Language learning

It seems like “everybody” I meet nowadays wants to learn a language. Be it Italian or French, Spanish, Russian, Norwegian or German, most people are constantly complaining on how they either neglected their language studies at school, or how they always wanted to learn some language but never find time for it. Here are two helpful tips that might be of assistance:
  1. Stop complaining
  2. Start learning
Learning languages is not hard, when having discovered the best way to do it. Though the “best way” will vary from person to person, there is basically one simple thing that always works: repetition. You do not need to memorize declensions for 6 hours every day, but if you read some texts / do some Pimsleurs about 1/2 hour every day, miracles will be forged. With time. Because that is what it takes to learn a language: Time and repetition.

Our brain has evolved the smashing ability to learn and speak languages, which obviously had large evolutionary advantages. Even though children tend to absorb languages quicker than adults, it is still perfectly possible to learn new languages fluently as an adult. All that is needed is some hard work and repetition. When done correctly, learning languages is not particularly hard, but it is time-consuming. The most important part of the learning process is repetition, not memorizing rules. If memorizing rules were a priority, then native russians would have problems speaking Russian. Think about how you learned your own language - you never needed memorizing any rules.

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What this page is...

This page is meant as a resource for individuals interested in language learning. It is also a track-record for myself, and the languages I am currently learning. The page contains online language learning resource such as
  • Links to language sites
  • Recommended methods for learning the specific language
  • Recommended books / easy reader books
  • My personal progress track
However, when learning a new language as an adult, it certainly helps to know and understand the rules of linguistics. All languages tend to have a certain set of common traits, such as having direct objects, passive objects, nouns, subjects, verbs etc. Recognizing these, together with having a basic understanding of what cases are, is extremely helpful in languages such as Finnish, Russian and Dutch.

Personally, the best method for learning languages has been through a combination of reading repetition, speaking practice (like the Pimsleur method) and learning the rules. If you want to learn a new language, you will have to optimize your own learning process as you go. .

Why do I learn languages?

I am Norwegian. Norwegians tend to speak Norwegian. Norwegian is a Germanic language, pretty close to English and Dutch. All these languages are grouped together in the Indo-European family, which also consist of the Slavic, Romance, Celtic, Albanian, Hellenic and various other languages. All these idioms have something in common. Being Norwegian, it is easier for me to learn languages that are close to my own language. Therefore, English and German were not too hard to learn, even though they seemed hard at the time. However, Spanish took some more time to get into, but once there, the remaining Romance language should be a piece of cake. But as one learns more languages, the difficulty level drops, and one start searching for connections.

The real treat starts when learning languages from different language groups. I am currently learning Finnish and Sami, two languages from the Finno-Uralic language group. The languages are not related to any Indo-European, and are hence are pretty hard for me to learn. However, for a Finnish person, learning Sami should not be too difficult. The two languages are not mutually intelligible, but are about as close as Spanish and Romanian, both being romance languages.

Languages_of_the_world
The language groups of the world.
One of the cool things about learning languages is that it becomes easier with time. But one also needs to be patient, and structured. As with everything that is learned, it is not an effortless process, but the rewards are great. After a couple of languages, interesting relations start to show, things that might be too sweet to be coincidences...

I am not yet at polyglot, and maybe I will never be. But that is not my goal. My goal is to learn languages simply for the sake of learning languages, being able to read weird texts in obscure alphabets because it is cool. I enjoy talking to people at parties, knowing something about their home country and being interested in their culture. I enjoy the subtle differences between expressions in languages, how some common word in one languages might be completely hilarious in another. I enjoy discovering how Finnish has influenced Russian, or how Norwegian deviated from Icelandic. How the English plural for the word “book” used to be “bek”, and how Spanish-speaking people differ in their pronunciation of “j”, “ll” and “c”. Even though my Spanish is pretty much on the same level as an 8-year old, it is getting better every day. There are so many things to learn.