i think it’s the other way though. you’ll understand a language better once you have the basics of grammar down. that’s the foundation. and you learn words as you go along. that’s why auto-translation between languages that aren’t grammatically similar is so tough. the software has all the words, but it’s not easy to figure out the grammar so they can’t always make sense of sentences (or worse, they can often get the opposite meaning).
I mean you have a point but I still think a language with very different grammar but similar vocabulary is going to be miles easier than one with similar grammar but a small shared vocabulary.
And in my experience learning Spanish through basically just listening to it (a bit oversimplified, but I never have studied grammar nor have been explicitly taught vocab nor had translation) I picked up on the meaning through words way before I had any confidence in grammar. Of course I was getting a feel for the grammar the whole way little by little though.
i think it’s the other way though. you’ll understand a language better once you have the basics of grammar down. that’s the foundation. and you learn words as you go along. that’s why auto-translation between languages that aren’t grammatically similar is so tough. the software has all the words, but it’s not easy to figure out the grammar so they can’t always make sense of sentences (or worse, they can often get the opposite meaning).
I mean you have a point but I still think a language with very different grammar but similar vocabulary is going to be miles easier than one with similar grammar but a small shared vocabulary.
And in my experience learning Spanish through basically just listening to it (a bit oversimplified, but I never have studied grammar nor have been explicitly taught vocab nor had translation) I picked up on the meaning through words way before I had any confidence in grammar. Of course I was getting a feel for the grammar the whole way little by little though.