On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 2:20 AM, Sidin Sunny Vadukut <[email protected]> wrote: > Anyone here who speaks both an Indian language and a Scandinavian one? I was > in Norway recently, and something about the way they speak seemed very very > similar to the Indic languages. I couldn't put my finger on it. Wikipedia > gives me the notion that it could be the fact that it is a pitch accent > language.
I have an Indian friend settled in Sweden who speaks Swedish (I don't know if he's on Silk, are you here BGa?), and I have a good ear for the language thanks to my many Swedish friends. I find it typically quite easy to mimic the native accent of any language I speak, but in all my attempts at speaking Swedish I keep getting some invisible (to me) nuance of the accent wrong, so I end up sounding variously like a Fin, a Dane or a German but never a Swede according to my friends. When you say it reminds you of Indian languages, which family are you referring to, Indo-Aryan or Dravidian? > This had me wondering if perhaps such a similarity, if it exists, it might > make Scandinavian languages easier to learn for an Indian. Or is there such > a thing as propensity to learn one language if you know another? I recall reading about a study that found learning a second language opens up new neural pathways in kids that come in very handy when they have a stroke or a few other disruptions of the brain in later life. However the study found no benefit from learning more than two languages. I speak or understand at least nine, but it's always been very easy for me to learn languages. Cheeni
