Improving L2 through L3, L4 etc.

[drp9341]

Hello everyone! Today I was thinking about something interesting. It's hard to explain without giving an example, so I'll start with some small examples:

example 1:If you learn English to B2, and then learn French to B2, your passive comprehension of (written, at least) English will improve a lot. A lot of common words in French, are very similar, or identical, to high level vocabulary in English. (When I say high-level I mean words not used very frequently, words used mainly in literature etc.)

example 2:My ability to read complicated / old texts in Italian has improved dramatically since I learned Spanish, French, and Portuguese. For example, the word "Onde" means "hence" (and a few other things depending on how it's used,) in poetic Italian. Just to give you an example, I've only seen the word "Onde" maybe 3 times in my life in Italian. However, "Onde" means "where" in every day speech in Portuguese.

I know the conventional advice would be "If you want to improve X language then just keep studying X language." However, if you can kill 2 birds with one stone, (in a linguistic sense,) then wouldn't it make more sense to learn an new language AND improve the old language at the same time? I know if your goal is ONLY to learn one language and you have no interest in learning more languages it might be more beneficial to stick with the conventional advice of "If you want to improve X language then just keep studying X language," but for those who want to speak more than just the language they're studying at the moment, then a thread like this could provide learners with some very useful information. Even as a native speaker of English, born, raised, and university educated in the US, learning French definitely boosted my English vocabulary big time.

My question is, for people who have learned entire, (or close to entire,) language families, which language helped which other languages the most? Not only in terms of vocabulary, but in any way in general.

and for my own selfish interests does anyone have any experience with this regarding the Slavic Languages, could you please share?

PS: I know the benefits of learning entire families of languages has been discussed ad nauseam, however I think sharing some specific advice and stories here would still be beneficial. (we need professor Arguelles back )

[tarvos]

The thing is that this is helpful when your languages are at a high level, but a hindrance when they are not, and I prefer my languages to be B2 MINIMUM (but preferably high C-levels) before I attempt this sort of thing.

The languages that have helped me most are, unsurprisingly, the languages I started out with, so Dutch, English, French and to a lesser extent German and Latin. Russian had an impact on my Czech later on, and my Spanish wouldn't be what it is without having studied all the other Romance languages beforehand.

Swedish helped with Icelandic.

I mostly don't choose to do this because of laddering (the term for what you're describing), but it's nearly always about having better resources or having them close at hand in language A but not in language B. And that means I will often resort to English instead of Dutch, but occasionally to something else (French is most common for me).

When it comes to the Slavic languages, this is hugely facilitated once you know one of them well (in my case that was Russian), as they're not so far apart.

[drp9341]

To my understanding, laddering refers to a language you’re more advanced in helping you learn a language you’re less advanced in. I’m referring to the opposite.

For example, recently, my father was talking about how I speak Italian and said, that after learning Spanish (and getting to a high level in it,) my Italian improved a lot. He hadn’t heard me speak Italian that extensively during the time I went from A2-C something in Spanish, but when I spoke Italian for about a week straight when family was visiting (a few months after coming back from 3 months of immersion in Spanish,) my Italian was much better. (For the first maybe 2 or 3 days I was using the occasional spanish word instead of Italian word,) but after that was sorted, my fluency and grammar was MUCH better than it was before I reached that level in Spanish.

I’ve heard Poles say that in Ukrainian they use a lot of old “village” words that people in Poland don’t really use anymore. So hypothetically, if I studied Ukrainian, a side effect (after getting Ukrainian to a high level,) would be that I would be able to recognize, and thus quickly learn, a lot of polish vocabulary that I otherwise would have probably never learned.

[DaveBee]

I’ve heard Poles say that in Ukrainian they use a lot of old “village” words that people in Poland don’t really use anymore. So hypothetically, if I studied Ukrainian, a side effect (after getting Ukrainian to a high level,) would be that I would be able to recognize, and thus quickly learn, a lot of polish vocabulary that I otherwise would have probably never learned.

I used to think of "candy" as an american word, but then I came across it in one of Shakespeare's plays (Henry IV?). You can see different evolutions in other words too. "pants" are trousers in the USA, underwear in the UK. A "vest" is an undershirt in the UK, or a waistcoat in the USA.

[tarvos]

The opposite seems pointless.

[mcthulhu]

Cognates are cognates, and there's usually going to be at least some shared vocabulary or loanwords among languages, particularly major languages, and more so within the same language family. The more languages you learn, the broader a base you have to build upon, the more potential cognates, and the more often you'll find yourself thinking "hey, X is like Y in that other language." This does help in building at least passive vocabulary faster, and I don't see any reason why the direction of the borrowing should matter. Borrowing is asymmetric and I think that less dominant languages may borrow more from more dominant languages than vice versa, however - e.g. lots of French loanwords in Lingala, but probably fewer Lingala words in French. The existence of the overlap should help regardless of whether you're going from Lingala to French or from French to Lingala, though.

Cognates are extremely useful memory hooks for vocabulary acquisition but you do need to be careful about assuming too much of an overlap. It's good to be skeptical. Even if the base meaning is the same there can be significant differences in connotation or register. The word agrément is a perfectly good English term (borrowed from French), but it's a technical term in diplomacy referring to a host country's formal acceptance of an ambassador nominated by another country. I believe the range of use in the original French is significantly broader (though maybe narrower than the range of meanings for the other cognate, the more common English "agreement"?).

And of course you do have to be careful about false cognates; your first assumption is always going to be that the meaning must be the same, but sometimes you're going to be wrong. (I was burned once by "brak" in Polish and Serbian - they are completely different.) Overcoming this natural confusion is part of the learning process.

"A lot of common words in French, are very similar, or identical, to high level vocabulary in English. (When I say high-level I mean words not used very frequently, words used mainly in literature etc.)" -- More than just high-level vocabulary. I was tempted to respond with a list of the French loanwords in your post.

[reineke]

To my understanding, laddering refers to a language you’re more advanced in helping you learn a language you’re less advanced in. I’m referring to the opposite.

For example, recently, my father was talking about how I speak Italian and said, that after learning Spanish (and getting to a high level in it,) my Italian improved a lot. He hadn’t heard me speak Italian that extensively during the time I went from A2-C something in Spanish, but when I spoke Italian for about a week straight when family was visiting (a few months after coming back from 3 months of immersion in Spanish,) my Italian was much better. (For the first maybe 2 or 3 days I was using the occasional spanish word instead of Italian word,) but after that was sorted, my fluency and grammar was MUCH better than it was before I reached that level in Spanish.

I’ve heard Poles say that in Ukrainian they use a lot of old “village” words that people in Poland don’t really use anymore. So hypothetically, if I studied Ukrainian, a side effect (after getting Ukrainian to a high level,) would be that I would be able to recognize, and thus quickly learn, a lot of polish vocabulary that I otherwise would have probably never learned.

I am always pleased to learn about someone progressing in language learning. Since I learned "onde" through Italian, I didn't bat an eyelash when I heard it in Spanish. It works both ways. The only thing that can significantly improve my Italian is doing things Italian.

[IronMike]

I can speak to the Slavic languages, but maybe not in the "direction" you're asking about. I learned BCS only after reaching high B2/low C1 in Russian. Four (full-time) months later I was low C1 in reading and listening BCS and high B2 in speaking. Did BCS help my Russian? Possibly. No idea though. Over the years I've hovered anywhere from B1 (several decades ago) to C1 in Russian. I learned BCS 20 years ago this year and it is all but gone (can still read at a B1). But my Russian (my first, serious, L2) is still there, and with little to no work I can manage a low C1 on a Russian test any day of the week.

I think it really comes down to productive and [can't remember the new term for passive] skills. Studying within the same language family sure makes [passive] skills easier to acquire and maintain. Productive skills are very perishable.

[MorkTheFiddle]

I think it really comes down to productive and [can't remember the new term for passive] skills.

Receptive?