I'm confused, now I am

[guest2859]

I took 2 years of Spanish now, no es dificil de comprender. But honestly, I can't say what I just said is right, because Unfinished Course of Spanish + Unfinished Course of Na'vi = Disaster. [Disaster is actually a latin word, Dis- not, aster- star, not a star, not good or pretty] So, No hablo español correcto.

But I always wonder how many languages start and fit together. Language started from like 3, and diffused to about 900, one of which we are the group learning. But I always wonder, how does learning 1 language suddenly make others impossible?

[NeotrekkerZ]

I actually think the opposite could be just as true.  I took German for two years in college and have been teaching myself a little Icelandic and because of the familiarity with those two languages I can read some dutch and danish sentences instantly.

[Niwantaw]

I took 2 years of Spanish now, no es dificil de comprender. But honestly, I can't say what I just said is right, because Unfinished Course of Spanish + Unfinished Course of Na'vi = Disaster. [Disaster is actually a latin word, Dis- not, aster- star, not a star, not good or pretty] So, No hablo español correcto.

But I always wonder how many languages start and fit together. Language started from like 3, and diffused to about 900, one of which we are the group learning. But I always wonder, how does learning 1 language suddenly make others impossible?

i think i know why it's harder
its because your learning Na'vi for fun
and now your not enjoying spanish so much because of this therefore making it harder
i think

[Kìte'eyä Aungia]

But I always wonder how many languages start and fit together. Language started from like 3

Hard to say as we don't know exactly how language originated and it's difficult to tell from archaeological remains whether a group of humans had language or not.

and diffused to about 900, one of which we are the group learning.

Closer to 8 or 9 thousand, actually.

But I always wonder, how does learning 1 language suddenly make others impossible?

Strictly, I don't think it does. Second language acquisition studies show that children who learn a second language are not negatively affected, as was often thought in the past, and there are polyglots who are able to become fluent in many languages (even ones learned as an adult). This guy, for example:

http://www.fluentin3months.com/

But admittedly, I'm no expert. What kinds of difficulties are you having?

[abi]

I actually think the opposite could be just as true.  I took German for two years in college and have been teaching myself a little Icelandic and because of the familiarity with those two languages I can read some dutch and danish sentences instantly.

Ya, but if they're too close then [some] people can get confused. Try learning Portuguese and Spanish at the same time, and keep them separate.

[NeotrekkerZ]

Certainly, some languages compliment others better.  Sometimes for the life of me I'll be saying something in German and hit one word that I know I know, but for some reason right then can only remember it in French.  And those two languages aren't even in the same group (Germanic vs. Romance).  You've probably had similar problems with Portuguese and Spanish.

[Lance R. Casey]

Heck, I've had that problem with Swedish and Klingon!

[Tsamsiyu92]

It depends, learning german is actually way harder than learning Na'vi (ive just started). I find it 100 times easier to pronounce Na'vi (even those rr's) than German, even though i have been studying German at school for around 4-5 years.

['eylan na'viyä]

I could imagine that it is hard to learn all the rules. Its good not having to know how the own language works in detail
But i cannot immagine that the pronounciation is a problem. Maybe you are trying to learn Bavarian 

[Tengfya swizaw]

Some of this pertains to how you learn both the languages. For Spanish, it's more rigid, sectioned, and planned out. For Na'vi, you're teaching yourself and learn a lot of different things about the language at the same time, not in neat, two-week subjects. Seeing as you're probably more interested in Na'vi at this point, your brain is focusing more on that when it switches to a sort of "language mode".
But since you've been learning Spanish for quite a while, the knowledge of it is more ingrained and disrupts the knowledge of Na'vi to a degree.

I personally find Na'vi harder than German because I have to motivate myself to find things out. I am forced to dedicate more time to German every day. With Na'vi, I rarely have terms spelled out for me, and there's no teacher correcting or checking me. On top of this, I have to learn a good amount of Linguistics terms in order to make sense of a lot of things, rather than just having a "This word means this in this case" thing. Which is partially because Na'vi is unlike German or English in countless ways.

But to each his own, you know?

[Letxepa tirea]

I think it is important to remember that the best way to learn a language isn't to learn it in school, books, or even Rosetta stone software. Though RS is better then the other two it isn't the same as being actually immersed in the language without a translator.

Also from my learning of spanish(I had three years technical training and a month of immersion) I can understand most romantic languages when spoken, I can also understand some filipino.

So no I think the more languages you learn the easier it is to learn more.

[kewnya txamew'itan]

I certainly think learning Na'vi will help me learn other languages but that's more because it's forced me to learn a fair bit of linguistics.

Other than that, I used to learn French and still learn Spanish (I have enough of a degree of fluency to just about hold a slightly hesitant (but not much) conversation) and, despite learning French for a lot longer, I was rubbish at it.

I think Spanish helped me with Na'vi quite a lot. The Spanish "en" is a perfect translation for "mì" whilst in is not. Likewise, I was already prepared for two verbs for to be, albeit split differently, just like Spanish has two verbs for to know as well as to be. Lastly, na'vi modals function identically to the Spanish poder, deber que and querer (provided you treat <iv> as being the infinitive in some cases).