Opinions about Celtic languages

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leke
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Opinions about Celtic languages

Postby leke » 2014-10-08, 15:48

Hi, Would anyone like to share their opinion on what the best Celtic language to learn is and why? I might give it a go because I think they sound nice, but I have no idea which to pick.

Thanks.

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linguoboy
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Re: Opinions about Celtic languages

Postby linguoboy » 2014-10-08, 16:03

The best Celtic language to learn is the one you can actually get yourself to spend time on. No one can pick it for you.

I don't find that the various Celtic languages sound much like each at all. That is, the Goidelic languages (Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Manx) and the Brythonic languages (Breton, Welsh, Cornish) sound very little like each other, though within each group there are strong similarities. Still, Breton doesn't have the speech pattern of Welsh and even the various dialects of Irish sound rather different.

My recommendation is that you listen to more of each language. There are plenty of clips of people speaking and singing them online. Hopefully, one will end up appealing to you more than the others. The other approach would be to go with the one you can find more support for. Are there classes in your area? Are there books at the local library? Do you know any speakers? Learning a language is always difficult, and the more help you can get the better.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Michael
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Re: Opinions about Celtic languages

Postby Michael » 2014-12-03, 5:41

Basing it on accessibility and standardization, Irish, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic would be your best bets.
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Swienegel

Re: Opinions about Celtic languages

Postby Swienegel » 2014-12-05, 15:04

I have that problem with the continental scandinavian languages - I know all of them almost on intermediate level, but I know I have to pick one if I want to be fluent and stop mixing up, and I personally can't be fluent in all of them. I just don't know how to decide.

I strongly agree with lingoboy. I often don't find logical reasons for why a language interests me. Sometimes I meet a person, discover a new band, find out about a cultural trait..... and then the language starts interesting me and then I usually find the sound of the language so fascinating and it becomes a vicous circle ;) On the other hand there are languages I should learn for obvious reasons of my career choice, but I just can't come up with the motivation, I can't find the spark that lights the interest (that's Russian for me... :? ).

I am learning Welsh because it started interesting me when I first saw a few sentences in Welsh written in my 7th grage English coursebook ;) And I'm really happy that there are a lot of learning opportunities on the web and a great choice of affordable month-long summer language course in Wales (I hope to finally take my first one next summer). I got sucked into it ;)

If you prefer a more practical approach, I'd also recommend you to look at the number and percentages of speakers, because of course that affects your chances of actually using the language ;) And you could take a look at the learning materials online and what you can get your hands on in Oulu. I decided not to use anything with german as a source language, because I think it will be more useful for me to know the english terms and explanations when I'm studying in Wales.

A friend of mine told me lately that if he would choose to learn a celtic language, he would learn Manx, because he would like to be part of the revival community and he would like the opportunity to invent words and introduce them into a language so that they'd actually be used, which of course works only with small speaker communities^^


Edit: Help, sorry for my terrible English. I'll leave it like that now, but I just saw my own violation of the rule that we learned about at school: "If + would = Satz kaputt"
Hopefully my old english teacher won't find out.


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