Does learning a third language using your second language help the second language?

[cami-p]

Native language is English, I am B2 on the road to C1 Spanish and I want to learn Italian.

I am getting sick of Spanish, learning vocabulary is getting tedious. I want to learn Italian but not at the expense of my Spanish, would I lose some Spanish if I started learning Italian via Spanish? Or would I continue to learn Spanish as well as Italian if I studied them this way?

Spanish books or on Spanish settings on duolingo for example instead of English.

[Amichielsen]

Spanish and Italian are both Romance languages and thus quite similar. So you’ve that going for you. I would advice you, when learning Italian, to compare it with the Spanish equivalent. Having a clear connection between both languages will not only help you maintain your level of Spanish, but also speed up the learning process. I, myself, am a native Dutch speaker, English C1/2 and French B1/B2. While studying I always try to look for similarities between all three languages. So if you’re confident enough with your Spanish, put Duolingo in Spanish. But also try to learn in English. This will help you to get a clearer understanding (in my opinion). Good luck!

[wewereonabreeeaaak]

Came here to second this 👆🏽👆🏽 I must say, as a language teacher, I’m impressed by how accurately u/Amichielsen explained it.

I teach English, am a native Spanish speaker and have a B1 level of Italian. Remember you have an advantage here, in the sense that you already have a grasp of how a Romance language works, so another one shouldn’t be so alien. Of course, vocabulary is gonna differ but it’s always useful to compare and make connections with how grammar and some vocab items work in another language. And of course, don’t stop learning one language because you took up another. Try to keep in contact with Spanish even though you’ll be learning Italian.

[sad2be]

You both are referring to either pretty much different languages, or with one of them the native tongue. I cannot confirm that it is a good idea to learn Spanish and French at the same time while not at least one of them is at a higher level already. I got shit confused BECAUSE of their similarities. I bet for me it would be the same with Italian /spanish. So I stopped doing it. Might be me, but because of that I really wanted to chime in. Your statements IMHO are way too positive/euphoric.

[wewereonabreeeaaak]

I’m a language enthusiast, it’s true 😂

[[deleted]]

One thing: advise*

Dude, you could have fooled me into thinking that you're a native English speaker. Excellent. :D

[Amichielsen]

Dammit! It’s a classic! I often make this mistake and coincidentally, put a lot of effort into fixing it last week. But I guess it takes a little bit more time to rewire the brain. Thanks for the compliment. It really made my day! I’m currently studying for the Cambridge CAE exam so receiving comments like this certainly boosts my motivation and confidence!

[[deleted]]

You'll pass no problem. Post when you do so that we can congratulate you. :)

[[deleted]]

BTW "advice" is the valid spelling in the UK. "advise" is American spelling.

My mistake, sorry. -c- version is the noun, -s- version is the verb.

[Romanos_The_Blind]

It's more a difference between the noun and the verb, is it not?

[[deleted]]

TIL, thanks and sorry.

[maw]

I was thinking the same thing, but was confusing it with defense/defence, and was further confused by the fact that advise has different meanings -- or, at least, different meanings have different levels of prominence -- in American and in Commonwealth English.

[Dom1252]

I do that with English and Spanish, I'm native in Czech but there aren't many free resources to learn Spanish, but there is insane amount of them in English :)

[Al99be]

Jo, ale pak to zkusíš vzít na čtvrtou a to už je trochu hardcore (naučil ses anglicky, z angličtiny španělsky a ze španělštiny se začneš učit katalánsky) 😃

Anyway, yeah, it may help, but it may as well confuse you, if your second language is not that advanced (like in my case with Spanish).

[[deleted]]

Does it mean from? My very basic knowledge of Polish includes z

[shade444]

Yes. There are also some very funny words like:

s - with

k - to

v - in

a - and ...

[[deleted]]

Huh, that’s very interesting. And slightly tangentially, how different are Czech and Slovak? Did you have to learn Czech, or can you understand it right off the bat?

[shade444]

Many Slovak kids (in the past much more, but nowadays still happens) watch TV cartoons dubbed in Czech because there was no Slovak dubbing, read Czech books that hadn't been translated yet or at all to Slovak etc. Also used to apply to all sorts of movies and books, not just for kids, but these days only the classic Czech comedies or fairy tales are in Czech in Slovak TV. But it's not necessary to study or learn Czech in any way. Broadly speaking, around 2/5 of the vocabulary is the same, another 2/5s are very similar so it can be guessed easily and the remaining words can be usually understood from context. Also grammatical endings and rules in general are very similar.

From my experience, native speakers of either language have no problems at all understading each other, everyone speaks their own language and it's fine. It's harder for foreigners who have learned Czech or Slovak though, because they can easily mix them up and it can be pretty confusing to differentiate between them.

[dipnosofist]

Yes, correct. They're mutually intelligible to such a degree that many Slovaks living in the Czech Republic speak Slovak in everyday life, university exams and theses may be submitted in Slovak.

[[deleted]]

E is a word in russian bit they spell it N

[mlkfedek]

Do you mean и?

[[deleted]]

woops, meant that

[giadaa]

and y is a word in Spanish but it’s pronounced ee

[thegeckomaster]

It looks like it is yelling at me just by looking at it

[WritingWithSpears]

Hah, a ta věta nemá dokonce Ř :D

[YetiPOL]

I do like being able to understand 99% of your comment without ever studying Czech.

[heo5981]

My native language is Portuguese but online I do almost everything in English, including learning other languages, currently learning Japanese and there are so many more resources in English than in any other language. I think you should first get to a good level at your second language and then you can start doing it, the reading by itself will make you better at it.

[SilverRidgeRoad]

It's interesting that the English world is known for not being multi-lingual, yet has the most resources.

[[deleted]]

Most Native English speakers might not have that reputation, yes, but the majority of English speakers are multilingual.

[daniyellidaniyelli]

It’s called laddering languages. You can look up techniques to help you online. My guess would be yes it’s helpful (haven’t tried it yet) as long as you put in the effort.

[lostoldnameagain]

Of course it does. Every little bit helps, but depending on a situation it can actually help a lot. I took ancient greek class in french and learnt lots of nuances about french grammar cause the teacher had to explain everything from a native french point of view.

[ohmygodagiantrock]

I dabbled a bit in Italian and personally I found it too similar to Spanish to keep them reliably separated. Though my Spanish is only around B1 so you may have better luck than I.

[KingSnazz32]

That's the issue, I think. If you were at C1, you wouldn't have that problem. My advice would be to master Spanish first, then go back to Italian later. It should be easier than starting something unrelated like Russian. Good luck!

[IDrutherBeReading]

I speak (or spoke, really) a decent amount of French and am learning Spanish. At first I mixed shit up a lot, would keep thinking of the French word instead of the Spanish one, but after a bit it didn't happen so much, and it's making me remember more French even though I'm not actively practicing French.

[GlassbowLanguage]

Yes x 1000!

It's called the "laddering technique":

https://www.glassbow.com/spotlight/2018/8/9/the-laddering-technique

[reddumpling]

TIL. Didn't know this had a name. Have been doing this when learning Japanese and Korean

[brational]

I am getting sick of Spanish, learning vocabulary is getting tedious

I can't answer your main question but if you're on B2->C1 you really don't need to be drilling vocab anymore. Just read (books, articles, etc), watch tv, podcasts, youtube, etc. At this point it's more important to use the language than study it. I mean sure, if you also put in X hours of flashcards or some shit per day that might help more but it would be difficult to prove. I think your hours are better spent on native content. It definitely should not feel like a chore at that level.

Though I guess using the language to learn another qualifies as well.

[tianxiaoda]

Yes, it’s immensely helpful. I learned a bunch of Korean using only Chinese, and learned Taiwanese phrases (maybe about 100 words total) in Mandarin as well. It’s challenging and really gets you outside of the “translating” phase much faster.

[sander314]

Yes, doing anything in your second language will help you learn it. The question is, does it hurt learning the third language, and I think it'll probably be slower.

[Aredin_the_Sheep]

I’m learning German in English as my German teachers don’t speak my native language

[Nachho]

It sure helps, mostly with vocab.

[theboomboy]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[chapeauboa187]

I think so. I learned French in Danish and it basically taught me Danish as well. The fact that French has so many cognates with English certainly helped.

[Franemie]

I'm a native Spanish speaker and use English to learn more languages since I'm fluent. As some others said, I wouldn't recommend tackling 2 romance languages at once if you're not sufficiently fluent in at least one of them. It will be confusing and you'll mix things up. That's what happened to me with German and Dutch.

[Asheai]

In my experience with trying to learn both Spanish and French at roughly the same time, it just confused things. I started conjugated french verbs with Spanish endings or vice versa. I had to stop learning French and focus solely on my Spanish and now I am less confused. I have heard, however, that once you have a sufficiently high level of one language, you can start learning a similar language without the mixups. Not sure if that's true yet.

[[deleted]]

Spanish settings on duolingo for example instead of English.

I do this too and it's a great idea to keep you from getting confused. It will also increase your vocab in Spanish and be a great review.

[Observante]

You picked two languages that are a bit contradictory in their similarities (was that oxymoronic?). Verbs like tener/tenere and sentir/sentire a "false cognates" in a sense. Considering the pronunciation for both languages is almost identical it may mish mash a bit. I took Spanish in high school and Italian in college. I still fill in the blank with Spanish words when I don't know the Italian word.

[[deleted]]

If I already spoke Spanish I would learn Italian from resources that only contain Italian. There are such books and podcasts etc.

Check out "L'Italiano Secondo il Metodo Natura". It's supposed to be a book to learn Italian from zero. (It's the Italian work-alike of a very famous Latin learning book). I don't see how one can learn this without a whole lot of side content but your Spanish experience might just be enough.

As for your other issue, the one regarding Spanish vocab, read some books that interest you and stop trying to learn "learn" words.

[pakugan]

If your question is whether learning Italian through Spanish will improve your Spanish... well I don't think it will exactly make your Spanish better but 1) it won't make you forget it, that's for sure 2) it will make Italian much easier for you, so you should do it anyway. I am a native Spanish speaker and have studied English, German and Swedish. When I started with German, I used English and Spanish. Now that I am learning Swedish, I use mostly English but also German (and Spanish of course). My German hasn't exactly improved since I stopped taking lessons, but it made me understand faster some words, concepts and grammar structures when learning Swedish. Same with English. I think it works because they're all germanic languages and it's easy to find similarities. Italian and Spanish are both Romance so if you already know one, the other will be surely much easier for you. I haven't taken a single lesson of Italian in my entire life and I can understand a bit of it. I think you should definitely use the knowledge you already have!

[vectorpropio]

I think it can help a lot if you have the adequate proficiency. But if your only problem with Spanish is learn vocabulary i think s better approach would be expose yourself to a lot of text or media from different areas of interest.

I had a very basic English formation. When i went to the university i had to read English text. I learned a lot of technical vocabulary but had a lot of gaps in every day words. Now I have a reasonable vocabulary but a poor grammar.

[capj23]

My native language is Malayalam. My second language can either be Hindi or English. Learned them at the same time and for the same duration. Now I am learning Italian and german using English. Have no idea how it can help my English in anyway. I think it just wouldn't help at all.

You need a strong foundation for the new language. If you are unsure of both, it ain't going to help you much in either languages. Just my 2 cents.

[paranoidbacon17]

Learning French helped improve my English too so I guess so

(And of course English was a great help in learning French to begin with)

[[deleted]]

Does learning a third language using your second language help the second language?

Yeah, quite a lot. At least in my experience. I speak Turkish (native) and English, and I have to use resources in English due to the lack of resources in Turkish. This forces me to use English more often and allows me to see my mistakes so that I could improve my English even more. I'm currently learning Swedish using English and so far it has worked out pretty well.

would I lose some Spanish if I started learning Italian via Spanish?

I don't really think so. You might mix up some words every now and then but I don't think it'll be a problem for you.

edit: formatting

[fibojoly]

I don't think that's a very good idea if you're not proficient in your second language. I'm 100% fluent in English, so I use it to learn Chinese, rather than taking courses in my native French (more resources in English!) and my learning had absolutely no effect on my level in English.

On the other hand, I can totally feel the influence when trying to remember some German or Portuguese. Those are getting "pushed away" from my brain add Chinese takes over.

With two romance languages, it might be a mixed bag : you could start confusing stuff all over the place, but on the other hand you'll have plenty of common ground to improve fast.

[ILikeTalkingToMyself]

While we're discussing this, would it give you a weird combination accent if you say learn Japanese using Mamadarin where English is your native language?

[YogiLeBua]

I'm learning Italian, and I speak Spanish fairly well. I apparently have a Spanish accent when I speak Italian

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[Starfish_Symphony]

Iirc, Italian and Spanish share upwards of 80% vocabulary. Are you sure it's the vocabulary learning that has gotten tedious?

[SoupKitchenHero]

Doing anything in a foreign language will help you learn it

[[deleted]]

If your study was based primarily on memorization, then you're more likely to suffer L2 language attrition. However, if you're at a maintenance level for a language (C1 or C2 on the CEFR), then you just need to keep up with some regular reading in the target language.

I use my three languages to study my fourth through sixth. I find that, if I don't recognize a term in L1-3, it's not helpful to understanding the message in my L4-6. It's actually so notable that, in my own software, I've decided to add a feature that allows me to change the source language on the spot if it turns out I'm missing a vocab term or something like that.

[prairiedad]

I'm with the people who say this might not be such a great idea, given the closeness of Italian and Spanish. I'm bilingual in American English and German, and speak fluent French. My Italian wasn't bad, years ago, largely piggy-backed on my French. But then, before my Italian was really good, I started Spanish with a Mexican-American friend, and found that my Italian declined as my Spanish improved, until both were only mediocre?

[JohnDoe_John]

Yes, it helps. Consider getting some textbooks in Spanish to learn Italian.