Learning a language
Is It Worth Learning a Related Language First
When a nearby language shortens the path and when it embeds mistakes that are hard to unlearn.
Learning a new language is often helped, and often hindered, by a close familiarity with a related language first. The ease of similarity creates a shortcut - but it also runs the risk of making the wrong shortcut. Languages that lie next to each other on the map, or hail from the same family, use similar words, rules and structures. Crucially, these similarities in the vocabulary, the grammar and the sound of a related language lets the learner transfer what they already know into their new ones. This transfer of knowledge is what helps.
Yet for every moment when similarity makes language learning easier, there is another when learning a related language first creates interference - an unwitting transfer of incorrect rules, words and structure. Acquiring a closely related tongue first can also slow progress when this first language seeds interference that has to be unlearned.
When similarity helps
In language classes, two lessons may be taught on the same day, with vocabulary for expressing what one thinks, and for expressing what one feels. Or, in two weeks, a different grammar or a different way of forming sentences may be taught. Learning on both of these days or in both of these topics might be helped by knowing a related language. If the learner already has some knowledge of the Spanish language, the French class they are about to take would surely be easier because of the similarities in the vocabulary. For example, if one learns how to say "I like" in Spanish which is "me gusta", then it will be much easier to learn how to say "I like" in French which is "j' aime". There is a clear winner if knowing the first language, and knowing another language that shares many similarities as a result, helps with the new language.
Where the first language gets in the way
However, there can also be a negative side to transfer. Learning the first language well can sometimes get in the way of acquiring the new language. For example, if in my own language I would say "me gusta correr", I might expect a new language to work similarly. However, this similar language may not work quite the same way. So my new words for "I" and "to run" may be different, because the new language doesn't use the same grammatical way of saying this.
For more than 60 years, there has been increasing interest in documenting the influence of language learners' native languages on their learning of new languages, and finding ways of helping learners deal with such interferences. While some differences between the native language and the target language make learning the target language more difficult, in the case of closely related languages, the similarities can help the transfer of known practices into the newer tongue.
What learners report
In a study published by Brigham Young University, students brought to their study experiences with learning prior languages which varied in how related they were to the languages they would study at the university. Many of the students reported a sense that knowing languages in a related group helped them; others reported that limitations in fluency for a language in a related group interfered with their work.
How linguists frame the problem
Under the umbrella of cross-linguistic influence, transfer has been traditionally widely researched to the detriment of other phenomena. Transfer or negative transfer patterns, or avoidance or borrowing and interference have been on the agenda for the past decades. More contemporary studies have shifted attention to the role of language loss, that has increasingly been coming into the domain of cross-linguistic influence.
Sometimes we struggle with our first language, unsure how to express something in the language we are learning and we simply know how to do it in our native language.
What this doesn’t settle
Transfer between languages is as a source of errors and a negative influence. Students often become disillusioned when they realize that a phrase or word they have learned and are using correctly is not translated into German; or that something they have understood to mean "perhaps" in English in fact comes from somewhere else. There is a sometimes protracted transformation or period of adjustment from one language to another. Many too develop a unique cultural experience, a kind of "cross-cultural aura". What's the frequency of that, though?
The unresolved trade-off
There is an unresolved trade-off: similarity can make transfer between languages quicker, easier, and more successful - but only if the languages are not so closely related that they create interference. Awareness of the degree of closeness and difference between languages can let the learner get a boost when similarity helps, but start clean when the helper is more a hinder.
Where this sits in the Register
Written by the Linguasphere desk. Classification data referred to here comes from the Linguasphere Register — see sources and attribution.