Basic Reading Knowledge of 25 Languages

David Graber

You can use languages already learned to learn other languages. This is particularly the case with closely related languages, like Spanish and Italian, German and Dutch, or Russian and Bulgarian. This blog is dedicated to: 1) making explicit connections learners can exploit to learn (to read) new European languages more rapidly, and 2) helping to systematize the connections for using multiple European languages.

If you already know a Romance language, you can learn the other Romance languages much more quickly. The same goes for the Germanic and the Slavic languages.

With the right combinations and leverage of experience in European languages (Romance, Germanic, and Slavic), you can gain a basic reading knowledge of up to roughly 22-25 languages.

Romance: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, Romanian

Germanic: English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish

Slavic: Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Macedonian