Languages

The people at Unilang/How-to-learn-any-language always blow my mind away with how much time they've put into learning languages. Some are younger than me and have studied 10 languages already, including at least one to (more or less) fluency! O_o

In any case, some of the posts have put me in the rambling mood again.

Languages I would like to learn, in rough order of priority (as of 10/28/09):
Norwegian
Seems quite similar to English in some ways, and I'm interested in the "3-for-1" gain.

Finnish
Fascinating language in terms of grammar and how it sounds. The downside is that it's pretty difficult, so I'm in no hurry to learn it for now.

German
I actually like the sound of German very much. What's turning me off right now is the complex grammar.

Russian
I've been mildly exposed to Russian before, and I rather like the sound of it. It's pretty far from any other language I know, so I'm waiting on this one.


Italian
I don't know, actually; I'm only a little interested because everyone keeps saying how it's such a beautiful language (I thought that was French?) and, after glancing at an "Italian for Dummies," I realized I could pick it up pretty quickly. Otherwise, I'm not very keen.

Icelandic, Polish, Hungarian
I'm not too interested in these because of the difficulty (simplicity does not turn me off, thank you very much), but admittedly the difficulty is also an attraction factor. I think these would be the languages I would learn on a rainy day, if I happen to be proficient/fluent in every other target language.

Given that same hypothetical rainy day, I would probably also sit down and learn the Thai, Georgian, and Armenian alphabets. And maybe stare at Basque, Welsh, Irish, and Catalan...

(Shoot, I need to stop myself before this goes on for too long...)

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But, in any case, my goal in terms of language learning isn't really native fluency in all of them. Heck, if by "fluency" you mean perfect pronunciation, no grammar mistakes, no pauses, can always express myself using the perfect, most sophisticated idiomatic expression, then I'm not even "fluent" in my native language, English.

I define "fluent" as being able to think in that language and say what you want to say without being too inconvenienced in terms of searching for how to put it into words, and without blaring grammar mistakes.

In any case, my personal goals in terms of language learning are (except where Chinese is concerned) first full literacy (which is the easiest part to work on anyway, relatively speaking), then aural comprehension, then at the very last oral ability.

Which Scandinavian Language to learn?

Swedish
+ Most populous Scandinavian country
+ Apparently has a strong literary tradition (Wikipedia)

Norwegian
+ "Between" Swedish and Danish, seems to facilitate comprehension of both
- Many dialects, including 2 written standards (Bokmål & Nynorsk)

Danish
+ Happiest country in the world
- "Hot potato in the mouth" pronunciation, apparently hard for others to pronounce/understand

All three
- Most residents are fluent in English and will speak English to foreigners (so I've heard)

Haha...this was not meant to be very politically correct at all. Still, I'm currently wavering between Norwegian and Swedish--I'm leaning toward Norwegian for the linguistic gains in the other two, and Swedish for the potentially interesting literature and more speakers--though I'd love to visit all three at some point. Written Swedish has different spelling from Norwegian Bokmål/Danish (which are almost the same), but apparently Swedes still don't have much issue with reading the others and vice-versa.

People argue about stupid things.

 All right, first, a heads-up, I'm slightly crabby because I'm tired (I've been suffering from a sort of chronic fatigue) and I have to submit a proposal for my history final paper by Friday and I STILL have NO idea whatsoever (thanks to the completely open prompt). So, the following post will be less diplomatic and politically correct than usual, because I'm seriously annoyed.

The How-to-learn-any-language forum seemed like a great place for me, because it's more active than the Unilang forum, but I've started to realize that there are some completely nonproductive debates going on there.

Case in point: one thread was started about Chinese characters being "inefficient" and that they should be got rid of in favor of writing entirely in pinyin.

Anyone who's learned Chinese to any degree will know that that is impossible on many levels. I would have forgiven that question as arising from ignorance, but then this other person jumps in and starts arguing for the romanization of Chinese. I couldn't help it--normally I'm reserved, especially in internet debates, but his arguments were so ludicrous that I had to jump in. But s/he never admits defeat--just keeps going and going until everyone (or me, at least) is sick of arguing.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that this poster's English isn't the best; either that, or s/he can't write arguments in general, because s/he keeps contradicting him/herself.

Another problem is that s/he thinks s/he's absolutely right and is pretty arrogant about the whole thing.

Finally, his/her arguments just don't make any sense.

S/he talks about homophones in Chinese (and there are a ton of them) as not being a problem, then proposes that homophones should be romanized according to their classical pronunciation (...what? That's like telling all English-speakers to go back to speaking Old English), says that pinyin isn't phonetic (are you going to call written English or French phonetic, then?), and basically keeps adding more and more nonsensical BS.

There was another argument about how calling a computer an "electric brain" (as it's called in Chinese) doesn't make sense, and I'm sitting here thinking, "Why are you wasting time arguing about this? You're not going to change the word for computer in Chinese anyway."

ARGH. I want to like the HTOLAL (lazy here) forum, but I can't. At least Unilang has fewer arrogant people who don't waste time arguing about things that are not worth arguing about.