Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

Learning One Language via Another

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The final thing worth mentioning when you have a few languages under
your belt is laddering, or learning one language via another.
While there is indeed plenty of excellent material to learn various
languages through English, I have found that learning through another
language I already speak well allows me to learn the new language a little
quicker sometimes. Usually I do this through French because I quite like
Assimil’s language courses, which present languages in an interesting way,
and my French is very good.
Learning through other foreign language speakers is another great way
to learn a new language through another language. When I first arrived in
Italy, for instance, I stayed with an Italian friend, Daniele, whom I had met
in Spain. He explained several of my mistakes in Italian through Spanish,
which really helped me begin to compartmentalize both of these languages
as well as appreciate their differences, much more so than I would have by
getting the explanations in English.
In fact, when dealing with similar languages, a book explaining how
one language works through the other can more effectively point out to you
the differences between them. If you then start over with a book explaining
the language in English, you will learn many similar rules and vocabulary
lists for the similar languages. It’s less efficient than learning through a
book designed specifically to point out the differences between the two
languages.
As such, when I started learning Dutch and kept mixing it up with
German, I found that I was able to work much more effectively as soon as I
got a book about the Dutch language written in German.
When I come across new vocabulary and learn it through the translation
of a language I speak well, I start to associate the meaning of a word in my
new language with the concept of what that word means, rather than a
translation through English (or French). This helps me remember it more
quickly.
One of the greatest advantages of all, though, is that for about the same
amount of work, you learn a new language while effectively maintaining
one of your current languages! I always say we should use our languages
for what we are passionate about, and if you are passionate about language
learning, it only makes sense to use one of your well-established languages
for that very purpose.

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