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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
Joined 6439 days ago
4474 posts - 6726 votes 
Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese
| Message 33 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:29am | IP Logged |
culebrilla wrote:
The trouble with learning French to use Assimil is that you have to learn a language in a *foreign* language. I'm not convinced that this is a very smart idea if you want to learn a topic well. I was very close to applying to medical schools in Puerto Rico since they are accredited but didn't since I wouldn't know the subject matter as well in Spanish as in English. And I'm much more practiced in Spanish than just a handful of posters here in any one of their foreign languages. You have to know your limits.
Once they got past learning grammar and could use native materials THEN I could see it working, using French to continue practicing your foreign language. But not when actually *learning* the basics. |
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On the contrary, the basics are the easiest part to pick up through a weak foreign language. You'll know basic phrases in your weak language, and technical discussion of things like verb tenses won't be much harder than it would be in L1. People also routinely strengthen two languages at once; look up laddering. And, pragmatically, plenty of people, including on this forum, successfully use Assimil with French around a B2 level.
It helps to pay attention to what pragmatically works, rather than impose limits based on your a-priori beliefs. A lot of degree programs in Europe have a majority of students who are studying in a non-native language (often English), and it usually works rather well.
culebrilla wrote:
| If I were in Europe I would probably learn French over Spanish. But in the Western Hemisphere, Portuguese and Spanish are much better languages to pick if you want to talk to people in person. |
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Both Quebec and France are in the Western Hemisphere. And the topic wasn't "what language is best if you want to talk to people on the street in a language other than English and happen to be in the USA or South America", it was "why does this particular set of recommendations from this particular person for this particular goal exist?"
As for the definition of good: that has been the subject of endless verbiage. Pragmatically, this forum has a lot of people who are more than capable of studying or teaching in several languages, read literature while comprehending over 99.9% of the words they encounter, etc. Pointing out that you could set the bar to being the equivalent of Shakespeare is a bit disingenuous at best, given the context of the discussion.
10 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 34 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
daegga wrote:
| However, I agree that learning L3 through L2 is quite inefficient, but sometimes you don't have another choice or have to make trade-offs (good material in L2 vs. bad material in L1). |
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It has a lot of benefits. We see tons of posts about "how do I stop translating" and the best way is never starting to translate in the first place. Learning through L2 downgrades translating to something you do only when you need to, not something you can't help doing. A different perspective is also useful - I'm currently using a book for Spaniards learning Italian. It makes me notice things about both languages and how they compare with my strongest Romance language, Portuguese. Also, how many people learn Catalan through anything but Spanish? Not many, I bet.
It also makes your L2 feel more natural.
7 persons have voted this message useful
| culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3997 days ago
246 posts - 436 votes
Speaks: Spanish
| Message 35 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:42am | IP Logged |
Volte wrote:
culebrilla wrote:
The trouble with learning French to use Assimil is that you have to learn a language in a *foreign* language. I'm not convinced that this is a very smart idea if you want to learn a topic well. I was very close to applying to medical schools in Puerto Rico since they are accredited but didn't since I wouldn't know the subject matter as well in Spanish as in English. And I'm much more practiced in Spanish than just a handful of posters here in any one of their foreign languages. You have to know your limits.
Once they got past learning grammar and could use native materials THEN I could see it working, using French to continue practicing your foreign language. But not when actually *learning* the basics. |
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On the contrary, the basics are the easiest part to pick up through a weak foreign language. You'll know basic phrases in your weak language, and technical discussion of things like verb tenses won't be much harder than it would be in L1. People also routinely strengthen two languages at once; look up laddering. And, pragmatically, plenty of people, including on this forum, successfully use Assimil with French around a B2 level.
It helps to pay attention to what pragmatically works, rather than impose limits based on your a-priori beliefs. A lot of degree programs in Europe have a majority of students who are studying in a non-native language (often English), and it usually works rather well.
culebrilla wrote:
| If I were in Europe I would probably learn French over Spanish. But in the Western Hemisphere, Portuguese and Spanish are much better languages to pick if you want to talk to people in person. |
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Both Quebec and France are in the Western Hemisphere. And the topic wasn't "what language is best if you want to talk to people on the street in a language other than English and happen to be in the USA or South America", it was "why does this particular set of recommendations from this particular person for this particular goal exist?"
As for the definition of good: that has been the subject of endless verbiage. Pragmatically, this forum has a lot of people who are more than capable of studying or teaching in several languages, read literature while comprehending over 99.9% of the words they encounter, etc. Pointing out that you could set the bar to being the equivalent of Shakespeare is a bit disingenuous at best, given the context of the discussion. |
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Yeah, but the point is that people that say that they can "understand 99.9%" of the words they find are overestimating their level by a LOT. You don't know what you don't know.
By "understanding" they are usually saying that they get the "gist." But just knowing the general denotation is one thing; connotations are a whole 'nother ball of wax.
The comparisons with Rhodes scholars or academic superstars in other countries was just made to show that "good" can mean a lot of things.
I remember going to a local running club and all the club members said, "This guy is QUICK. He runs as fast as the wind!"
I ask them what his times are.
"He run the 5K in 21 minutes!" (I could lap him easily in a four lap mile, 1,600m race)
It'd be the same as me saying I am "really athletic" when my university has a lot of olympians in many sports. No joke, lot of olympians here.
Or somebody I know very well that said that they could express anything they wanted in Spanish after taking three years of it in High School. (typical language classes in the US. Read: crappy)
So somebody saying that they are really good at X just has to be measured as objectively as possible, hard as it may be.
1 person has voted this message useful
| culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3997 days ago
246 posts - 436 votes
Speaks: Spanish
| Message 36 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:43am | IP Logged |
Volte wrote:
culebrilla wrote:
The trouble with learning French to use Assimil is that you have to learn a language in a *foreign* language. I'm not convinced that this is a very smart idea if you want to learn a topic well. I was very close to applying to medical schools in Puerto Rico since they are accredited but didn't since I wouldn't know the subject matter as well in Spanish as in English. And I'm much more practiced in Spanish than just a handful of posters here in any one of their foreign languages. You have to know your limits.
Once they got past learning grammar and could use native materials THEN I could see it working, using French to continue practicing your foreign language. But not when actually *learning* the basics. |
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On the contrary, the basics are the easiest part to pick up through a weak foreign language. You'll know basic phrases in your weak language, and technical discussion of things like verb tenses won't be much harder than it would be in L1. People also routinely strengthen two languages at once; look up laddering. And, pragmatically, plenty of people, including on this forum, successfully use Assimil with French around a B2 level.
It helps to pay attention to what pragmatically works, rather than impose limits based on your a-priori beliefs. A lot of degree programs in Europe have a majority of students who are studying in a non-native language (often English), and it usually works rather well.
culebrilla wrote:
| If I were in Europe I would probably learn French over Spanish. But in the Western Hemisphere, Portuguese and Spanish are much better languages to pick if you want to talk to people in person. |
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Both Quebec and France are in the Western Hemisphere. And the topic wasn't "what language is best if you want to talk to people on the street in a language other than English and happen to be in the USA or South America", it was "why does this particular set of recommendations from this particular person for this particular goal exist?"
As for the definition of good: that has been the subject of endless verbiage. Pragmatically, this forum has a lot of people who are more than capable of studying or teaching in several languages, read literature while comprehending over 99.9% of the words they encounter, etc. Pointing out that you could set the bar to being the equivalent of Shakespeare is a bit disingenuous at best, given the context of the discussion. |
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Quebec has 7 million French speakers. Haiti has about 1 million fluent speakers. French Guiana has 220,000 people.
Spanish-speaking Western Hemisphere, like 350 million native speakers. Proportions, man.
Edit: by "western hemisphere" I'm referring to countries across the Atlantic, in the "new world."
Edited by culebrilla on 08 March 2014 at 1:46am
1 person has voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 37 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:44am | IP Logged |
culebrilla wrote:
| Now that, to me, is impressive. Same with the Rhodes scholar friend I have. But getting a B1, B2, C1 level in a few languages? No, not to me based on my value system. |
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Believe it or not, we're not learning languages to impress you.
Not to mention the fact that you're not necessarily better at your best language than polyglots are at theirs.
8 persons have voted this message useful
| culebrilla
Senior Member
United States
Joined 3997 days ago
246 posts - 436 votes
Speaks: Spanish
| Message 38 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:50am | IP Logged |
I don't care if you want to impress me or not. That is your prerogative.
People tend to overestimate their skills at things they suck at, by the way. And people that are good at things pooh pah their skills.
The problem with hyperbole is that people go way too far. By definition! A lot of Spanish natives always write, "you write better than me!" or "you are better at writing than a native." Bull. I write ok. But definitely make more mistakes than any educated native.
Let's look at Luca. In some lingq threads they ask if he sounds like a native. All the (well, the guys being real) native English speakers say that his accent and flow and diction are great! Close to that of a native. But there is "something", some sounds that don't sound native. And he is not a native speaker. Makes more mistakes than an equivalently educated native speaker. Is he evil? No. Is it wrong? No. It is what it is.
But we're doing a disservice by saying that people are better than what they are.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6597 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes
4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 39 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:53am | IP Logged |
culebrilla wrote:
| Edit: The descriptions for how to produce certain sounds may say, "to make sound X in this language, you have to say the first three letters of CATERPILLAR just like in your native language." Well, you could get it if your second language level is high enough but you could also get learn it incorrectly. |
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You shouldn't rely too much on this sort of descriptions even in your native language.
3 persons have voted this message useful
| Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 7156 days ago
4228 posts - 8259 votes
20 sounds
Speaks: English*, French
Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 40 of 115 08 March 2014 at 1:54am | IP Logged |
As a native speaker of English, sometimes I have to suck it up rather than try to make a point about efficiency or "unnaturalness". How badly did I want to learn Northern Saami? Enough that I raided a bookstore in Lapland for whatever textbooks and dictionaries that I could fit in my luggage, never mind that almost everything that I got used Finnish as the intermediary language.
See Learning L3 via L2?.
As for a bit about my experience:
On 08 March 2012 at 11:10pm in “How many languages to learn others?”, Chung wrote:
The only languages where I've relied on learning material not in English are Inari Saami and Northern Saami. What few usable materials I've found and been able to use effectively are in Finnish. Otherwise I've been able to rely heavily if not totally on learning materials that use English as an intermediary language (excepting monolingual dictionaries or handbooks such as "Bescherelle" for French verbs).
However by just looking at my bookshelves, I realize that I've used the following learning materials that aren't published for monoglots of English even though I cut my teeth in these languages using material published in English.
- Testy z nemeckého jazyka (book of practice tests for German designed for Slovak students - good for brushing up my German)
- Tschechisch im Alltag (self-instructional course in basic Czech for Germans - actually quite good and more thorough than Colloquial Czech or TY Czech)
- Česko-slovenský a slovensko-český slovník (Czech-Slovak/Slovak-Czech dictionary - useful for figuring out "false friends" and it also gives a few hints about the inflection of most words)
- Horvát–magyar kisszótár & Magyar–horvát kisszótár (Croatian-Hungarian & Hungarian-Croatian mini-dictionary - useful by giving clues about the words' inflection)
- Langenscheidt Taschenwörterbuch Kroatisch (Croatian-German/German-Croatian dictionary - again useful by giving clues about the words' inflection)
- TEA minitaskusõnastik. Soome-eesti-soome (Mini Finnish-Estonian/Estonian-Finnish dictionary - useful by giving clues about the Finnish words' inflections)
- Soome-eesti sõnaraamat (Finnish-Estonian dictionary - useful by giving clues about the Finnish words' inflections)
- Suomi–viro-suursanakirja, osat 1 ja 2 (Large Finnish-Estonian dictionary - basically a larger version of the Finnish-Estonian dictionary above) (Source) |
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All of the material in that list beat whatever counterparts or comparable items exist in the Anglo- or Francosphere. I'm the last to claim fluency in anything other than English or French but having enough of a background in several languages to take advantage of that material sure beats waiting or hoping for an altruistic publisher to produce comparably good material that uses English or French as the intermediary language.
Edited by Chung on 08 March 2014 at 2:03am
8 persons have voted this message useful
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