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Learning French to learn other languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6275 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 9 of 19 15 April 2010 at 4:49pm | IP Logged |
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I have found Turkish-language learning materials directed at German speakers better than those available for English speakers. Whether it is worth learning German just for that reason is debatable, but you can use one L2 to learn another.
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| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5793 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 10 of 19 15 April 2010 at 5:49pm | IP Logged |
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Italian is easier than it would have been because I already know French. And I've been thinking about buying Le turc sans peine.
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| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5451 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 11 of 19 28 April 2010 at 3:28am | IP Logged |
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Are better and broader resources available in French or German? There is no backing out from French for me, but if German is so useful then I may think about picking it up later. The languages that I want to go for are the minority languages of Russia (especially Caucasian ones like Georgian, Chechen, Avar, etc), the Turkic languages of Central Asia, non-Mandarin and non-Cantonese varieties of Chinese, other minority languages of China, and some African languages. Edited by chucknorrisman on 28 April 2010 at 11:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| vikramkr Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6072 days ago 248 posts - 326 votes Speaks: English*, Portuguese | Message 12 of 19 28 April 2010 at 6:41am | IP Logged |
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Just my guess: French would be more useful for African languages, German would be more useful for Slavic and Turkic languages, and both would be equally useful for Asian languages.
Although, for the languages you want to learn, it seems as if you'd be lucky to find any resources at all! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7166 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 13 of 19 29 April 2010 at 10:37am | IP Logged |
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"Are better and broader resources available in French or German?"
"Just my guess: French would be more useful for African languages..." Apart from African languages, there are quite a lot of French resources for SE Asian languages (eg Burmese, Thai), Arabic, Persian & central Asian languages (published by INALCO) plus the huge Assimil series. "I've noticed that the French usually have the best materials for learning languages" I'm not sure this is true. I'm a recent convert to Assimil, but quite a lot of the French material I've seen strikes me as user-unfriendly. (But perhaps that's partly because my French isn't great.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| delectric Diglot Senior Member China Joined 7184 days ago 608 posts - 733 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin Studies: German | Message 14 of 19 29 April 2010 at 5:56pm | IP Logged |
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Chinese has a mass of materials for learning Korean and Japanese. In fact, It seems that
Chinese caters well for all languages now. Saw, a great 5 book set that seemed very similar to Assimil for learning Indonesian recently. So my advice for becoming a polyglot is learn Chinese first it will be your door way to all the languages of the world :D 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| onebir Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 7166 days ago 487 posts - 503 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin | Message 15 of 19 30 April 2010 at 10:42am | IP Logged |
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"Saw, a great 5 book set that seemed very similar to Assimil for learning Indonesian recently."
With audio? Do you remember the name? (I'm also a recent convert to using L2s to study L3s ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6014 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 16 of 19 30 April 2010 at 1:11pm | IP Logged |
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This idea seems very odd to me.
If you're starting from scratch, you're immediately adding a big chunk of time to your learning. It takes years to learn the subtleties of a language to the point where the teaching language of the materials becomes second nature, so you're delaying starting learning your genuine target languages. So just how much better are the resources in French? How much time do they save you in learning these other target languages? And how many target languages are you aiming to study via French? If the French-based materials are 25% more efficient than the materials you use to learn French initially and equivalent English-based courses for your target languages, then you need to learn 4 languages via French to actually profit from the experience. It comes down to whether you are learning languages for practical reasons or just out of curiosity. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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