Well... ok,
I am a language afficionado
I want to learn (at some point) the following languages:
Spanish
Norwegian
Finnish
Chinese (mandarin)
Japanese
Hebrew
Arabic
Has anyone learned or dabbled with these on their own ?
Any books or resources that you recommend ?
What's your reasons for wanting to learn these languages? I can understand why you would like to know arabic, hebrew, spanish, mandarin and japanese. But what's the reasons for finnish and norweigan? These languages are spoken by about 5 million people each, and for finnish, Finland is not the number one resort in Europe exactly... Norway is beautiful and I belive norweigan (being a scandinavian language, along side swedish, danish and icelandic) is a lot easier to learn if you speak english and some german. From what I've heard, finnish has more simularities to languages spoken i India and Pakistan than swedish or german.
If you decide to learn norweigan at some point, it will then be fairly easy for you to learn the other scandinavian languages. I guess it's like learning C, and swedish would be Objective-C, and danish C++, and Icelandic Java (It's a bit different). Still, I don't belive it's woth the effort. There's not that many scandinavians to talk to. Around 16 million or something last time I counted.
Norwegian I want to learn for two reasons,
a) as a steping stone for icelanding, danish and scand
b) I have a few norwegian friends so I can capitalize
on it and practice the language
as far as finnish goes, I heard that it has a complex grammar stucture so I want to wrap my brain around it...maybe do some comparative stuff too between languages
I also want to learn Turkish lol
Hmmm by the time I get done learning all those languages I will be a true polyglot
Ordered five books from amazon.com
2 spanish: 1 grammar, 1 teach yer-self
2 norwegian : 1 grammar, 1 teach yer-self
1 arabic: Learn arabic script (once I get the writting system down I will concentrate more on grammar)
the obvious question that begs to be answered:
I will start off with spanish (should be a piece of chocolate cake with my french and italian background).
Then move on to Norwegian, should be ok with me german and english background.
and then arabic script
(I am still trying to convice my friend to teach me vietnamese )
Norway is beautiful and I belive norweigan (being a scandinavian language, along side swedish, danish and icelandic) is a lot easier to learn if you speak english and some german. From what I've heard, finnish has more simularities to languages spoken i India and Pakistan than swedish or german.