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Too many languages VS significant progres | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 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 17 of 21 20 March 2015 at 4:35am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I never learn more than 3, and that's when I'm feeling pumped up and/or I'm bored and don't have anything else to do. I've tried more (I even tried doing a marathon of five language classes in different languages in a day) and I was exhausted at the end, even though I bookended it with my best languages! You can do more during a week (I am positive about this - otherwise the Dutch school curriculum has a few problems to sort out, given that I studied four during my high school days, namely English/German/French/Latin next to Dutch). And 3 is usually a lot already. I'm doing more or less four now, given that I am in China, and my other languages that I am studying are Greek, Russian and Italian. However Chinese is something I use in daily life here in China (no escaping it anyways), and Russian is a language I am good at, but maintaining particularly because I want to open myself up for the opportunity to teach that language later on myself. Greek (and Italian which is more of a fun project; I used to have Norwegian there) are necessary preparatory things which I am doing so I don't get lost during my next project.
I wouldn't. But others would. I notice that after three months I need fresh input somewhere else (it's about three months; I go with my gut, not with a timer) and that I need to switch approach. I can't switch off of Chinese for obvious reasons, but I did severely tone down the formal study. Most of my Chinese comes from active use and that's not time you can count, but certainly time spent improving.
Use it or lose it... some languages I would hate to lose after the time I spent on them, like French. If my levels in Romanian or German drop a bit, that's okay... (not that they have) but if you keep doing something in that language once every so often (this is why I have my blog!!! I write in my better languages occasionally!) you will improve even if slowly. And to be fair at my level sometimes the improvement isn't noticeable, but once you get back into it you will notice that you are using details correctly that you weren't before. Edited by tarvos on 20 March 2015 at 4:35am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 18 of 21 20 March 2015 at 12:06pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
*If the goal is to get somewhere asap, and this also depends on whether you count passive skills as getting somewhere. For me they definitely do, so the maximum is 2-3 language families (or technically groups), like Romance/Germanic/Slavic. I wouldn't count larger families like Indo-European, although once you explore something like Finnish and Indonesian, you'll see how many similarities between English and Russian you've been overlooking. I think it's not a coincidence that many negative experiences described here were with trying to learn several Romance languages and presumably attempting to get active skills in all of them (and not by reading books either). Tarvos has more experience with unrelated languages and his limit seems higher. Now look at Prof Argüelles and the pattern gets pretty clear. It's nice how the current discussion is basically in the European context of this debate. No "typical" Americans who've spent so much effort on learning Spanish and see how they're still not native-like and claim that it's foolish to start a new language when they see how much they still don't know. My main difference from the Europeans here is that I'm not in the EU/Schengen, and while there are definitely Russians who try to take as many weekend trips to Europe as they can, I'm not one of them. I also don't really have any random exposure to the European languages, but instead to Vietnamese/Georgian/Kazakh and the like. (and they are fascinating, but I'm not interested in learning them) Of course I'm simplifying the typical European experience, but still. edit: as for the original quote, the definition of "focusing on one language" also varies. I often have to choose an official focus language for 6WC and three for Tadoku, but I still work on 5-15 more languages at least a bit. Edited by Serpent on 20 March 2015 at 1:48pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 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 19 of 21 20 March 2015 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't think my limit is that much higher, I'm just more efficient at stuffing language things into my day. And I am nowhere near the professor in terms of discipline... I am not even anywhere near Iversen. It's true that I have more experience with learning unrelated languages to knowns (all languages that fall within Romance/Germanic, really), but nowadays I am starting to notice that filling in gaps in those groups is easy - I can communicate even if it isn't necessarily very standard what I am doing. Maybe there are more relationships between English and Russian or Greek than between English and Chinese, but in those languages it's not enough to matter; the vocabulary horde is still too big to bridge at once. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6532 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 21 20 March 2015 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yeah, I agree that it's more about stuffing your day than about finding the limits.
I hate discipline though. I consider myself extremely devoted, not disciplined. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4642 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 21 of 21 21 March 2015 at 9:33am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I don't consider myself disciplined either, no matter what anyone says about me...
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