Studying Your Own Language To Help With Learning A New Language

Studying your own language can really help you out with getting to grips with your new one.

Knowing how your own language actually works can give you something to compare and contrast the new language with and being able to notice differences can actually help.

In this article I will go through how you should study your own language, as it’s not going to be done in the same way as you would go about studying your new one. 

You Don’t Need To Study In Depth

When you hear me say you need to study your own language first, you may think I am telling you to stop studying your new language or to stay away from it until you have mastered your own …Don’t worry you don’t need to be this extreme.

You don’t really need to spend that much time, or go into that much depth when studying your own language. 

Since you are a native speaker you already have a very good grasp of the language, even if it is on a subconscious level. You can quickly skim through topics and very quickly get a clearer understanding of why things happen.

You will also find that most of the comparisons you make between your own language and the new one will happen at the very basic and early stages. Once you have a basic grasp of the new language you will find it becomes its own thing and you don’t need to be constantly trying to compare it.

You Can Just use the Internet To Study

You don’t need to go out of your way to buy any textbooks or take any courses; you will find a quick internet search is more than enough to get the information you need.

Your understanding of the language will make things a lot easier for you. A quick skim of a website article and you should be able to understand what is going on and then be able to take that back to your new language for reference.

Let Your New Language Guide You 

The whole point at looking at your own language is so that you can make sense of your new one, so it makes sense that you use the new language as a guide to where to start.

My approach is to start a new topic in my new language and firstly just see if it makes sense. Let’s say it’s a lesson on French verbs. The first thing I will ask myself is if I know what this means in English.

You will find this is going to happen with the real fundamental basics, so chances are you will know roughly what is going on, but if you are not comfortable you can spend 5 minutes quickly looking up how it works in English.

It will not take you long to skim through an article on English verbs then when you go back to the French lesson you now have a reference point in English and you can use that to help you to understand what is going in French.  

Just Study When Something Comes Up

You will find that when you get the basics down you will not need to really look at your own language again, unless something very specific comes up.

Usually this will be a question from a language exchange partner. They will want to know about some obscure thing and you will have no idea why it is that way.

If that happens I just do a quick internet search on what they have asked, to make sure that my understanding is correct and to help give myself a better understanding. This way I can make sure I am helping  my partner properly, while also finding out something new too.

However, sometimes you may just find something strange in the language you are learning and you will get curious about how that works in your own, which of course you can look up and find out about.

Areas To Look At When Studying Your Own Language To Help With A New Language

If you are not sure what you should be looking at, I will go through some common areas I have found helpful to study, however, as I said above, let the new language guide you. You will come across all these areas below and when you reach them, and if you are not sure at that point, then you can look them up.  

Basic Language Terminology

On my first day of learning my first ever language, I nearly give up straight away. I was reading about basic beginner grammar in French and it just made zero sense.

It was talking about auxiliaries, conjugations, particles and articles and all this crazy stuff.

These words made no sense to me. Did I learn this in school? Probably, but I can’t remember. I vaguely remember learning the difference between a noun and a verb that’s about it.

You might have this problem too. I would highly recommend you take a step back and start looking at what these words mean before you even start the first lesson.  

Having a basic understanding of the terminology being used is going to make your life so much easier. You will actually be able to understand what is being explained.

Tenses and Conjugation

Another huge problem area that you may face is tenses and conjugation. I remember being so confused at why French had like 5 past tenses and never ending conjugation, while we English speakers only had one tense and no conjugation.

We just have the past tense and that’s it. Right? …wrong.

Once I started looking it seems that we have about the same amount as French. Just think about the different way you can say the same thing:

“I’ve eaten an apple”

“I have ate an apple”

“I was eating an apple”

There is 3 ways off the top of my head, the word EAT is used in 3 different ways. These are all actually different forms of the past tense and 3 forms of conjugation.

We just know automatically which version to use and have never actively have to think “Do I need to use the past present or the simple past?”

This is exactly how other language speaker’s brains work too in their native language, when they try and speak English they get as confused as us trying to speak their language.

Knowing all the different names for the tenses isn’t important, but understanding how ours works make it a lot easier to start comparing them to other languages.

Word Order In The Language

Some languages have the words in a sentence in a slightly different order compared to others.

This is all down to grammar rules and you will have to learn why your new language places certain words in certain places at certain times.

Although looking at this in your own language will not make understanding your second language easier, it is still worth looking at.

Understanding your own grammar rules for word orders can help you see the differences more clearly and help you to remember that there is a difference, so you will not make as many mistakes when trying to speak yourself.

It is also fascinating that we know some of these rules automatically. We just learn them from hearing and seeing them subconsciously all our lives.

If I say “look at that brown old dog” you might think this sentence seems a little off if you’re a native English speaker. To an English learner, this probably looks okay.

There is actually a grammar rule that we use in English that I guarantee most of us don’t know about, but we all use correctly.

The order of types of descriptive words in English follows a certain pattern. Size, Age, Shape, Colour.

It’s always in this order. So I should have said “look at that old brown dog” which sounds much better.

We all would have said that sentence in the correct order and we have no idea why. No one ever teaches us this.

You wouldn’t even think about it until you meet someone studying English and hear them say it wrong and correct them. It’s only then you will start to wonder why you know it’s wrong, but you can’t explain why. 

This would be the perfect time to look this up and study it and see what is happening. 

Idioms

You should look at idioms in your in language as they usually make no sense, yet you probably use them all of the time. I think it’s important that we just take a look at how often we use them and why.

This can help us to stop using so many when we are speaking with non-natives, but it can also help us realise that other natives of other languages are probably using them a lot as well so we can start to look out for them and just be aware of them.

Word Groupings

Word groupings can be an interesting thing to look at and they are maybe more common in other languages than English, so this may not be helpful for a lot of reading this.

If you look at Japanese all their verbs will end in a -U sound, and French is similar, all their verbs will end in –er, ir- and –re.

If your language is like this, it is going to help you with languages like English. You are going to know that spotting a verb is going to be slightly harder, but being aware that they are going to be all different will help you look out for them.

Conclusion

Looking at your own language is helpful when learning a new language.

You don’t need to go into great depth, or spend too long on it. Just recapping some basic concepts is going to be enough to make it easier for you to understand the new concepts you are trying to learn in a different language.

This small investment is very worth it and you will quickly see the returns when you can start to notice how it has really made you understand the concepts in the new language.

(You can read more about – Will Learning A New Language Affect Your Native Language?)