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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  3027 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Any hubski users here into language learning?

I'm currently learning English (linguistic level) and German (amateur-level, through Duolingo, am looking for a proper Russian- or English-language text-/workbook for the language). Planning to go for Icelandic and Norwegian (the bokmaal kind, through Duolingo) soon since I'm already a bit in and have proper textbooks. Looking forward to learning Romanian, French, Portuguese in the future. Curious about Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese and Chinese due to their non-Latin base and peculiar script. Thinking of taking up Korean in some undefined future.

For German, I'm doing my best to have a bit of practice with Duolingo every day or two. I tell myself that it's as much as I can take, which may or may not be true. I've been speaking A1-A2 German from back when I attended the first uni, so now I'm merely refreshing the old material.





CardboardLamp  ·  3026 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Russian! What a language. It's definitely on my list for to learn, because shouting in Russian and German sound so scary :3

Also the history which is very long and interesting.

user-inactivated  ·  3026 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I wouldn't want to advertise it as language to scare your enemies with, same as German. Both may sound more rough and gritty but, indeed, one can produce amazingly-beautifully-sounding sentences using it. Just listen to classic pieces of literature from both cultures read with quality. It may often have to do with understanding the language, too, so I may be biased on the matter.

Some of the thoughts are expressed much more succinctly with those two languages. It's true for any language, naturally, yet I can only speak for the three I know on a level - Russian, English and German.

In English, there are handy participle constuctions like "people working on the farm" which takes a bit more mental space in Russian due to being obstructed by commas on both ends if followed by something else ("люди, работающие на ферме, <did something>"). Commas add mental pauses, thus prolonging the reading time.

Both German and English feature "who"-structures due to being Germanic languages: "those who speak Latin" and "wer Lateinisch spricht" (if my German is up to speed). I can't easily recall such constructions for Russian, but there are some, as I remember wondering how some things are much more easily expressed in Russian.

Just a few tidbits.

CardboardLamp  ·  3025 days ago  ·  link  ·  

thanks