I'm not as big of a language nerd (no offense) as most people on this forum. I have no idea what syntax, lexicon, or morpho-whatever is. I thought that a Romance language was any language that used Latin characters (with exceptions).

For the layman:
• Syntax is basically the same thing as grammar. Word placement, tenses, etc etc.
• Lexicon is the vocabulary of a language.
• Morphology is more or less how a language sounds. Morphemes are generally syllables that appear in the language.

There are lots of languages out there that use the Latin alphabet even though they're derived from something else. For example, around half of the Slavic languages use the Latin alphabet instead of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Often, language families are centered around a specific region. If you don't know what family a country's language is in, it's probably in the same group as the languages of the countries around it.

I'd probably expand my language learning quite a bit if I didn't have to learn a new alphabet. There was a day where I spent the whole time studying the Old Cyrillic alphabet. After that, every word in English looked weird. Like it didn't belong. So confusing.

I must apologize for dragging the thread slightly off-topic. On a more related note, I'm sort of tentatively learning Cantonese. I can order cake!

Thanks the welcome, Anoran. As much as I would like to be learning all of those languages, I have pared it down significantly currently. Now, I am going over Shoshoni and Comanche as they are very similar. I have a big interest in Native American languages and love researching them. I hope to get back into German soon as well as Irish.

I think you may have morphology confused with phonology. Phonology is the study of speech sounds, their patterning, and their combination. Morphology is actually pretty close to the layman's definition of "grammar", which for most people seems to mean basically "inflection" (which is how they can go about saying that English "doesn't have much grammar"). Because inflections and word order work together to give sentences meaning, some linguists like to group the two together as "morphosyntax".

A while after I wrote it, I realized my mistake, but I couldn't go back and fix it.
At least my statement was intentionally vague. I thought maybe no one would notice, but I guess I was wrong!

In layman's terms:
Morphology is how a word is constructed, as opposed to syntax, which is how the sentence is constructed.

I find that understanding this stuff makes it easier to grasp the concepts behind other languages.

I'm tempted to learn a synthetic language like Finnish or Russian, but I fear that would be putting too much on my plate.

List of languages in process:
1. Mandarin - upper-advanced level
2. Cantonese - reasonably fluent
3. English - hmm... still much to improve
4. French - studied at the University years ago, now trying to refresh
5. Vietnamese - basic
6. Thai - just started
There're two other languages I used to study - Italian and Czech - now undeservedly neglected and almost forgotten.
Waiting list:
1. Lao
2. Burmese
3. Khmer

Okay, that has really helped when i try to read Grammer books and such. Thanks!


My list changes weekly (Not on purpose)

Today it is:
-Klingon. Nerdy and pointless i know, but i am learning it nonetheless.
-German. I have a lot of friends who are German, so that is a huge factor.
-Latin. It is required to take foeign language in my high school (yes i am in school) so i am starting that next year.

This isn't exactly true. While Guangzhou has thousands, if not hundreds of thousand migrant workers from every other part of China turning up constantly.. Yes it makes it look like the number of Cantonese speakers is decling. The Cantonese people there still speak and use Cantonese. They'll use Mandarin if work requires them too, and in school as it's the 'national language' but in everyday life they speak Cantonese.

I'm glad I haven't seen any 'Cantonese is doomed' threads on here... yet! I'ts one of the most spoken languages in the world. I doubt it will go away anytime soon. Even if it did just come to Manchester, England. Everybody is Cantonese here!

Is tha frae Manchester? Ah's livin' near Bratford, wir everyone's Arabic o Bengali!

Languages I am planning to learn are as follows:
English
Welsh
Scottish Gaelic
Irish
German
Russian
Dutch.

That's it for now! But there'll probably be more in the future.

But it's your native language, isn't it? Still in the planning stages are you?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/catchphrase1/
(Sorry, I love pointing people toward resources.)