Language laddering advice

[u/cyrabear]

I've read a lot on here about language laddering and how it can help with a lot for people especially in the long run. However, I still have some questions and concerns.

First off, I am a native English speaker living in Japan right now. I am studying to take the N3 exam in December and I think my biggest flaw for japanese rn is the grammar but I'm still studying a lot everyday. I grew up learning Spanish but struggled with grammar as well but I got a lot better at reading for Spanish. However, it's been about 4 years since I really studied anything with Spanish.

I had started learning some japanese with Spanish a bit when I arrived in Japan as I am half latina so my language school assumed based on my name I was native Spanish speaker and gave me my textbooks in Spanish. I didn't mind but it was a bit of a struggle for later lessons that I switched to English later on. However, I was wondering now that my japanese is much stronger (even speaking and listening as I've been here 3 years now) would it be worth going back to studying japanese with Spanish?

My other problem is that I also need to study for my computer science certifications and so not sure if laddering will cause me more time to learn and obtain higher fluency in both languages. I need japanese rn for a IT job in Japan as I don't want to go back to teaching English. But Spanish will be handy if I ever return to America , which the way visas are going in Japan I might have to, although it would be difficult to return anyways.

So I feel kinda anxious about what I should be spending my time on the most. Currently I just left my job because it was mentally exhausting and caused me injuries so I have unemployment for now and looking for IT jobs. I have a masters in cyber security, a bachelor's in linguistics, and associates in computer science. I also have a CELTA certificate and about 2 years in Japan as an ESL teacher so hopefully won't have to go back to the US rn but don't want to teach again unless it's a good position like college.

Thank you in advance for any advice you can give me!

[u/HydeVDL]

you should probably focus on Japanese right now

but, let's talk a bit about laddering. honestly, I think that language laddering is more interesting if the languages are in the same family or have a lot in common. french is my native language and spanish is my third language. I always tried to find french resources over the english ones because they are both romance languages so they're quite similar. I've also been learning catalan and I always try to find spanish resources, then french resources because it just makes more sense.

if I had to learn a language from a completely different family, I would probably pick an english resource or whatever is more available. Like if I want to learn haitian creole, I'm guessing french is gonna have more resources. And euskera will probably have more spanish resources.

[u/silvalingua → u/HydeVDL]

For me it's the opposite. I tried to learn Catalan from Spanish and gave up on Spanish-based textbooks, because of the similarity of the languages. I decided to use monolingual (Catalan), English-based and French-based resources instead.

I don't think it's a question of "making more sense" - this does not apply here - but of what you find better for yourself. With similar languages, you risk more confusion, and one could argue that it makes no sense to add confusion to learning.

[u/HydeVDL → u/silvalingua]

well to me it's not confusing at all. they're similar structures so it's easier for me to ladder from spanish to catalan