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Easy language to broaden culture | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4879 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 9 of 42 20 April 2011 at 11:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good point. Since I'm not an aspiring globe trotter, I don't think I would want to include necessarily traveling to a country which speaks the target language. But for sure literature, film, news, and other media would be included. And the language doesn't necessarily have to be an easy one. If a language were moderately difficult but provided the opportunity for tremendous cultural expansion then it might still meet the criteria that I'm looking for. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6474 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 10 of 42 20 April 2011 at 11:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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If you learn French, you can really dive deep into European culture, so learning another European language like German or Italian wouldn't really open a entirely different culture.
Spanish wouldn't "cost" much and open a whole new continent and its culture (although you'd still stay in the so-called Western culture). Persian is a rather easy language (although learning to read the Arabic alphabet can be off-putting) and since geographically and culturally it's been the bridge between the West and the East, it can open a door to the Islamic and (to some extent) Indian cultures. Hindi is the lingua franca of India, whose culture is extremely different from Western culture. I'm not an expert, but I've studied it a bit and it doesn't seem overly complicated. Probably, East Asian cultures are the most exotic from your perspective, but languages like Chinese or Japanese require a huge investment of time to get anywhere. Personally, I think Persian or Hindi would be the best investment in terms of time spent vs. cultural insights gained. However, I also think that if your goal is to break anglo-centrism, it would be easier (and less time-consuming) to make a reading list including authors from many different countries and read their works in English translation (for example, pick a book each from Mexico, Peru, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Greece, Russia, China, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria, India, Japan and Indonesia). I believe that you will learn a lot more about different cultures than by studying the grammar or vocabulary of any single language. One final remark on Afrikaans: I've traveled to South Africa several times and also studied some basic Afrikaans. It didn't give me much insight into African culture, since Afrikaans is basically used by a rather European subset of the South African population. English is much better to explore South African culture. 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Marc Frisch Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6474 days ago 1001 posts - 1169 votes Speaks: German*, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Persian, Tamil | Message 11 of 42 20 April 2011 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
Linguistically, Arabic is probably one of the best choices if you want to broaden your horizon, since virtually everything is different from English. Culturally, I think that Persian and Arabic offer similar benefits, but Persian is much easier to learn. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hjordis Senior Member United States snapshotsoftheworld. Joined 4995 days ago 209 posts - 264 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, German, Spanish, Japanese | Message 12 of 42 21 April 2011 at 12:56am | IP Logged | |||||
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While I'm personally not a fan of Esperanto, I agree that it would be a good language for experiencing many different cultures. However, I have a suspicion that most of the people who learn it are European, so it might not get you too far out of "Western" culture.
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| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4879 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 13 of 42 21 April 2011 at 1:10am | IP Logged | |||||
I've never really considered Persian before, thanks for the recommendation, I'll be sure to read up about it. And I agree that it would be a lot easier to just read books in English about various cultures, but a lot of books never get translated, and it world be interesting to read contemporary books and news. I find Spanish to be interesting as well since it would open up a huge portion of South America to me. What about Swahili? The FSI rated it at 750-900 hours, about the same as German. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| irrationale Tetraglot Senior Member China Joined 5859 days ago 669 posts - 1023 votes 2 sounds Speaks: English*, Spanish, Mandarin, Tagalog Studies: Ancient Greek, Japanese | Message 14 of 42 21 April 2011 at 2:19am | IP Logged | |||||
Something about this paragraph bothers me. Are you more concerned with not being perceived as "Euro centric" in the least amount of time and work than you are in learning about other cultures? Do you expect to be suddenly not Euro-centric when you learn an "exotic" language? In my opinion, learning languages are the effect, not the cause, of a genuine interest in other cultures. Edited by irrationale on 21 April 2011 at 2:20am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5071 days ago 2237 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French) | Message 15 of 42 21 April 2011 at 2:29am | IP Logged | |||||
So many good suggestions have already been offered. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. You say you want to be less "anglo-centric". Spanish will help you do that and open up a large indigenous community to you in our hemisphere. Portuguese will do the same for you in our hemisphere with Brazil. It is also an African language (Angola, Mozambique, São Tome, Guinea Bissau) and to a much smaller extent, an Asian language (East Timor, Goa, Macau). Granted, Portuguese and Spanish are still western languages but there are plenty of non-westerners who speak both. You're learning French to better understand your fellow Canadians- what about Inuktitut? Inuit related languages stretch from Greenland to across the Bering Strait. Inukitut is representative of a non-western culture with many speakers spread across the vast northern tier of your own country. Inuktitut is probably not easy for an indo-european language speaker but it would definitely give you a fascinating cultural perspective within your own country. More conventionally but still outside the mainstream, your French would open up Haitian Creole to you at very little cost and there are many Haitians living in Canada. It's always good to broaden one's horizons. Best of luck to you and please let us know what you decide to do! Edited by iguanamon on 21 April 2011 at 2:49am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| JasonE Groupie Canada Joined 4879 days ago 54 posts - 78 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French | Message 16 of 42 21 April 2011 at 2:47am | IP Logged | |||||
I'm not worried about being perceived as less "euro centric", I simply have a strong desire to learn and increase my mental horizons. As much as I hate to admit it, I'll never have enough time to learn about everything that I'd like to, so I must therefore be efficient in my learning to get the most out of life. I don't expect to become non "euro-centric" once I learn a sufficiently different language, but rather I'm hoping that the new language will enable me, through reading it's books and absorbing it's media, to better understand the target culture, especially contemporary culture, which often gets translated slowly for us westerners if at all. Edited by JasonE on 21 April 2011 at 3:01am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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