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Using L2 materials to learn L3

  Tags: L3 via L2
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies Post Reply
10 messages over 2 pages: 1 2  Next >>
yeshe
Triglot
Newbie
United States
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2 posts - 2 votes
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Japanese
Studies: Tibetan, Biblical Hebrew

 
 Message 1 of 10
15 July 2014 at 4:07pm | IP Logged 
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)
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Via Diva
Diglot
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Russian Federation
last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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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 
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.
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tarvos
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China
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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 
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

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Chung
Diglot
Senior Member
Joined 6970 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 
yeshe wrote:
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.


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.

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day1
Groupie
Latvia
Joined 3706 days ago

93 posts - 158 votes 
Speaks: English

 
 Message 5 of 10
16 July 2014 at 9:13am | IP Logged 
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.
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Paco
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 4091 days ago

145 posts - 251 votes 
Speaks: Cantonese*

 
 Message 6 of 10
18 July 2014 at 3:36pm | IP Logged 
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.
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yeshe
Triglot
Newbie
United States
Joined 3813 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 
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

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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4521 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 
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



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