Keeping it in the family?

Open Forum
1

Does anyone here specialise in one language family or branch thereof?

It would, I guess, actually make some sense to do this? Let’s say someone learns Latin, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French; I can appreciate that there might be some ‘interference’ going on between these languages, but at the end of the proverbial day they would also mutually reenforce each other to a tremendous degree. It might also become easier and easier to learn each new language in the list? And it might then become relatively easy to learn to read obscure dialects as well?

Another possibility: German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish, Icelandic…followed by Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse maybe?

Or: Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbian-Croation…followed by Old Church Slavonic?

I think I’m much too mentally promiscuous(!) for this myself - but it might work well for a more disciplined and focussed learner.

2

I wanted to learn all of the Germanic languages but then I realized that I would need to devote my whole life to learning German. Also I was (and am) not very good at English.

After Spanish it’s not an option for me, no, not anymore!

If I could find enough materials, I’d like to learn the big Turkic languages. Then I could say that I speak 10+ languages.

3

“I’d like to learn the big Turkic languages.”

Which one would you learn first?

I feel like it’s mostly the speakers of smaller Turkic languages (Azeri, Tatar, etc.) who tend to learn Turkish because of your TV shows being more interesting.

4

First of all, I apologize for the long post. If you just want to get the answer do not read the text below.

I understand Azeri very well, lets say, %95 of what they say and almost everything in the writen form. The Azerbaijanis also understand us very well. However I don’t think that someday I will speak Azeri because Azeri and Turkish are so close. In the eastern part of Turkey people talk Turkish like Azeris. An examples:

Toprak(Turkish) - Torpak(Azeri) - Torpak (in the eastern part of the country) / soil, ground, land

I don’t know why but saying “torpak” sounds “funny”. (The fact is only the farmers in Turkey say torpak and it sounds a little bit “different”)

Btw Azeri is actually the second biggest Turkic language because in Iran there are app. 30 million native Azeri speakers, one of them is Ayetullah Khamei. This video shows the conversation between Ataturk and Shah in Turkish-Azeri, if you are interested in there is a link here.

I am not sure, if Azeri and Turkish are two different languages. I think, they are not.

I can understand Gagausian perfectly and %95 of Crimean Tatar. (Still I am not sure, if they are seperate languages. My answer is, no they are not.) I have never studied them. I only listen to the Youtube channels, football matches and news in these languages.

THE ANSWER

Uzbek would be a good start. They use the latin alphabeth and there are app. 35 million native Uzbek speakers. The words are not very different.

My second choice would be Kazakh. They use the cyrillic alphabeth and their words are a little bit different than ours. Whenever I hear Kazakh, I feel like, I am listening to the grandsons of the mighty Khans. :slight_smile:

Kazakhs use j and ş instead of y and ç. (j- french j, y like in York, ş is sh and ç is ch)

Yıldız (Tur) - Jıldız (Kaz) - Star
Kazakça (Tur) - Kazakşa (Kaz) - Kazakh language

EDIT

Here there is a video of Ayetullah Xamenei, the supreme leader of Iran.

Translation from Azeri

Some Farsi words… At 0.10 He starts to speak Azeri.

“In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Turks and the Persians are equal. (Have equal rights) Together…” (applause) “Let me continue…”

“In the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Turks and the Persians are equal, they are Iranian, Muslim and brothers.”

Trancription

İran-i İslami’de Türk de Fars kimin, Fars da Türk kimin, birbiriynen… goyun cümle tamam olsun… Arz edirem, İran-i İslami’de Fars da Türk kimin, Türk de Fars kimin, hami İranidi, muselmandi, birbiriynen gardaşdi.

5

Thanks for the video! Very interesting.

6

Very interesting and comprehensive answer - I didn’t know that with a knowledge of Turkish you can understand Crimean Tatar - I always thought that It have evolved in way Romanian did comparing with any other romance language.

If you can understand 95% it’s very impressive.

7

Qırımtatar tili ya da Qırım tili – qırımtatarlarnıñ tilidir, Altay til ailesine kirgen türkiy tillerge mensüp. Yazı tili latin ve kiril urufatlarınıñ esasındadır. (From Wikipedia - Crimean Tatar)

Kırım Tatar dili ya da Kırım dili - Kırım Tatarlarının dilidir. Altay dil ailesine ait Türkî dillere mensuptur. Yazı dili latin ve kiril harflerinin (or hurufatlarının) esasındandır. (or Yazı dili latin ve kiril harflerinden oluşur.) (My Translation - Turkish)

We don’t have the letter “q”.

Til - dil (language)

This alteration (or change) is very common in the Turkic languages.

tillerge - dillere (to the languages)

Kıpchak Turks add the letter “g” , we don’t.

Evge - eve (to home)

If you know which letter changes in which dialect or language and how it changes, it’s easier to understand the spoken language.

Gagausian

Gagauz Türkçäsi, Gagauz dili — Türk dilleri gruppasına giren dil, angisindä Gagauzlar laf ederlär. (Wikipedi - Gagauz)

Gagauz Türkçesi, Gagauz dili - Türk dilleri grubuna giren dil. Gaguzlar konuşur. (or Gagauzlar tarafından konuşulur.) (My Translation - Turkish)

As you can see, they are almost the same language but they use “angisinda” which is “hangisinde” in Turkish.

This is interesting because they probably changed their grammatical rules after they came to Romania becuase “angisinda” is like “dass”, “that” or “que” in the western languages. We don’t need to use such an expression or conjuction like “that” or “dass” or “que”.

Azeri

Eyni zamanda yazı dili də olan Azərbaycan dili yazı dili ənənəsinə sahib olma baxımından Türk dili ilə paraleldir. (Wikipedia - Azeri)

Aynı zamanda yazı dili de olan Azerbaycan dili yazı dili ananesine sahip olma bakımından Türk dili ile pararleldir. (MT - Turkish)

8

Crimea was a part of Seljuk Rum and then it was ruled as a vassal Khaganate of Turkey. There were many merchants etc. in Crimea who came from Anatolia. They actually speak a Kipchak dialect which is imposible to understand but the Oghuz influence on the language is so strong (thanks to these merchants or peasants), because of that I can understand them easily.

Disclamer: I don’t claim that if you learn Turkish, you can understand all of these languages. I spent some time with the Turkic langauges and I, mostly, know how the words change. This makes easier to understand them.

9

That’s awesome.

I particularly like how Azeris added “ə” when they switched back to the latin script from cyrillic.

It’s still pretty impressive that you can understand it almost perfectly even though those Turkic peoples have spent most of the 20th Century in the USSR and hence closed off from the rest of the world.

10

I’ve tried to do so with Romance languages, which I’ve studied at least 6 of them. Turns out it just gets boring, and not really fun to keep learning them. I learn languages based on different interests, not necessarily because they are easy to keep adding on.

1 Like
11

Maybe it has a practical sense - to keep our study in the same language family.
But sometimes we need something very fresh and unusual - and the language from the very different family is a good challenge for it!
At least, I prefer combining the languages from three different families.

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12

I learned and learn several languages from romance family. They are my favourite especially because they sound so nice. Long time ago I started with French. Then later it was easier for me to learn Spanish. And as a last I started to learn Italian about an year and half ago. I really like all of them but the problem is a bit sometimes confusing words between Spanish and Italian. At present I practice both in order to have better knowledge and also to avoid that confusion, to separate them well in my head.

13

i have no interest in any slavic language german is the only germanic language i would ever study since i already speak english,i have more interest in romance languages except for italian and romanian