4 ms·

I have a feeling this anecdote has more to do with the personality of people who have the drive, desire, and passion to self-study Japanese.

• OJFord 5y ago
  I disagree, a lot of learning a language is transferable, but not because it's 'learning how to learn', just because it's the same. Grammars are largely described using the same system, with different languages using different parts of it (and more or less - Latin quite a lot; English quite little). Learning a second language (that's different enough) exposes you to more of the available grammatical constructs, so when you learn a third there's less that could possibly be new, and probably quite a bit of grammatical overlap with your first or second language.
  • nonbirithm 5y ago
    But does this specific anecdote generalize to, for example, learning a language and then trying to learn linear algebra? I feel that was the point the GP was meaning to bring up. Languages are fundamentally similar to one another in many ways, so I would imagine there is less you can transfer to learning something where the framework of language-learning no longer applies.