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Is learning Dutch & Portuguese a waste of time?

od InsaneInter, 21. mája 2013

Príspevky: 33

Jazyk: English

InsaneInter (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 18:44:43

Hey! I wanna learn Dutch and Portuguese after Esperanto because I like the cultures but I think they're pretty useless. Should I learn them anyway?

Aubright (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 19:53:41

I say yes learn them. No language is a waste of time. There's always something to get out of them. Plus, the term "useless" is so horribly subjective it's not even funny.

robbkvasnak (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 20:08:44

Brazil is the biggest country in South America and the world's fifth largest economy. There are over 200 million Brazilians and they all speak Portuguese - mostly ONLY Portuguese. My husband is from Brazil and we have been there many times. I hardly ever met anyone there who speaks a foreign language (i.e. other than Portuguese). The big exception is Esperanto. A lot of people in Brazil CLAIM that they speak English or Spanish but since I really do, when I try out these languages they are ashamed and it turns out that they had a little of one of them in school or they have been to Buenos Aires on vacation and used Portugnol to communicate. English - mmmm - not even the stewardesses on the plane understood it. So Portuguese is def not a waste of time. Dutch may be. When I was in Holland I tried speaking Dutch and the people there always answered me in British other than when I was with German friends and then the Dutch answered us in German even though we wanted to speak Dutch.

Uridium (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 21:37:59

If you like the idea of studying them, why not?
I suppose its more easier learn something (whatever) that you enjoy instead learn the same issue obliged or without want to do it.

Portoguese is a very used language, and seeing how are the stuffs now, Brazil soon will be a new economical power on world, so the probability that you can use this language not only for fun but also for work increased.
And anyway, Portoguese is used in almost 4 of 5 continents, with hundred million of native speakers and probably other millions people that speak it like 2°/3° ect. language or studying it, so i think should be useful also for tourism travels.
And how works for the family languages, from Portoguese you can continue to learn other neolatin languages, like Spanish (the most used language in Latin America!), French or Italian (commercials for my mother language hehehe), if you wish it.

I dont feel agreed with people that Dutch is preety useless: Dutch is a germanic language like English and German and its spoken from 23 million persons between 3 continents.
If you are charmed from Nederlands culture, why dont study it?

I remember you that many people think that learning Esperanto its a waste of time but we are here no okulumo.gif?

Bonan lernon!

robbkvasnak (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 21:44:06

I just wish that the Dutch would use Dutch!!! They seem to want to play being a dialect of English

InsaneInter (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 22:08:51

robbkvasnak:I just wish that the Dutch would use Dutch!!! They seem to want to play being a dialect of English
LOL true. I had an online Dutch friend and he prefered English over Dutch. Funny, I liked talking to him using Google translate hee hee.

Druif (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 23:25:48

I agree it's very difficult to let the Dutch (like me) speak their own language in front of foreigners. They just love speaking English and foreign languages in general. That is a big problem if you want to learn Dutch.

robbkvasnak (Zobraziť profil) 21. mája 2013 23:31:46

Here in my area we have some Surinamers. They like speaking Dutch. When I was working in the bank, the Surinamers would always come to me for advice and they spoke Dutch with me. I have studied Dutch and since I speak German, Norwegian, Danish, some Swedish, and English and have taken old English, Icelandic, and old high German, as well as speaking the dialect of Frankfurt, I can keep up a conversation. Of course, it helped that we were talking about bank products and things that I understood very well. I have read some novels in Dutch (mostly from Belgium) and when I lived in Germany I would sometimes buy a Dutch newspaper.

Benjamino (Zobraziť profil) 22. mája 2013 12:32:33

an Esperantist asking if it's useless to learn Dutch and Portuguese? that's a new one.

Daniel_Claverie (Zobraziť profil) 22. mája 2013 12:48:20

It's your time. Use it or lose it.

Nahor