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Learning a 3d language via a 2nd language | ||
Tags: L3 via L2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Bradley326 Groupie Joined 6167 days ago 78 posts - 104 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Kazakh, Spanish | Message 1 of 42 28 September 2008 at 10:48am | IP Logged |
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I am currently studying russian in moscow for the fall semester. I am far from fluent, but i can communicate here with native speakers, although sometimes with difficulty.
i have found myself with a lot of free time, however, and am toying with the idea of starting to study Spanish. the problem is that all the Spanish books here are, of course, russian-spanish. i have no doubt that i could read a russian-spanish textbook, because all my current textbooks are solely in russian. however it will be slow and difficult most likely. i guess i am worried that i will have trouble grasping vocabulary and grammar concepts because i will often be going from English-russian-spanish and back. has anyone begun a third language through a second language which they are not entirely fluent in? i should note that this interests me because it will also give me plenty of practice with russian, which is why i am here. i am interested to hear opinions and advice. thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 2 of 42 28 September 2008 at 12:12pm | IP Logged |
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It's possible, but it's slower and more confusing.
I've studied languages using materials in French, German, Italian, Polish, etc (as well as my native English). Especially for the basics, it's not really so bad. For trying to understand nuanced explanations, or using readers (with vocabulary lists in your not-yet-fluent language) it's harder; depending on how solid your knowledge of the language you're using as an intermediary is, this may or may not be feasible. You should be able to supplement using a variety of online resources, though - there are some nice Spanish grammars in English online, and lots of online dictionaries. If you do this, it suddenly becomes a lot more feasible - and you can then use your newly-acquired knowledge of Spanish grammatical points to work backwards and figure out more of what your Russian-language Spanish textbook is saying. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| pli Triglot Newbie PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5979 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Danish Studies: German, Russian, Esperanto | Message 3 of 42 24 October 2008 at 7:08am | IP Logged |
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My mother tongue is Polish and I learned Danish exclusively using English materials within about 5 months (I'm now pretty communicative.) And I find this way of learning VERY effective (I call this cross-learning.) This may be due to: me being pretty fluent in English, and Danish having a lot in common with English (and obviously much less with Polish.) So I'd recommend to give it a try. My private conjecture is that when you learn one foreign language using another one, the brain operates in an only-nonnative mode and you both learn the new stuff quickly and get better comprehension and feeling of the language you already know.
I'm now doing the same with English->Spanish and it seems to work as well. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tigresuisse Triglot Senior Member SwitzerlandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5996 days ago 182 posts - 180 votes Speaks: Italian*, English, German Studies: Russian | Message 4 of 42 24 October 2008 at 7:19am | IP Logged |
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If I were you, I just would look for English books to study Spanish.
I would consider doing what you think only if, for example, there would not be any materials available or so. And another thing. I speak German and English at a quite good level and I want to study Dutch. I don't know what materials will I find about Dutch for Italian native but surely I'll find a lot more in German and English. So I definetly will study Dutch through German (first) and then maybe English. But only because the 3 languages are related. I see no relation between Russian and Spanish so ... Have fun, Marta 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6900 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 42 24 October 2008 at 4:43pm | IP Logged |
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I'm studying all of my foreign languages through English (though not exclusively). English isn't too different from my native Swedish, and I started learning it in 1984, so now it's not a big problem for me...
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6445 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 6 of 42 24 October 2008 at 5:57pm | IP Logged |
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I'm studying Russian through Italian (in which I'm very fluent, though) without any difficulties. But when I was younger (13, I think..) I learned some Portuguese from a German textbook! :) At the time I was by no means fluent in German, so of course it was a bit hard, but manageable, I'd say. So if you think you can make it and you can devote a LOT of time to your language studies, go ahead!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6025 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 7 of 42 24 October 2008 at 6:56pm | IP Logged |
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In my opinion this can be very beneficial if your skills in the second language are really good but very confusing otherwise.
Furthermore it's best to use monolingual materials in this case. As a counterexample, I can give Pimsleur French. When the word order is different from English, the narrator explains the difference by scrambling the word order of the English sentence. This is extremely annoying and confusing for me, because I'm not influenced by the English word order when I'm speaking French. And the narrator is, very counter-productively, drawing my attention to it. But you learn to ignore this stuff after a while. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Northstar Newbie China chineseontheairRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5895 days ago 19 posts - 19 votes Speaks: Mandarin* | Message 8 of 42 25 October 2008 at 9:33pm | IP Logged |
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you can learn a new one, and hence another one, why don't you just try, you will learn both of them, though the pace may be slow at first.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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