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Using an L2 as an L1? (benefits, cautions | ||
Tags: L3 via L2 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| plumbem! Groupie United States Joined 3635 days ago 44 posts - 72 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French | Message 1 of 11 22 March 2015 at 4:13pm | IP Logged | ||
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I am interested in taking on Wolof through French.
For one the resource pool is slightly richer. For another this allows me to stop "studying" French and to just use it I will be starting an intensive language program for Wolof with English as the base language in November. Is this enough reason to abandon the idea of using French? What happens when an L2 has multiple L1s? I am kind of just curious more than anything. I will be living in Senegal so the French will continue to be useful occaisionally. Curious to hear from others who took the leap of using an L2 as an L1, especially for two languages that were completely dfferent. Hope all is well, -ed 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3544 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 2 of 11 22 March 2015 at 6:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you know the instruction language (French), it doesn't seem like it should matter whether this is your native language or not. Whether the languages are "similar" or not is going to affect how much effort it will take you for it to "stick" but it should not hender comprehension.
For example, after attaining some beginner French knowledge I have found that I can quite easily progress through a language textbook (Assimil) for which French is the teaching language. IMO you want to spend 98% of your mental energy on your target language. This means you are allowed to spend a few seconds at most for every instruction minute in order to clarify something (i.e. what does that item mean again?). Edited by chaotic_thought on 22 March 2015 at 6:39pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Darklight1216 Diglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5102 days ago 411 posts - 639 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: German | Message 3 of 11 23 March 2015 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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Two birds with one stone. I would never use my native language if my L1 was available
affordably... unfortunately that is rarely the case. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4709 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 4 of 11 23 March 2015 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||
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doesn't seem problematic to me. But make sure you know French well and not half-assed
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5168 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 5 of 11 23 March 2015 at 11:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Funny how textbooks are usually the first resource I'm comfortable reading in a language I'm studying. The first German book I read was a Georgian grammar - the best Georgian grammar available. I struggled with it two years ago. Then this year I read an Estonian texbook in German again and it was a piece of cake compared to the novels and other non-fiction books I'm reading with a translation.
What will bring you the most trouble are word lists. Specially when the textbook has the typical vocabulary-killer lessons: everything that is in a kitchen, everything in a wardrobe...(I ocasionally rant about this useless approach of teaching an A1 learner to say 'tie'). I have been through situations at which I met words I didn't know in my native language yet! I think you're comfortable with using a different L1 when you can pick up a random wordlist at your textbook and not have to translate more than 5 words each page. If the textbook doesn't have such list, then even better, because it will be mostly explanations then, which are easier. I also tend to 'save' the 'weaker L1' textbooks for later, and sometimes they work almost like a review. I tend to do them before monolingual textbooks, both of which are a warm up for the intermediate level. Again with Estonian, the German textbook was my final one before E nagu eesti. As for Chinese, I just started a Chinese-German reader. It is simple language, but I still have to do the occasional word look-up and it also happens that I may know the Chinese word and not the German one (which can also happen when you are using a textbook in a different L1 while having already used other textbooks in your native language or in a stronger L1). My goal for Russian is learning it enough to be able to use the Russian textbooks I own for learning Georgian, Estonian and several other languages I still haven't started. It is much harder than I expected in the case of Russian, and I already have some failed attempts and one successful one when I did skip some translations that seemed easier to read in Georgian and some explanations on topics I already knew. I check my level of comprehension of textbooks in Russian once in a while. Some of the Estonian ones are more 'aural' and have words that I may already know in Estonian, so I won't even need the Russian in the first place. It also helps enormously to scan and OCR your textbook and then post it at an online translator. I did it often with my Georgian textbook in Russian. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| guiguixx1 Octoglot Senior Member Belgium guillaumelp.wordpres Joined 4094 days ago 163 posts - 207 votes Speaks: French*, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 6 of 11 26 March 2015 at 8:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have never lived in a foreign country to use an L2 daily, and I don't use a lot of
textbooks in L2 (because I just happen to find them in my L1 in shops), but a few years ago I used English intensively (speaking to myself only in this language all the time, reading in English all my free time, watching movies, etc). I actually used only this language when I wasn't at school or when I wasn't speaking to family or friends. I thus lived through my L2 and didn't use my L1 much. I can't say how long I did this, probably about 1 year, and went from A2-ish to low C1 I tried the same with other languages, but since it was harder to find materials, it took me longer and was less effective That's it, I just thought sharing my story could be interesting ;) 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6705 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 11 27 March 2015 at 10:50am | IP Logged | ||
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Learning L3, L4.. through language L2, L3.... is definitely possible - otherwise people like me who have a 'small' L1 would have a problem. But it has to be through languages you know well. There are good dictionaries in Danish for many languages, but not nearly as many as you can find in for instance English or German, and in some cases they simply don't exist. For grammars the situation is worse so there the majority of my tools are in English or other strange outlandish languages.
Given this situation I regularly look words up in dictionaries where I get an answer in English or German or French or Spanish or whatever instead of Danish, and my best grammar books are often in English - like the Routledge series. And so far I have survived this ordeal. The physical format, size and quality of the dictionary or grammar book is more important then the base language as long as we are talking about my 'good' languages, but a similar dictionary in Danish would always be better for me because I immediately understand all the translations and understand these with all the implications and possible pitfalls. Expugnator mentioned wordlists (eh, don't get me going on that...). I have a fair number dictionaries with a base languages outside my best languages, and you immediately feel the difference. For instance I used an Italian - Serbian languages and an English - Serbian dictionary last year for my wordlist experiment, and I have to say that I learned a lot of Italian words through that exercise (smiley here) even though my dictionary based word counts consistently have shown that I have a passive vocabulary beyond 20.000 in Italian. Apparently 20.000 words isn't enough. Even in English, where similar tests yield figures above 30.000, I regularly see new words I don't know. So using weaker languages would mean that I were studying the base language as much as the target language, and that would bode for confusion and lack of focus. As practical use of a target languages I would think the question of a non native base language was less relevant. If you want to express yourself in a weak target language and run into a problem then you will probably think, think and think as mad in your own language, not in some other language just for the fun of it - unless of course you have seen a solution in that language recently. And in that case it might actually be a complicating factor to have that memory reactivated. Edited by Iversen on 27 March 2015 at 10:59am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4670 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 8 of 11 03 April 2015 at 1:33am | IP Logged | ||
I'm using the Italian-base Assimil Swedish course. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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