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Learning a related language | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| guiguixx1 Octoglot Senior Member Belgium guillaumelp.wordpres Joined 3902 days ago 163 posts - 207 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Dutch, Portuguese, Esperanto, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Polish, Mandarin | Message 1 of 5 09 March 2015 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
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I seem to have some problems using the the research option...
I was curious to know what methods and strategies you use when learning a language which is related to a language that you master in the C level. I have begun Italien a few months ago, but don't seem to make progess (although I have slowed down on it these past few weeks), and I really want to be able to speak this language. Is there something that can make a difference, knowing that French is my native language, and that I am intermediate in Spanish? I had thought of listening massively to Italian, but I don't really have experiences about this kind of learning for a related language. I learnt Spanish through a course in which we learnt grammar and vocab, like any course, but when I was able to begin reading, I read harry potter and listened to podcasts, and it did make a difference. But I don't know if I should do that in Italian as well (without having a course, and without knowing of the whole grammar), or if I should try some other method... I am also afraid of having some real interference problems with Spanish. Last time I worked intensively on Italian, I found it difficult to speak Spanish. Should I work on both at the same time? Or massively on Italian, and go back to Spanish after? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| jbadg76421 Groupie United States Joined 4198 days ago 51 posts - 92 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, French, Esperanto | Message 2 of 5 09 March 2015 at 11:50pm | IP Logged |
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I'm kind of in the same boat, I learned Spanish and then later French, and I sort of left my Spanish to get rusty, so when I tried to speak it, French would come out. Now I'm learning Italian...at first I was worried about the same thing happening, but honestly I don't think it's that big of a deal. I've found it useful (for myself) to sort of work on languages in "waves"...This strategy works for me because I'm no rush to "perfect" any of my languages in a short amount of time, so I don't really care how long it takes. I'm using Assimil in English for Italian, but I'm starting to wonder if maybe I should use Assimil El nuevo Italiano sin esfuerzo, which I also have access to, that way I can see both languages at the same time and try to underline the differences.
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4869 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 3 of 5 10 March 2015 at 12:12am | IP Logged |
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When you learn a related language, you get a huge boost and some minor difficulties.
You should spend much less time with learner materials and grammar study. Most of the grammar will be similar enough that you can absorb it from input. The vocabulary will be similar enough that you can begin reading native texts with the help of a dictionary almost from the start. Interference will happen. If you have been recently using one of the related languages a lot, it will be hard to speak the other. However, this is NOT something you need to worry about in most cases. If you travel to the country where one of the languages is spoken, you will have enough time to acclimate, and interference will soon go away. If you must regularly speak both languages, your brain will soon learn to overcome the interference. If I'll be briefly speaking a language I don't speak often (e.g. for an international phone call), I like to spend an hour reading/listening in that language beforehand. That goes a long way towards suppressing interference. If you won't be speaking both languages regularly, then who cares if you can't be fluent in all of them at the drop of a hat? You will be able to speak them when you need to. *assuming you have reached a high level in the previous language. If your knowledge of the first language isn't well established, interference can contribute to losing it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4254 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 4 of 5 10 March 2015 at 2:38am | IP Logged |
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A language like Cantonese is related to Mandarin but with slightly different grammar, vocabulary and
pronunciation. How do you get around similar languages? In the beginning you need a lot of listening to pick up the sounds of a language. I find watching videos with captions helpful. Most people tend to read very well but have trouble picking up spoken words & phrases. There are many languages we assume to be similar like Spanish, French & Italian. There are enough differences between them that the speaker of 1 language won't be able to communicate directly with another without a translator. Unless a person has enough knowledge of a different language but feel uncomfortable speaking it to be able to pick up a conversation. For instance, there are people in Montreal, Canada who would speak French to the other person and he would reply back in English. Similarly, a person in Hong Kong would speak Cantonese to a Chinese from the Mainland and the other person would reply back in Mandarin. You can't really do a 1 to 1 translation between Spanish & Italian or between Cantonese & Mandarin. It is best you treat similar languages as if they are different languages and put in the extra effort to learn words & phrases that are different. I know a Cantonese-speaker who took Mandarin classes for 6 months. After that he was unable to say anything besides the basic greetings. A 1 hour class per week isn't very much considering that the rest of the week you have no exposure to a language. A while ago, I came back from a summer exchange program in Taiwan. At that time my Mandarin was sufficient to allow me to go shopping and order in local restaurants but not at the level I would like to be. For 8 months I limited my English TV programs to the news and started watching Chinese dramas instead of American ones. I found that even 2 hours / day of Chinese TV programs helped me to improve my language proficiency. There are only 24h in a day so you'd need to make the switch to Italian TV programs to improve your fluency in Italian. The other thing I'm doing now is to set my computer & mobile devices to accept Chinese input so that I can keep up with the language by typing notes in Chinese. Every little effort you do will help you improve in the long run. In the beginning if you are not comfortable with watching to TV programs or listening to the radio, reading magazines with lots of photos is a good start. By looking at the photos you can guess what an article is about. Edited by shk00design on 10 March 2015 at 2:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4331 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 5 of 5 10 March 2015 at 2:46pm | IP Logged |
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For related languages, "intercomprehension" as the learning strategy would be an option.
You can look it up on Wikipedia. It's actually best researched for Romance languages with French as your starting point. Basically you would serialize your learning process. First reading, then listening, then active skills. You train one skill until it is good enough to facilitate the next one. For the first skill (reading) you use the languages you already know in order to figure out the meaning of texts. There are some techniques you can use to help you and you should start with easy texts. In some cases I feel it makes sense to swap reading and listening, but it depends on the language pair. The important thing is to get good at both passive skills in order to facilitate the development of active skills. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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