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I can speak German, English and Dutch (which are very close Germanic languages) and also understand a bit of French and Italian. I guess I could learn their bas

I can speak German, English and Dutch (which are very close Germanic languages) and also understand a bit of French and Italian. I guess I could learn their basics relatively quickly if I tried hard enough. However, I actually need to learn Croatian, a Slavic language. This is extremely difficult for me and I make hardly any progress. The vocabulary is so different from everything else I know, I just can't remember the words. The grammar is quite challenging as well.

alexey-salmin 2y ago
I did give some thought whether your native language makes it easier or harder to learn others, but all I have is anecdotal cases from my life. I wonder if there are any scientific studies on the topic. E.g. a curious thing I noticed is the frequent complaint about Latin being very hard to learn because of the seven grammatical cases, three genders and morphology -- words just don't stay the same. As native Russian speaker I find these things absolutely normal and easy to understand, but I can image this must be a nightmare after English. Slavic languages you mention are very curious in how different yet how similar they all are. One of the most impressive thing I saw with respect to learning languages is the Interslavic language [1]. Apparently if you speak any of Slavic languages you can understand it quite well, even though you usually are completely lost with most of the other Slavic languages. You still need to learn to speak it, but the fact that you understand foreigners with zero training just blows my mind. Feels like you awakened the memory of your ancestors of something. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztgXMLwv4A&t=122s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztgXMLwv4A&t=122s
- ajuc 2y ago
  I'm Polish, I've never learnt any foreign Slavic languages, but I can mostly understand Ukrainian, Belarusian and Slovak from passive exposure on a few trips. The experience is weird - when I first went to Ukraine I couldn't understand almost anything. After a few days it suddenly "clicked" and I realized how the most common sounds and word endings relate between Polish and Ukrainian - and since that moment I basically got all the words with the same roots for free (which is like half the language). It also gave me Belarusian as a side effect :) Of course it's not actual language speaking, I'm just understanding every other word and connecting the dots. With Slovak it was even quicker, but somehow it hasn't given me Czech - their pronuciation is just too weird, despite the fact it's almost the same in writing :). I'm not sure Interslavic provides much value. For me it's basically Slovak, so if you come from East Slavic language you'd probably get the same benefit spending that time learning some Slovak, and you'd then know some actual language instead of an artificial one.
  - elefanten 2y ago
    There’s a surprising amount of vocabulary difference across Czech and Slovak, in addition to the pronunciation differences you mention. Pre-split everyone on both sides grew up hearing bilingual broadcasts, so they picked up the differences ambiently. I’ve heard that it’s a lot less of a given whether the younger generations presumptively understand each other these days. But I’ve also seen evidence that many still choose to engage with people / content / opportunities on the other side enough to get to solid working familiarity anyway. This comes from limited first-hand experience and more extensive second-hand cross-generational experience. Take it as you will.
    - l3x4ur1n 2y ago
      Slovak children usually grow up with Czech narrated cartoons, so they are able to understand Czech more easily. I heard that Czech children does not receive this language training for Slovak, so they have a harder time understanding Slovak language. I never "learned" Czech in school but I watched a lot of cartoons as a child (born '93) and read books in Czech so I have no problem understanding Czech language as a Slovak. I have a hard time understanding Polish though, never clicked for me.
      - jajko 2y ago
        I can confirm this is true. Czech republic is cca 2x the population size of Slovakia and its historically more developed part, so during one state union a lot of media were in czech language and it became our second language without thinking about it. Also Czechs did get a decent exposure to slovakian language. But if there is no exposure, its becomes visible how grammar is very similar, but most words are just a bit different (very few are completely different), and pronunciation varies so much across whole region (even within given country) that its not easy or even possible to understand each other out of blue, without prior exposure. I got some exposure to Polish TV during 80s, since commies couldn't put together more than 2-3 channels on TV and those were anyway pretty bland. I can cca understand it, but can't say a single sentence well enough. If I read polish text, I have to read it loud in my head and then I grok it easily, otherwise too much 'cz', 'w', words are too long etc and I lose meaning very quickly. But in general Polish is a bit further away from either Slovak or Czech languages. We were and still are literal brothers (CZ and SK), extremely similar in so many regards, still see no good rational reason why we split up (of course I know real reasons, but those are nasty as are the people responsible for the split).
- antihipocrat 2y ago
  The US state department has some estimates of time to become proficient in target languages for English speakers. Germanic and Latin based languages take the least amount of effort: https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
  - wvh 2y ago
    Interesting link. Some of those estimates are very, very optimistic though...
    - antihipocrat 2y ago
      It helps that staff are participating in these programs full-time, no other duties required. A story I've heard first hand is that after the program, department staff can discuss diplomacy in the target language, but struggled to order a coffee!
holoduke 2y ago
As a dutch person i once spend 2 years in Ukraine. Hardly anyone spoke decent english there, so i was forced to learn (russian) the language. Within a year I was able to speak it moderately. Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar. Its not important and will be fine later on. First learn 2000 to 3000 words and you will be able to say a lot of things.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  > Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar. Absolutely! The way they teach foreign languages in school is insane. "OK, you know 20 words and can't say a thing, now it's time to learn past tense".
  - yurishimo 2y ago
    Can I ask what language you're thinking of here? When I was taking classes, the A0-A1 level class was all in the present tense for the full length of the course. We might have touched on past tense in the last lesson and most of the books I've seen for this language (Dutch), structure things as present/future tense first, and then past tense after.
    - alexey-salmin 2y ago
      These are my memories of learning English in school as a foreign language. French courses that my wife took recently also had past and future tenses in A1. Even if it's not the tenses, still schools typically put a lot of focus on grammar and order of words but not even nearly enough into speaking. I have an suspicion that these corses are modelled after native-language programs which rightfully focus on grammar because everyone knows how to speak already. But starting from it is madness.
  - gwervc 2y ago
    And before learning words, learning and practicing phonology. Then, add vocabulary while still practicing phonology. It's insane people and institutions assume one could be understood when speaking a language when its most basic building block is not acquired.
wvh 2y ago
I had the same problem coming from the same Germanic/Romanic languages as you, trying to learn Finnish. It's not just the vocabulary, the whole construction and modality is often different, and it's hard to map things one on one. Then I learned Swedish, and it was just a funny dialect between Dutch and German.
- euroderf 2y ago
  Yes Finnish is way out there. We're raising our kid bilingual EN/FI, and I am really curious to know how he will align these two languages in his head, and what kinds of insights he will get. I suspect he will be a sponge for additional languages.

alexey-salmin 2y ago

I did give some thought whether your native language makes it easier or harder to learn others, but all I have is anecdotal cases from my life. I wonder if there are any scientific studies on the topic. E.g. a curious thing I noticed is the frequent complaint about Latin being very hard to learn because of the seven grammatical cases, three genders and morphology -- words just don't stay the same. As native Russian speaker I find these things absolutely normal and easy to understand, but I can image this must be a nightmare after English. Slavic languages you mention are very curious in how different yet how similar they all are. One of the most impressive thing I saw with respect to learning languages is the Interslavic language [1]. Apparently if you speak any of Slavic languages you can understand it quite well, even though you usually are completely lost with most of the other Slavic languages. You still need to learn to speak it, but the fact that you understand foreigners with zero training just blows my mind. Feels like you awakened the memory of your ancestors of something. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztgXMLwv4A&t=122s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztgXMLwv4A&t=122s

ajuc 2y ago
I'm Polish, I've never learnt any foreign Slavic languages, but I can mostly understand Ukrainian, Belarusian and Slovak from passive exposure on a few trips. The experience is weird - when I first went to Ukraine I couldn't understand almost anything. After a few days it suddenly "clicked" and I realized how the most common sounds and word endings relate between Polish and Ukrainian - and since that moment I basically got all the words with the same roots for free (which is like half the language). It also gave me Belarusian as a side effect :) Of course it's not actual language speaking, I'm just understanding every other word and connecting the dots. With Slovak it was even quicker, but somehow it hasn't given me Czech - their pronuciation is just too weird, despite the fact it's almost the same in writing :). I'm not sure Interslavic provides much value. For me it's basically Slovak, so if you come from East Slavic language you'd probably get the same benefit spending that time learning some Slovak, and you'd then know some actual language instead of an artificial one.
- elefanten 2y ago
  There’s a surprising amount of vocabulary difference across Czech and Slovak, in addition to the pronunciation differences you mention. Pre-split everyone on both sides grew up hearing bilingual broadcasts, so they picked up the differences ambiently. I’ve heard that it’s a lot less of a given whether the younger generations presumptively understand each other these days. But I’ve also seen evidence that many still choose to engage with people / content / opportunities on the other side enough to get to solid working familiarity anyway. This comes from limited first-hand experience and more extensive second-hand cross-generational experience. Take it as you will.
  - l3x4ur1n 2y ago
    Slovak children usually grow up with Czech narrated cartoons, so they are able to understand Czech more easily. I heard that Czech children does not receive this language training for Slovak, so they have a harder time understanding Slovak language. I never "learned" Czech in school but I watched a lot of cartoons as a child (born '93) and read books in Czech so I have no problem understanding Czech language as a Slovak. I have a hard time understanding Polish though, never clicked for me.
    - jajko 2y ago
      I can confirm this is true. Czech republic is cca 2x the population size of Slovakia and its historically more developed part, so during one state union a lot of media were in czech language and it became our second language without thinking about it. Also Czechs did get a decent exposure to slovakian language. But if there is no exposure, its becomes visible how grammar is very similar, but most words are just a bit different (very few are completely different), and pronunciation varies so much across whole region (even within given country) that its not easy or even possible to understand each other out of blue, without prior exposure. I got some exposure to Polish TV during 80s, since commies couldn't put together more than 2-3 channels on TV and those were anyway pretty bland. I can cca understand it, but can't say a single sentence well enough. If I read polish text, I have to read it loud in my head and then I grok it easily, otherwise too much 'cz', 'w', words are too long etc and I lose meaning very quickly. But in general Polish is a bit further away from either Slovak or Czech languages. We were and still are literal brothers (CZ and SK), extremely similar in so many regards, still see no good rational reason why we split up (of course I know real reasons, but those are nasty as are the people responsible for the split).
antihipocrat 2y ago
The US state department has some estimates of time to become proficient in target languages for English speakers. Germanic and Latin based languages take the least amount of effort: https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/
- wvh 2y ago
  Interesting link. Some of those estimates are very, very optimistic though...
  - antihipocrat 2y ago
    It helps that staff are participating in these programs full-time, no other duties required. A story I've heard first hand is that after the program, department staff can discuss diplomacy in the target language, but struggled to order a coffee!

holoduke 2y ago

As a dutch person i once spend 2 years in Ukraine. Hardly anyone spoke decent english there, so i was forced to learn (russian) the language. Within a year I was able to speak it moderately. Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar. Its not important and will be fine later on. First learn 2000 to 3000 words and you will be able to say a lot of things.

alexey-salmin 2y ago
> Key is to focus on words only. Dont care about gramar. Absolutely! The way they teach foreign languages in school is insane. "OK, you know 20 words and can't say a thing, now it's time to learn past tense".
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Can I ask what language you're thinking of here? When I was taking classes, the A0-A1 level class was all in the present tense for the full length of the course. We might have touched on past tense in the last lesson and most of the books I've seen for this language (Dutch), structure things as present/future tense first, and then past tense after.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    These are my memories of learning English in school as a foreign language. French courses that my wife took recently also had past and future tenses in A1. Even if it's not the tenses, still schools typically put a lot of focus on grammar and order of words but not even nearly enough into speaking. I have an suspicion that these corses are modelled after native-language programs which rightfully focus on grammar because everyone knows how to speak already. But starting from it is madness.
- gwervc 2y ago
  And before learning words, learning and practicing phonology. Then, add vocabulary while still practicing phonology. It's insane people and institutions assume one could be understood when speaking a language when its most basic building block is not acquired.

wvh 2y ago

I had the same problem coming from the same Germanic/Romanic languages as you, trying to learn Finnish. It's not just the vocabulary, the whole construction and modality is often different, and it's hard to map things one on one. Then I learned Swedish, and it was just a funny dialect between Dutch and German.

euroderf 2y ago
Yes Finnish is way out there. We're raising our kid bilingual EN/FI, and I am really curious to know how he will align these two languages in his head, and what kinds of insights he will get. I suspect he will be a sponge for additional languages.