Interesting article, though it feels pretty unpolished, like a step above someone's train of thought.
Also odd that Catalan was chosen as the example, rather than french, latin, or German, which all have much stronger and more direct influence on English than Catalan or Spanish.
Also some odd linguistic claims. The Altaic theory is not really supported by most linguists, and is the author claiming that Japanese and Korean are incredibly easy to learn for English speakers, or that Japanese is incredibly easy to learn if you're a Korean speaker and vice versa?
Regardless, interesting blog. Would be great as a first draft to expand upon with more examples to make you imagine what it would feel like.
Anecdotally as a native English speaker, I find spanish much easier to guess the meaning versus french or german.
I believe the author means Japanese/Korean are easier to learn if you know the other, versus English which is comparatively difficult for native C/J/K speakers.
In my experience, studying Korean did make studying Japanese a lot easier. There are some shared concepts, but Japanese is still quite difficult and different from Korean. From what I can tell, my Korean friends have an easier time picking up Japanese than English.
>>* From what I can tell, my Korean friends have an easier time picking up Japanese than English.*
I think it also helps that Japanese and Korean sounds share similar sounds, where as English has sounds that are difficult to pronounce for native Korean/Japanese speakers. My mother still has a hard time pronouncing the English "V" and "Z" sounds.
yeah, that was pretty much my point. The article wasn't trying to show what language is easy to guess for K/J speakers, it was trying to show what language X sounds/reads like to speakers of languages A and B, where X was a major influence on A and B. In the article, A and B are K/J and X is Chinese. In my example, A/B is English, and X is French/German.
I study both Korean and Japanese and I agree, knowing some Korean helps with learning Japanese. My korean friends who speak both fluently say about as much as this article: it's almost a replace-in-place similarity, so that seems to line up with your account as well.
Also odd that Catalan was chosen as the example, rather than french, latin, or German, which all have much stronger and more direct influence on English than Catalan or Spanish.
Also some odd linguistic claims. The Altaic theory is not really supported by most linguists, and is the author claiming that Japanese and Korean are incredibly easy to learn for English speakers, or that Japanese is incredibly easy to learn if you're a Korean speaker and vice versa?
Regardless, interesting blog. Would be great as a first draft to expand upon with more examples to make you imagine what it would feel like.