![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Aug. 19th, 2002 02:03 pmWell, after much discussion, we've decided on what language alexander's going to learn as his second. The finalists were French, Gaelic, German, Japanese, Latin and Russian.
French got dropped because i'm not that interested in brushing the language up, Gaelic because i'm not competent enough in it to be able to teach it yet. This left four candidates. Of these, Japanese and Russian were eliminated because of the character sets- although he's reading at about a second-grade (or slightly higher) level, the concept that 'B/b' is sometimes "bee" like the visually somewhat dissimilar 'Б/б', but that the visually similar 'В/в' is "veh" might just be too confusing at this point. Russian will probably be his third language, though, although - i'm thinking about waiting until he's seven or so to start on it.
Latin would be useful for building vocabulary, and would help with future Romance languages, but has limited practical use otherwise, and certainly isn't going to be a conversational language for him.
So.... German it is. English is a Germanic language, so he'll benefit from some cognates, which will make initial learning a bit easier. My German's a bit rusty from disuse, but i think i can still follow Deutsche Welle news broadcasts- will have to look at the broadcast schedule for the International Channel to see when it's on to verify this.
Bonus points to the first person to recognize the source of the following quote (although i find the use of the familiar du/deine rather than the formal/plural Sie/seine a bit unsettling, and it's exceedingly likely i've goofed the transcription in at least one place.)
Das ist deine Welt.
Deises sind deine Mittmenschen.
Du kannst heute für dich lebe
Oder für alles Hilfe Bau morgen aufbau....
French got dropped because i'm not that interested in brushing the language up, Gaelic because i'm not competent enough in it to be able to teach it yet. This left four candidates. Of these, Japanese and Russian were eliminated because of the character sets- although he's reading at about a second-grade (or slightly higher) level, the concept that 'B/b' is sometimes "bee" like the visually somewhat dissimilar 'Б/б', but that the visually similar 'В/в' is "veh" might just be too confusing at this point. Russian will probably be his third language, though, although - i'm thinking about waiting until he's seven or so to start on it.
Latin would be useful for building vocabulary, and would help with future Romance languages, but has limited practical use otherwise, and certainly isn't going to be a conversational language for him.
So.... German it is. English is a Germanic language, so he'll benefit from some cognates, which will make initial learning a bit easier. My German's a bit rusty from disuse, but i think i can still follow Deutsche Welle news broadcasts- will have to look at the broadcast schedule for the International Channel to see when it's on to verify this.
Bonus points to the first person to recognize the source of the following quote (although i find the use of the familiar du/deine rather than the formal/plural Sie/seine a bit unsettling, and it's exceedingly likely i've goofed the transcription in at least one place.)
Das ist deine Welt.
Deises sind deine Mittmenschen.
Du kannst heute für dich lebe
Oder für alles Hilfe Bau morgen aufbau....
