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Using L2 materials to learn L3 | ||
Tags: L3 via L2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| yeshe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4000 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Tibetan, Biblical Hebrew | Message 1 of 10 15 July 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm wondering if any of you have experience / advice, or know of any blog posts or other topics on this forum, about
using materials written in one of your second languages in order to learn another language. I know a number of people have used the Assimil courses in French to learn other languages, but I haven't seen anyone discussing advantages / disadvantages / tips for this sort of thing. (Details: I'm thinking about using materials aimed at Japanese speakers in order to learn Mandarin, or at least as part of my resource pool, because it would utilize the similarities between Sino-Japanese and Mandarin vocabulary - - and help me see where a seeming cognate is actually a false friend) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4235 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes  Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 2 of 10 15 July 2014 at 4:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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That happens a lot with non-native English speakers. I learn German mostly through English now because it's simpler to remember words and easier to L-R something as well.
I can't really go into details, but the most important thing is that you should be confident enough in your L2 required when studying L3 or make sure to ignore things you don't know in L2 so that they won't get false meanings in L3. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 10 15 July 2014 at 6:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I use them all the time. I only use languages I know well and languages I have
experience with IRL (so no using Spanish for example). Outside of Dutch (and English, but English can be annoying because of the really bad phonetical explanations), I use French often. French is by far my strongest language outside of my (quasi-)native tongues, so it's an obvious choice. I have material in Romanian for other languages too, and in Russian as well. Romanian is easy for me to use, I haven't tried using the Russian book. I use Romanian to study Greek, although I have immigrant textbooks too and I use them equally often (because the Greek self-study course in Romanian has gaping vocabulary holes, especially in the lexicon). I need a good dictionary. Edited by tarvos on 15 July 2014 at 6:12pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 4 of 10 15 July 2014 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | ||
Here are a couple of related threads: Learning L3 via L2? Multiple points of attack I have no experience doing this with Asiatic languages, but was forced to take this path when I was dabbling in Inari Saami, and studying Northern Saami. For both languages, I relied on course materials issued in Finnish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| day1 Groupie Latvia Joined 3893 days ago 93 posts - 158 votes Speaks: English | Message 5 of 10 16 July 2014 at 9:13am | IP Logged | ||
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I am all for using L2 for learning L3, as a non-native English speaker I do it all the time (lack of textbooks in my native language). I see actual benefits for this when the "new" language is close to the one you're learning, or when some specific grammar point matches better with which ever of your L2s.
Japanese and Mandarin, well, the only thing they have in common are the characters. So, a Japanese textbook as a supplementary text - why not? As the main one, probably not. But then again, it depends on how strong your Japanese is. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Paco Senior Member Hong Kong Joined 4278 days ago 145 posts - 251 votes Speaks: Cantonese* | Message 6 of 10 18 July 2014 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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If what concerns you is ability, admittedly you may never attain native fluency in L2,
however, as for as you are able to read, understand and enjoy a language, it does not matter much whether it is L1 or L2. I think you agree with this, and that is why you started this thread, don't you? By the way, I study Japanese too. I use courses and readers written in both English and Chinese, and reference grammars in English. English resources provide different perspectives and are at times more pedagogical, while Chinese ones are more straight- forward to me (I am East Asian) and have more advanced materials than English can provide. It depends on what you want and what they offer. I wish you success. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| yeshe Triglot Newbie United States Joined 4000 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese Studies: Tibetan, Biblical Hebrew | Message 7 of 10 30 July 2014 at 7:37am | IP Logged | ||
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Hey guys, sorry about the radio silence, I've been traveling and my internet access has been spotty. Thanks for all
the replies and advice! I think I'm going to get a Mandarin textbook in Japanese as a supplementary text, in large part because it should be fun to play around with it. Via Diva, I never thought about that! Shows how much I take having so many language learning resources in my native language for granted. Chung, thanks for the links to other forum posts. I'll go through and check them out. Also (though this is OT) how did you get interested in Saami? And are materials exclusively available in Finnish, or did you elect to use Finnish materials for other reasons? Tarvos, I totally agree about the really bad phonetic explanations in textbooks for English speakers; I usually try to find grammars written by and for linguists in order to get my phonetic descriptions, and leave that section of the textbook completely alone. I've seen some particularly terrible ones for Mandarin: every single one I have seen misdescribes the unaspirated consonants as voiced consonants (which is how they're written in pinyin, but not at all how they're actually pronounced). Also, why do you choose to study Greek in Romanian? day1, although Japanese syntax is very different from Chinese (about as different as two languages can be, I'd reckon!), the way that morphemes are combined in Sino-Japanese vocabulary follows some of the same logic as Chinese. I'll be interested to see if a Mandarin textbook aimed at a Japanese learner would try to leverage this parity. Though I had actually been thinking that their LACK of similarity would be the benefit: it would force the text to more fully describe / instantiate the grammar, rather than just glossing over things that are more-or-less the same (as I've found some Mandarin Chinese textbooks in English to do, at least in the early stages). Edited by yeshe on 30 July 2014 at 7:37am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4708 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 8 of 10 02 August 2014 at 9:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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No real reason actually. I was simply in Romania when I decided to buy my Greek
textbook, and they had nothing in English. I thought, to hell with it, I'll just use Romanian then. I have a few .pdfs of books for immigrants and together with my book it works. I recently bought a Swedish book for Chinese, because I was in Sweden and wanted to read about Chinese. Greek and Romanian have some fairly similar structures and like avoiding the infinitives. The Orthodox religion also throws up some funny cultural similarities. (I hate the pinyin transcription too, same for revised Romanization in Korean). Edited by tarvos on 02 August 2014 at 9:25pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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