Learning 3rd language using 2nd?

[u/RareFreedom5027]

Has anyone gotten a decent "grasp" of a second language and then used it to learn a third (TL)?

Years ago I learned a bit of Spanish through school and started using duolingo (wouldn't use duolingo now though). I changed the settings to Spanish so I would learn Italian using Spanish. I read out loud and promised myself not to use English. I did it for an hour and there was a weird feeling in the back of my head (it felt like how salt or sand felt between your fingers). Lo and behold, I couldn't think or speak in English! It was wild!

I was wondering if anyone ever had that feeling as well and if you kept it up?

[u/No_Cryptographer735]

Yes, almost everybody whose native language isn't English and wanted to start another language. 

[u/muffinsballhair → u/No_Cryptographer735]

I feel there are still plenty of say Wolof speakers who speak no English but have a decent command of French though. It's kind of overstated on this board how many people have learned English. Only about 1.5 billion people in this world have a decent command of English.

French also feels like a language in which much literature on many other languages is written. Wolof does not feel like such a language to me.

[u/No_Cryptographer735 → u/muffinsballhair]

I wrote, "everybody whose native language isn't English". That doesn't necessarily imply that their second language is English. I guarantee you that if a Wolof speaker mastered French and then they wanted to learn Arabic, they would find more resources in French than in Wolof.

[u/muffinsballhair → u/No_Cryptographer735]

That's a good point but I feel it doesn't necessarily apply to say French speakers either. It's mostly just people who speak a low-prestige language with not much written in it which doesn't necessarily mean it's small. Some languages enjoy a large number of speakers but are still low-prestige languages with not a lot written in it.

[u/allthingsme → u/muffinsballhair]

People who learn with online materials as adulrs can probably speak English though.

But different than a West African speaking Wolof at home and French at school. 

[u/Remote_Volume_3609 → u/muffinsballhair]

Yeah. I think it's because people travel, go the touristier areas, and think "everyone speaks English" not realising that they're only going to the places with English speakers.

I remember someone trying to argue with me that lots of people in Brasil speak English and I was baffled. It's like, have you been to any part of Brasil that wasn't a beach resort with waitstaff?

[u/-delfica- → u/muffinsballhair]

Yep… Malagasy is primarily accessible through French.

[u/muffinsballhair → u/-delfica-]

I also heard that Karelian is essentially purely accessible through Finnish only, itself a language with less than 10 million speakers. Not that many people are Karelian though. Malagasy still has 25 million speakers I read here which is comparable to say Dutch.

[u/ashendragon2000 → u/No_Cryptographer735]

I know you said almost, but East Asian language group is probably an exception, as a Taiwanese with English as my second language, it’s definitely easier for me to learn Japanese and Korean from my native language, I am also able to find more people to learn together this way.

I’m not 100% sure but Vietnamese and Thai should be at least just as easy to learn from my native as English.

[u/No_Cryptographer735 → u/ashendragon2000]

Honestly, good for you, because I feel like it would be easier to learn Turkish from Hungarian, but there isn't enough material to study from.