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Why not Spanish as essential?

 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages Post Reply
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YnEoS
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4254 days ago
472 posts - 893 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 65 of 115
08 March 2014 at 7:54pm | IP Logged 
daegga wrote:
Henkkles wrote:
I was reading through this thread and I found that one of the points
Culebrilla used was that it's not effective to learn a language through another
learned language and this struck me as very odd. I do almost all of my language learning
through English, which is a learned language.


I don't think that's what he claimed. He wrote that it's not efficient.
The thing is that efficiency doesn't really matter that much in language learning
(imho), sustainability of a method does seem to be much more correlated with its
effectiveness than the efficiency of a method does (except when the efficiency is close
to null, like riding a bike for learning Russian - so let's assume something
reasonable).


If given a choice of learning a language through your native language or learning it through an L2 with the exact same course, I would agree that you will learn the target language faster with English. But often people who do L2->L3 are doing so because there are better courses available in the L2 than in L1, in which case I believe it is more efficient than using a worse course from your native language.


Also if you have some exposure in both languages, I actually think L2->L3 can often be very efficient for studying multiple languages. I've recently started using the same Assimil courses from multiple language bases and find I it helps quite a bit with learning the base language as well as the target language. This is even more true when L2 and L3 have different vocabulary that is transparent to you. Like for example an English speaker studying German and French through each other.

Edited by YnEoS on 08 March 2014 at 8:00pm
1 person has voted this message useful



Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
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9753 posts - 15779 votes 
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Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

 
 Message 66 of 115
09 March 2014 at 12:35am | IP Logged 
Why would you learn faster? I've named some benefits of learning L3 through L2 already. And you wouldn't waste half your study time reading your L1.
2 persons have voted this message useful



Irish_Goon
Senior Member
United States
Joined 6415 days ago
117 posts - 170 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 67 of 115
09 March 2014 at 1:35am | IP Logged 
Holy shit, I came to see information on one of my favorite languages and it turned into a real circle jerk.


3 persons have voted this message useful



Wulfgar
Senior Member
United States
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404 posts - 791 votes 
Speaks: English*

 
 Message 68 of 115
09 March 2014 at 8:19am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
tarvos wrote:
Volte wrote:
I think he's left already, tarvos.


Oh well, this sort of posturing is the one thing that grinds my gears like a corn mill.


Yeah - he's the second guy to do similar things in the last while. It's a pity when it happens. There are some really
amazing people here, like Iversen, and it's just bizarre when people come in with an axe to grind and won't pay
attention to what's actually here.

Well then by all means do your best to get rid of him and anybody else that stimulates debate.
4 persons have voted this message useful



tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4707 days ago
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

 
 Message 69 of 115
09 March 2014 at 9:15am | IP Logged 
Wulfgar wrote:
Volte wrote:
tarvos wrote:
Volte wrote:
I think he's left
already, tarvos.


Oh well, this sort of posturing is the one thing that grinds my gears like a corn mill.


Yeah - he's the second guy to do similar things in the last while. It's a pity when it
happens. There are some really
amazing people here, like Iversen, and it's just bizarre when people come in with an
axe to grind and won't pay
attention to what's actually here.

Well then by all means do your best to get rid of him and anybody else that stimulates
debate.


I don't think being a single issue wonk and having an axe to grind on off-topic
questions stimulates debate, rather it gets a lot of people with normally valuable
insights annoyed.
7 persons have voted this message useful



Henkkles
Triglot
Senior Member
Finland
Joined 4253 days ago
544 posts - 1141 votes 
Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish
Studies: Russian

 
 Message 70 of 115
09 March 2014 at 9:42am | IP Logged 
YnEoS wrote:
daegga wrote:
Henkkles wrote:
I was reading through this thread and I found that one of the points
Culebrilla used was that it's not effective to learn a language through another
learned language and this struck me as very odd. I do almost all of my language learning
through English, which is a learned language.


I don't think that's what he claimed. He wrote that it's not efficient.
The thing is that efficiency doesn't really matter that much in language learning
(imho), sustainability of a method does seem to be much more correlated with its
effectiveness than the efficiency of a method does (except when the efficiency is close
to null, like riding a bike for learning Russian - so let's assume something
reasonable).


If given a choice of learning a language through your native language or learning it through an L2 with the exact same course, I would agree that you will learn the target language faster with English. But often people who do L2->L3 are doing so because there are better courses available in the L2 than in L1, in which case I believe it is more efficient than using a worse course from your native language.


Also if you have some exposure in both languages, I actually think L2->L3 can often be very efficient for studying multiple languages. I've recently started using the same Assimil courses from multiple language bases and find I it helps quite a bit with learning the base language as well as the target language. This is even more true when L2 and L3 have different vocabulary that is transparent to you. Like for example an English speaker studying German and French through each other.

I would argue that it's always best to use a course in a language that you know that is closest to the target language. That's why I don't study Estonian from English language books, but I won't study Germanic language from books that are in Finnish either.

I would and will argue that I would learn German faster from Finnish sources than from English ones, because why study a language through a language that's not even related to it if I know a language that belongs to the same subgroup of the same group of the same family?

Edited by Henkkles on 09 March 2014 at 9:44am
1 person has voted this message useful



Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
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Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 71 of 115
09 March 2014 at 10:00am | IP Logged 
Henkkles wrote:

I would argue that it's always best to use a course in a language that you know that is closest to the target language. That's why I don't study Estonian from English language books, but I won't study Germanic language from books that are in Finnish either.

I would and will argue that I would learn German faster from Finnish sources than from English ones, because why study a language through a language that's not even related to it if I know a language that belongs to the same subgroup of the same group of the same family?


Is your statement about learning from Finnish backwards? It says the opposite of the rest of your post.

That aside, I mainly agree: learning a language from materials in a closely related one tends to be the most pleasant option, because things you already know (for instance, a lot of details of how tenses and aspect and mood in the verb system work) aren't endlessly belaboured, and minor differences, which can otherwise be easy to overlook at first, are sometimes highlighted.

The major exceptions I can think of are if L3 courses simply aren't available in the nearer language, or if you want to practice an L2 no matter what (for instance, laddering Spanish via Japanese for an English speaker), or if you want to use your (close) L3 to solidify your (distant) L2 a bit, since you understand the grammar which is being explained in L2, can fill in unknown words in L2 with L3 cognates in some phrases, etc.

Edit: and one other case - when there's a course or material you really want to use - for instance, if you particularly like Assimil or a particular reader which is mainly in your target language but has footnotes in a more distant one.

Edited by Volte on 09 March 2014 at 10:13am
1 person has voted this message useful



YnEoS
Senior Member
United States
Joined 4254 days ago
472 posts - 893 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish

 
 Message 72 of 115
09 March 2014 at 3:23pm | IP Logged 
Henkkles wrote:

I would argue that it's always best to use a course in a language that you know that is closest to the target language. That's why I don't study Estonian from English language books, but I won't study Germanic language from books that are in Finnish either.

I would and will argue that I would learn German faster from Finnish sources than from English ones, because why study a language through a language that's not even related to it if I know a language that belongs to the same subgroup of the same group of the same family?


True, I hadn't considered some of these instances, probably because I've never had the opportunity to study Non-Indo-European -> Non-IndoEuropean thus far. It's probably better in most cases to avoid studying languages that are vastly different when you have an alternative available. Though I think there are situations where its worthwhile to choose a base that is related but maybe not the most closely related you can find, especially when you want to create crosstalk and improve your knowledge of the base and the target language at the same time...

Volte wrote:

or if you want to use your (close) L3 to solidify your (distant) L2 a bit, since you understand the grammar which is being explained in L2, can fill in unknown words in L2 with L3 cognates in some phrases, etc.


This, pretty much. For example, when I study Italian, I figure that my intermediate-French will help me even without a french translation, so I decided to start my Italian studies from German(also intermediate). This way if I come across a German word I know, there's a chance I'll understand the Italian transparency. But if I used a French base and didn't understand a French word, the Italian would be less likely to help. Of course there are probably instances where seeing the French and Italian side by side would highlight some less obvious cognates. So in general I try and study from a few different language bases so I can get multiple viewpoints of the language, and not be dependent on any 1 source for learning everything.


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