Could any kind of learning be framed as learning a language?
It appears that the language and learning new skills would often (depending on the skill) be managed by different parts of the brain. It is, therefore, unlikely to be similar. 

A good description of how the learning process works from neuroscience's point of view can be found here: http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s4/chapter07.html.

This same course also describes how the language is managed in the brain in this chapter: http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s4/chapter08.html.

Based on the above, it doesn't seem to be the case that the mentioned skills are similar to language, at least not in terms of how the brain processes them.