italienne au cours d'une même période. On peut apprendre le piano et l'accordéon au même moment.
Guest   Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:44 pm GMT
>>On peut apprendre le piano et l'accordéon au même moment.

Why piano and accordion? Are you a musician?
Xie   Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:10 pm GMT
Greg, I can suddenly decipher part of your message, though I don't think it's good for you to reply him/her in French when both of us (OP and I) don't know (enough) French...

Let me guess...

One can perfectly learn two languages simultaneously.

I can guess at least 30% of the rest too, but... well, I do see the point when I can manage French as well (and now read a bit of it), but it's anyway a comprehensive answer to a not very well asked question...

I'd just say I won't learn two novice languages simultaneously, because that'd be diverting my energy too much when I have to absorb 2x new word forms, perhaps until I know how to do this. But I think I'd have had more carryovers to start with if I had learned French first. Even with a lot of cognates, German words still look less straightforward than many French words...
JLK   Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:12 pm GMT
<<On peut apprendre à faire du vélo et de la moto simultanément. On peut apprendre l'algèbre et l'analyse en même temps. On peut apprendre l'histoire de France et l'histoire italienne au cours d'une même période. On peut apprendre le piano et l'accordéon au même moment.>>

How very French of you, babbling on about nothing for eternity. And you condemn your own argument. All those things you listed are <<strikingly>> different activities. One does not confuse the music of an accordion with that of a piano. With languages however, such as Italian and French, the vocabulary and grammar can be/are remarkably similar. For many a novice, that causes a great deal of problems.
Skippy   Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:18 pm GMT
Learning two languages that are related (like French and German) but rather distantly, may be helpful because they're still part of the same language family so you really don't have to learn the fundamentals of grammar twice (both are Centum languages that still exhibit gender, similar verb tenses, only active and passive, not agglutinative... I just keep thinking their grammar is similar enough and would therefore be easier than trying to learn French and Hungarian...). But the languages are distantly related enough to where you won't confuse vocabulary between the two (you won't be permanently affected saying things like 'Ich moechte fromage' or 'je voudrais Kaese').
Xie   Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:39 am GMT
What is centum?
Skippy   Mon Jun 02, 2008 1:54 am GMT
The Indo-European languages are divided into two groups: Centum and Satem languages. The Centum languages retained the /k/ of Proto-Indo-European while the Satem languages developed the PIE /k/ into /s/. The Germanic, Celtic, and Romance languages are Centum languages while the Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages are Satem languages... "Centum" (originally pronounced with a /k/) is the Latin word for 100, while "Satem" is the word for 100 in (I believe) Sanskrit.

Look it up on wikipedia.
Xie   Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:02 am GMT
But this not so... related to something I can think of. I mean... they are Romance and Germanic, but for some reasons, they share a lot of international words and even some basic, native Germanic/Romance words also look similar. Besides grammatical features, they (I take English, German, and French) are also similar in how they put the vowels, the consonants... and probably even the stress.

And yes, centum pretty much suggests some evidence... everything east of Germany looks more different.
zatsu   Mon Jun 02, 2008 3:00 am GMT
Well, don't people do that in school all the time, learning two languages at the same time? And that not counting the grammar and other lessons in your own language... I don't think it's a big deal.

Sometimes it may even be helpful and motivating... When I was learning Swedish, many times I would remember Japanese stuff, or asking, "OK, and how would I say this in Japanese, or French, or whatever?", and in that way actually gaining something more. Concentration is important, but it's easier to get bored and reach a plateau when you're focusing too much on a language.
IMHO.