Should I give in to language wanderlust? (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Should I give in to language wanderlust?
Tags: Wanderlust \| Simultaneous study
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16 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3979 days ago
168 posts - 329 votes

Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

Message 9 of 16

30 December 2013 at 4:18pm | IP Logged

If you are aiming at being familiar with a number of languages, understanding structural differences and connections between and within language families and order a beer and do some weather talk with the cab driver when you're on holiday in Paris, Beijing, Rome then go for it.

On the other hand if you want to reach a good conversational level and interact with natives beyond a few pleasantries, or you intend to consume original content (books, movies etc.) then stick to one language.
3 persons have voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6588 days ago
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4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 10 of 16

30 December 2013 at 4:47pm | IP Logged

No, that's not how it works. Even if we assume that more languages=less time [actually] spent on each language, this doesn't mean you'll have an overall crappy level in each language. You can focus on one thing and become quite good at it, like speaking a lot but remaining a slow reader, or consuming native materials but not being able to speak. Of course that's not an ideal situation, but many people learning just one language also end up being much better at one thing than another.
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
Winner TAC 2012
Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4698 days ago
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 11 of 16

30 December 2013 at 4:51pm | IP Logged

Hungringo wrote:

If you are aiming at being familiar with a number of languages,
understanding structural differences and connections between and within language
families
and order a beer and do some weather talk with the cab driver when you're on holiday in
Paris, Beijing, Rome then go for it.

On the other hand if you want to reach a good conversational level and interact with
natives beyond a few pleasantries, or you intend to consume original content (books,
movies etc.) then stick to one language.

I've interacted with people beyond pleasantries in at least six or seven languages. I
have consumed original content in more than eight.

Edited by tarvos on 30 December 2013 at 4:52pm
3 persons have voted this message useful

Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3979 days ago
168 posts - 329 votes

Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

Message 12 of 16

30 December 2013 at 5:06pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

I've interacted with people beyond pleasantries in at least six or seven languages. I
have consumed original content in more than eight.

Please note, in my post I was referring to OP's concrete situtation, who is basically a first time language learner. It goes without saying that you can learn many languages beyond saying pleasantries, but I would not recommend to any inexperienced learner to move from one language to another every couple of months and without ever building a core in any of them, and then suddenly start learning French and Chinese at the same time.
2 persons have voted this message useful

tarvos
Super Polyglot
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Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4698 days ago
5310 posts - 9399 votes

Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 13 of 16

30 December 2013 at 5:22pm | IP Logged

Hungringo wrote:

tarvos wrote:

I've interacted with people beyond pleasantries in at least six or seven languages. I
have consumed original content in more than eight.

Please note, in my post I was referring to OP's concrete situtation, who is basically a
first time language learner. It goes without saying that you can learn many languages
beyond saying pleasantries, but I would not recommend to any inexperienced learner to
move from one language to another every couple of months and without ever building a
core in any of them, and then suddenly start learning French and Chinese at the same
time.

I don't know, 3-6 months is plenty of time to learn the basics to return to later. I
haven't studied Hebrew for more than that time, but coming back to it is pretty easy.
The thing is that those 3-6 months should mean daily work on the language, not some
classes here and there. If you want to learn more things, I think periods of a couple
months of intensive work are great for boosting your skills. I usually rotate languages
after a few months, otherwise I get bored.
2 persons have voted this message useful

Hungringo
Triglot
Senior Member
United Kingdom
Joined 3979 days ago
168 posts - 329 votes

Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish
Studies: French

Message 14 of 16

30 December 2013 at 5:33pm | IP Logged

tarvos wrote:

I'm sure it works for you and probably for many other experienced learners. But what I've gathered from OP's post is that he is far from being an experienced learner. Now he might have an intermediate level in Spanish, but still has problems with some aspects of the language.

Edited by Hungringo on 30 December 2013 at 5:45pm
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tarvos
Super Polyglot
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Senior Member
China
likeapolyglot.wordpr
Joined 4698 days ago
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Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans
Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish

Message 15 of 16

30 December 2013 at 8:04pm | IP Logged

I have problems with aspects of all of my languages. Except Dutch and English. I think
the OP should just try if he can, and if he can't, that's that and no harm done.

Edited by tarvos on 30 December 2013 at 8:05pm
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nj24
Diglot
Groupie
United States
Joined 4654 days ago
56 posts - 106 votes

Speaks: English*, Spanish
Studies: Italian, French

Message 16 of 16

31 December 2013 at 3:38am | IP Logged

Thanks for all of your input! It's been quite helpful and has helped me think through and clarify my language
goals.

Luke wrote:

No.

Haha, thanks, Luke. Very succinctly put.

Julie wrote:

I don't think French would help you that much to reinforce your Spanish, at least not to an extent
that would compensate for possible interferences. Speaking is the skill that is most likely to suffer from
interferences, and given that it is your weakest skill anyway, I would suggest working on that before starting any
serious French studies. (That said, some people are less prone to interferences than me... maybe you are one of
those lucky ones :).)

This makes sense. It seems that it would be best for me to improve my Spanish speaking skills before moving on
to another Romance language.

Julie wrote:

Furthermore, it seems to me that you are a bit more into Italian than into French... so maybe it
would make sens to wait for a while, and then reconsider going back to Italian before your French studies.

I hadn't really even considered this, but, yes, it is definitely true that Italian is my favorite out of all of the
Romance languages. However, French is a close second, and I would love to travel to both France and Italy in the
future and be able to speak both languages. I guess I was thinking that Italian would be way too confusing to
pick up at this point in my Spanish learning, but you're right that French might interfere as well. It seems that the
general opinion is that won't really matter if I choose Italian or French in the future once my Spanish speaking
skills are stronger.

Indíritheach wrote:

My rule is 200 hours in a language before even contemplating starting another.

Thanks! This is a great tip. I don't keep track of my hours, but I'm definitely passed that number for hours I've
spent studying Spanish. However, I know for sure I have not spent 200 hours speaking the language. Setting a
concrete goal of 200 hours of speaking in 2014 sounds like a really great idea. I'm not sure if I can reach it, but I
know that if I did I would definitely have given an incredible boost to my speaking skills and probably be ready to
pick up another Romance language.

Serpent wrote:

But also, have you started Mandarin yet? Are you intimidated or just not as interested as you are
in French... or Italian? You don't need to learn the language seriously just to help your brother. What if he loses
interest as soon as he realizes how difficult it is going to be?

The more I reread your post, the more I have a feeling that you actually want to learn Italian. Apart from the
pronunciation, the similarity level with French is pretty much the same. I can read French although I hate the
language :P In my experience, if you limit your study to the passive skills (reading, listening), there's no
interference.

Wow, it's funny how everyone's picking up on how much I love Italian from my post. I actually hadn't even
considered studying it this coming year, except for the other day when I was watching an Italian movie and
remembering what a beautiful language it is. To be honest, I think I am a bit afraid to pick it up right now at this
point in my Spanish studies because I might end up abandoning Spanish completely and start obsessing over
Italian. I know that wouldn't happen with French.

Anyhow, I really don't want to just study Spanish either, maybe because I do like the beginner stage and I haven't
started a new language in over two years and I won't really be working through any textbooks with Spanish. I
know that Chinese won't interfere with my Spanish studies at all since it's such a completely different language. I
have already started studying the pronunciation and joined the TAC Chinese team. I know studying Mandarin is a
bit of an ambitious goal, but I am very interested in it. Sorry if it seemed I wasn't from my post! In fact, I know
that learning Mandarin will be a long road which is one of the reasons I want to start it now.

And thanks for the invite to the STARt team! I'm still trying to decide if I should join the Spanish & Iberian teams.
I'll probably end up joining once I set up my log in January.

renaissancemedi wrote:

I feel or you. 2013 was wasted in wanderlust. So I'd say, no, you shouldn't. Stick with
certain languages a while before you start a new one.

Thanks. I think one of the factors is that I see forum members who list so many languages that they speak, and I
get impatient and think that I will not have enough time to learn all of the languages that I want to. But what I
really want is to be able to speak my favorite languages well so I know I should wait and work on each one by
itself until I reach a decent level.

Jeffers wrote:

I say, go for it! You'll probably end up favouring one language and eventually dropping the other
(at least temporarily). But it will be because you want to, and you will have discovered from experience which
language you enjoy learning more.

Thanks for the encouragement, Jeffers. I hadn't thought of that. I guess I could try studying a little of French and
Chinese at the same time and see which one I like more.

culebrilla wrote:

Why don't you just focus on one language until you can conjugate verbs reflexively, form
sentences without much thought, and can choose the word that a native speaker would pick 95% of the time? If
you reach such a level I don't think you would ever get confused when you learn other languages.

The problem with learning so many languages without really reinforcing them is that maintenance really of
languages really takes a lot of effort and you will get really rusty if you don't practice your languages every day.
Personally I lose fluency in my ONE foreign language if I don't speak at least every other day. Imagine what would
happen if I only got to speak it once a week! Good luck.

I think that I have almost reached that level when I write in Spanish or when I translate something from English to
Spanish. It just needs to be more automatic when I'm speaking. Sounds like I really need to buckle down on my
Spanish study before moving on to another Romance language. I don't think that studying Mandarin for 1-2
hours will really hurt though, but I can see now how adding French or Italian on top of that might be detrimental
to ever taking my Spanish to the next level.

Hungringo wrote:

On the other hand if you want to reach a good conversational level and interact with natives
beyond a few pleasantries, or you intend to consume original content (books, movies etc.) then stick to one
language.

Yes, I am consuming a lot of native content right now with Spanish (books, TV shows, music). I think reaching the
level where I can now watch movies and TV shows without subtitles made me suddenly want to do the same thing
in French and Italian. I guess I'm forgetting that it took me over two years to get to this point with Spanish, and I
didn't have any other distractions while doing it (except for several insanely busy college semesters before I
graduated).

Tarvos wrote:

I have problems with aspects of all of my languages. Except Dutch and English. I think
the OP should just try if he can, and if he can't, that's that and no harm done.

Thanks, Tarvos! I am definitely going to stick with Mandarin, but the other posters are probably right that adding
French on top of that would be an unnecessary distraction from Spanish. Studying Mandarin will satisfy my desire
to dabble with a new language. I might try out my Assimil French course this summer (or maybe pick up one of
my Italian books instead), but I think it is probably best to focus on speaking more in Spanish this year.

Thanks again for all of your comments and hope I didn't miss anyone. All of the suggestions and advice were
incredibly helpful.

Edited by nj24 on 31 December 2013 at 3:42am

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