When you know a language in one family, do you find it fairly easy to read the other languages in that family?

Question

I speak Spanish and I've studied some French, but it amazes me that I can actually read and understand Portuguese, Catalan, and some Italian as well without ever having studied them (mostly, of course there are words and usages unique to each of them) . I can't do Romanian, though... no matter how hard my Romanian friend tries with me :) . So, I've got the Romance languages almost down. What are your experiences with languages in other families?

It's the best thing about languages, you know one in a family and you're already halfway to the rest.

I sure hope I get more answers so I don't have to report the first guy for gaming for points and not attempting to answer the question....

I wonder if people like that know how dumb they sound?

Answer 1

bueno.. es mas facil para que entiendas otros idiomas como el portugues y italiano porque las palabras son casi similares por eso es mas facil leer y escribir(romance languages) pues yo hablo 4idiomas.. y soy multicultural.. siempre he mantenido equilibrar todos 4 por hablar los todos los dias.. por ejemplo hablaria espanol con amigos.. y frances con mi familia, ingles cuando estudio y criollo con mis primas o aveces los mezclo.. sabes seria bueno si practicas los que pueds leer uno al otro aunque dices entiends el portugues,catalan,y italiano sin estudiarlos mejor si aprendes uno despues del otro porque creame te van a confundir(eso me esta pasando ahorita) el portugues es muyyyy similar al espanol.. pero practicalos...
buena suerte y sigue aprendiendo.

Answer 2

It depends on what you mean by "family" and which family and family members you try to learn/understand.

For instance, Spanish, English, Russian, and Greek are all in the Indo-European family, but learning one would *barely* help you learn another!! And, as you pointed out, knowing Spanish doesn't help much (or at least not enough) with Romanian.

So...knowing Dutch or German (Germanic) will help you learn the other one, but it will be less useful in learning English or Afrikaans because of the large borrowing of words from other language families. Swedish and Norwegian are pretty much mutually intelligible, but Icelandic (same Scaninavian family) is harder for speakers of the first 2. And some families (like Slavic or Semitic) use more than one alphabet, which makes reading related languages tougher...

Answer 3

It depends, I think, not only on the similarity between the languages, but also in the similarity between the writing systems. I know what you mean about Spanish and French because I learned to read French sort of when I was working with a Cuban professor who taught out of a French textbook (long story). However, my ability to recognize similar words is aided not only by my knowledge of how certain languages are pronounced but also by my vocabulary in English, which has many roots in common with other Indo-European languages. In other words, I think not just my Spanish helps me to understand French, but also my English, and my general knowledge of linguistics.

(I'm working right now on German, though, and I was pleased to find out the other day that the word for "shrimp" in German is pretty similar to the Spanish word for "shrimp". Go Indo-European language family!)

If I were basing my ability to read a new language on knowledge of a language that wasn't my native language AND they were written in different scripts I think it would be basically impossible.

Answer 4

I agree. I speak French and find it remarkably easy to 'get the gist' in Spanish and Italian (well, when they're written, not spoken...)
I also speak German, and I found Dutch fairly easy to learn, even though I kept making typical 'German' grammar errors and had a German accent in Dutch, but I still find it reasonably easy to comprehend. I've heard it said, about the Romance languages, 'learn one, get four free', but I don't think they're really 'free'--just a deep discount.

Answer 5

Yes, your impression is quite correct. Even English speakers will find it much easier to learn Dutch than to learn Chinese, because they are so close. Depending on how closely related two languages are, it is more or less easy to learn the other. For example, an English speaker will find Dutch is easier to learn than German and German is easier to learn than Russian

Answer 6

you know one and you know them all