Learning a foreign language by means of another foreign lang
Has anyone here tried to learn a foreign language by means of another language that is not their L1? Such as using a French textbook written in Spanish, or an Arabic textbook written in Turkish? For a while I've had a great interest in the languages of Russia and the former Soviet Union. This includes the Turkic languages of Central Asia like Kazakh, Uzbek, and Tatar, as well as Caucasian languages like Chechen. For most of these languages, I have not been able to find very good resources in English. However, there's quite a bit to be found in Russian - likely because there's a larger amount of Russians learning these languages on a daily basis than Americans/English speakers. Russian isn't my native language, but I'm proficient enough to understand lessons written in it, so it's beneficial. One such site that's intrigued me is a site devoted to those who want to learn about the Chechen language and culture. The site is here, and in the Russian (default) section, there is an area where you can listen to and read a series of Chechen lessons conducted in Russian by a native speaker. If you speak Russian and you have spare time, you can participate in them using Skype - though at this point if you were to join, you'd be expected to be comfortable with all of the material in the lessons up to the current. I've had thoughts of translating some of the material to English to make it more accessible for the non-Russian speakers who are interested in the language, though I'd send them an e-mail before I plan to post anything online.

Has anyone here tried to learn a foreign language by means of another language that is not their L1? Such as using a French textbook written in Spanish, or an Arabic textbook written in Turkish? Well, we had a similar discussion forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=29>here, but yeah, while I was in Qatar I would try and read the Arabic dictionaries for French, Spanish and German. Learning language seems like a domino effect to me, once you begin in opens you to all other languages. In elementary school learning French wasn't fun, mainly based on the orthography, but it lent towards me having a much better understanding of English phonetics and orthographic practices.

You are both luckier than I am that way. I have found out that, although similarities between a language I want to learn and my L1 can help me learn the new language, similarities between my target language and an L2 that I'm already familiar with don't much. I know that other people have the opposite experience, and I envy them.

@ Sano - As for the thread you mentioned (which I had posted in on the old Scriptorium), I regularly use foreign Wikipedia/Wiktionary to help build vocabulary, and sometimes understand sentence structure better. Unfortunately for many of the languages I am interested in, the 'pedia is quite small, and the few articles they have are stubs. Yeah, you'd almost think that only English speakers use the internet, huh?

You should look at the Japanese and Chinese Wikis...depending on the article they can be impressively long.

I had to learn German while learning French. It actually wasn't that hard, now that I think about it. Even though I don't speak German and never actually learned it completely, quite a bit has stuck. I think that learning French was a complete pain, but then I got into the "zone", or "language mode", and it just made learning languages easy.

When I was in Kindergarten (I think that's how it is spelled) my family moved to France because my dad got transfered. We lived in Alsace, which was close to the France-Germany border, isntead of learning Spanish, we learned German. I went to a public school. I guess people at international schools can just speak English.

I started Kindergarten in Michigan, then we moved, then we moved back. It was all French, except German class was German and French. Nobody spoke English, although one of the students had an older brother that learning English, and someone's mother knew English because her family were missionaries, or something like that.

Learning french and spanish at school was very uninteresting for me. It seems you just sat down, repeated words en masse, and did a -*test*-('") every other month to determine your ability. There was no emphasis on the more philosophical sides of the languages; the culture that these languages arose from. The only teacher that has made me want to learn a foreign language is my english teacher. And I enjoy not exactly learning a language through another, but just learning the language then unfortunately mashing up words between languages. It might seem like a frankensteinian nightmare but occassionally it fits just right.

Well, my L1 is Spanish and I'm used to learn things while reading books written in English. I also "speak" German a bit. Learning french and spanish at school was very uninteresting for me. It seems you just sat down, repeated words en masse, and did a -*test*-('") every other month to determine your ability. Well, even if I'm a Spanish speaker, I must agree with you. My first 6 years of education were completely boring, there was almost no new stuff, just some silly books to read or stories to listen to, the same grammar basics and... that's all. It wasn't till the 7th grade that it actually changed a bit. A bit...