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Learning L2 with two L1s | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sin_Nombre Newbie United States Joined 5135 days ago 19 posts - 22 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 10 04 June 2011 at 6:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I have acquired both parts of the Assimil Japanese w/ Ease French editions, and I have many dual Japanese-English texts with audio from various sites I've gotten linked to by posts on this forum. I was wondering if studying Japanese in both French and English would be good or bad. Would studying in two languages make learning the language easier, or more difficult?
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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 2 of 10 04 June 2011 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Depends on how good your French is. In general, adding a second L1 can be helpful. It gives access to more materials, more explanations, etc - some of which will be good, with any luck. It also makes more parallels between languages easily visible - though using closely related L1s to study a distant L2 reduces this benefit. If the second L1 isn't entirely comfortable for you, though, it can certainly slow you down. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 3 of 10 04 June 2011 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think a lot has been written about triangulation and "using L2 for learning L3" or similar. Fasulye is a proponent of this method, but her L2 are quite strong and she certainly does it for the overall learning effect, too, of course you get some training in your L2 by learning your L3. I do it, too, but I have noticed: Nothing comes even close to the direct access to my native language; if this is because of neurological reasons (different areas used for native languages and the other ones) or just because all my L2 are too bad I don't know, but I have come to think that linking your new L to your native L is the fastest and best way of learning (If you do not think that any linking to your native language will definitely kill any hope to acquire native skills in your new language. I don't think so, but you know, the neuronal networks, who knows ...) As you mention bilingual texts and audio, what sounds like L-R: It was there, where the difference was most evident for me, (while it may be more a feeling as far as using textbooks or courses is concerned): When listening to the L3 audio, even reading a relatively free translation in German was far more effective than reading along , using the original in (L2)English, what I can read quite fluently, hm, no, quite fast, without major problems. The difference between quite and the real thing can make all the difference between fast progress and slow creeping. Nothing absolute here, just my 50, 20, I never know, cent. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6439 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 4 of 10 04 June 2011 at 11:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
You're right. Exactly how much the 'penalty' for not using your native language hits you varies a lot based on what you're doing, in my experience. I'm perfectly happy reading phonological material, or some things about grammar, in non-native languages, sometimes even ones where I hardly consider myself intermediate. I'm happy L-R'ing with a foreign base for stories I know very well, especially when the foreign base is the original language and the L2 is closely related to it - even when my knowledge of the foreign base is mainly passive. On the other hand, I find L-R'ing new material with a foreign base to be extremely ineffective, even if I could read it fairly comfortably in the base language by itself. Every tiny glitch in understanding is magnified, and I have less attention to devote to the new language. A detail I'd skip over while reading normally can easily derail me for a few sentences at times, if I pause to think about it at all - and if I don't, there's a foggy spot left, which seems a lot larger than if I'm just reading in my foreign language, because it (sometimes) greatly increases my uncertainty about the L2 phrase, how it's put together, what it's trying to convey, etc. Assimil with a foreign base is between these extremes. It's perfectly usable, and the penalty largely does come down to your level of comfort and skill with your L2, I find - but I do not find it comfortable to use with a base in a language where I'm hardly at basic fluency, much less any lower. Edit: I feel as comfortable using phonological material in Spanish (which I am not fluent in) as in English. My comfort using phonological material in Polish varies, but is often quite high as well, although I'd call myself a beginner at the language - a couple years of doing very little with it, after acquiring some passive knowledge have definitely left it rather dull. Edited by Volte on 04 June 2011 at 11:18pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| lingoleng Senior Member Germany Joined 5298 days ago 605 posts - 1290 votes | Message 5 of 10 05 June 2011 at 12:06am | IP Logged | |||||
I agree. Where I feel it the most is vocabulary and semantics. One might think it does not matter, as long as you find out what a word means, more or less, but again the difference between figuring out a slightly vague meaning on the one hand and a striking, illuminating definition seems important. This may be irrelevant for simple words and concepts like car, but I think it is very important for words like conjunctions, prepositions, phrasal verbs, verbs at all, well, everything that cannot simply be matched 1 to 1. (For people who don't like the idea of using any language as an intermediate layer between Lx and meaning this may be a confirmation, but on the other hand an idea like L3 via L2 must be hell for them from the very beginning ... ). After one has made the L3 - L1 connection (with a kind of direct memory access, to say so) any further expansion into the realms of one's L2 semantics may be useful additional mnemonics, creating more connections, according to the concept of L3 via L2.
I can only second these well put observations :-) 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5046 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 10 05 June 2011 at 1:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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As far as phonetics go, feel free to use either L1 or L2 transcriptions to get L3, but ultimately, nothing beats listening to native speakers of your L3 and it always is the preferred method.
While I think it there is merit to triangulation or laddering, some conditions are necessary for it to be a good idea: 1) proficiency in L2 should be a basic or advanced level of fluency, don't attempt to mix in L2 that you just started learning a couple of weeks ago. 2) L3 is more closely related to L2 than to your native L1, ex. you knew Chinese L2 and used it to learn Japanese L3, or say you knew French or Spanish L2 and used it to learn Italian or Portuguese. 3) your primary goal is to learn or strengthen L2, not so much learn L3 itself. As such, French and Spanish and English are all sufficiently removed from Japanese, linguistically speaking, that there'd be little reason to justify using anything but your native language. And ultimately whatever language you use to learn your Japanese, there's something to be said to switching to using Japanese to learn Japanese, once you already know a decent core of the language. Good luck! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| s0fist Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5046 days ago 260 posts - 445 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Sign Language, German, Spanish, French | Message 7 of 10 05 June 2011 at 1:37am | IP Logged | |||||
Very good point, this is why learning Lx is best done in Lx. This way you use the language itself to learn exactly what the meanings of the words are, what the associated sub-meanings and all connotations are, as well as context it's used in, since so many words are not 1 to 1. Most of it is usually done through overloading yourself with content in Lx, some can be quickly acquired from a monolingual dictionary. Of course, it's impossible/hard, or at least inefficient for an adult, to start with Lx directly, so one has to make do with starting from L1, using it to get a rough, sometimes incomplete, innaccurate or simply vague knowledge of Lx (with all it's new, shiny and weird prepositions, pronouns, verbs, etc) and progressively improving, clarifying pieces until things cling into place eventually getting to native level fluency. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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