Language transfer

Language transfer is when you already know one language and then you try to learn another language that is similar to it. It's like building a new tower on top of the old tower that you already made. Some parts of the old tower are helpful, but sometimes they can get in the way too.

It can be helpful because you already know some rules and words from the old tower that are similar to the new tower. So, you can use them to help you in the new tower. For example, if you know English and you're learning Spanish, you already know some words that are similar. "Gato" in Spanish means "cat" in English.

But sometimes, parts of the old tower can get in the way of building the new tower correctly. For example, in English we put adjectives before the noun - like "big house." But in Spanish, they put the adjective after the noun - "casa grande." If we're not careful, we might say "grande casa" which is not correct!

So, language transfer can help us learn a new language faster because we already have some knowledge from a previous language. But we have to be careful not to mix up the rules between the two languages.