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Learning foundations of 8 languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| libertango Newbie United States Joined 6595 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes | Message 1 of 17 08 February 2010 at 11:56pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm 27. I have business level Mandarin, and beginner level Japanese.
I'm moving to Japan this month, and my focus will be on Japanese for the next year or two. My current schedule has about 8 hours of work, 2-3 hours of japanese, and maybe 30 minutes of Mandarin a day. What I would like to do is, in my limited time, is to start slowly building a foundation for the following languages: French (I really only want to be able to read French, and maybe write a little. I know that my pronunciation would be terrible, starting at this age, so I doubt that I would ever speak it. I'd like to be able to read novels in ten years, and read philosophy in 20.) Ancient Greek (I studied a little bit of this in years past, though I have since forgotten everything. I would like to be able to read the well-known Ancient Greek texts in about 10 years.) Latin (Basically, I would like to be just be knowledgable about Latin. I'd like to understand the grammar and how the language works. I'd like to have enough vocabulary to understand the occasional latin quote I come across. Since my goals for latin are low, I'd like to get there in a 5 years.) German (I believe that I am able to pronounce German somewhat, so I'd like to learn beginner to intermediate conversation in maybe 5 years, and would like to be able to read German philosophy in 20 years.) Italian (I'd like to learn some basic conversation, and to be able to read some simple things, in about 5 years) Spanish (I'd like to be able to speak at an intermediate level in 5 years and read novels in ten years.) Modern Standard Arabic (I'd like to be able to speak a little bit in 5 years, and be able to read in ten years) Russian (I'd like to be speak at an intermediate level in 5 years and read Russian books in about ten years) So basically, I was wondering if anyone had any input on managing so many languages at once. I can't study them everyday. Maybe one hour for each language a week. DO you think that a slow growth plan would work? Edited by libertango on 08 February 2010 at 11:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5962 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 17 09 February 2010 at 12:15am | IP Logged | ||
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You could try prioritising your languages and work on only two at one time. When one of the two languages reaches a level you are satisfied with, replace it with the next language on the list. And so on and so forth.
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| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6122 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 3 of 17 09 February 2010 at 12:19am | IP Logged | ||
lol @ 20 years! It does NOT take that long to learn to read french, especially for an English speaker. With 1 year of light study, you should be able to read almost anything. And in french the more "complex" texts, like an academic paper, are actually easier to read because they're in a register where the words are the same. You'll immediately recognize 60% of the words in a philosophy book intuitively. In french with just a little study, you'll be able to understand A LOT. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5587 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 4 of 17 09 February 2010 at 12:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Pursue one or two at a time, and when you're comfortable, move on. I recommend the "Assimil" language program, which is available on Amazon.com. It will quickly get you to up to speed in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic. In around 6 months to a year you will be having conversations and everything. I really love this program. You will not be PERFECT, but you will definitely have a solid grounding in reading and speaking. They are around $30 each. (MAKE SURE YOU GET THE CDS TOO) :D
Best of luck to you. German, French, Spanish, and Italian are relatively easier to learn. Being in Japan, your Japanese will progress rapidly. Stick around the forums, we are all here to help! Your goals are VERY slow indeed. You could be reading Spanish novels in as little as one to two years of good self study. :) -Jordan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jimbo Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6296 days ago 469 posts - 642 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin, Korean, French Studies: Japanese, Latin | Message 5 of 17 09 February 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
Trust me, after Mandarin, French is a breeze. Get a dictionary plug-in for your web browser and start reading French now. (I'm using Firefox and Babelfish. Works for me.) Tons of free resources on the web to help you learn. Do a little searching on this forum. BBC French is one place to start. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6770 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 6 of 17 09 February 2010 at 6:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Cool, where in Japan will you be?
Our languages have a lot of overlap. I know Japanese and French, and I'm puttering along in Mandarin and Ancient Greek while I consider adding Italian to the mix, and I have German, Russian, and Latin on my long-term goal list too. (No plans for Arabic, though.) Japan's a nice place to study languages. There's lots of learning materials as well as educational radio shows (and some TV) on NHK for all major languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6472 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 7 of 17 09 February 2010 at 10:59am | IP Logged | ||
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For Latin as well, you can reach your desired level a lot faster. For example, I
regularly teach online classes, where participants meet once a week for 45-60 minutes. After 26 weeks they are at the level you describe, possibly above, because they can read Caesar, Cicero and other Roman authors with the help of a dictionary then. There is no homework, though they should review the vocabulary during the week. So all in all, I'd say it takes about 30-35 hours to reach the level you want in Latin, and surely you can invest those in less than 5 years... And French... I don't think you should give up on having a good accent just because you're 27. There are plenty of people who start studying languages later, even in their fifties, and still managing to acquire a decent accent. I also believe that you should tackle these languages two at a time, especially if you'll also be working on Japanese and Mandarin. If you try to split limited time between too many languages, as I have done in the past, you will often forget what you studied before you next study that language. There is also a good possibility of confusion when you're an absolute beginner in several languages, for example I could sometimes only come up with Chinese words when trying to speak Modern Greek. When the languages are as unrelated as that, this stage passes quickly, depending on how often you study each of the languages, but with related languages it's a lot worse. So my recommendation is to pick French, Italian OR Spanish and one of the other three for a start, not to study several Romance languages at once except if you have comparative materials. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| libertango Newbie United States Joined 6595 days ago 8 posts - 8 votes | Message 8 of 17 15 February 2010 at 5:28am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you for the replies. I will probably be putting too much time into Japanese and work this year to really get started.
I think I will start Latin since Sprachprofi suggested that it might only take 35 hours to get to where I want to be. I think it is always more fun to start learning a language from complete ignorance, rather than starting with a language that I have a little familiarity with, such as Ancient Greek or French. I will probably start with French and another language (not Spanish or Italian) next year, @Captain Haddock, I will be in Hiroshima. Where do you live? And I just want to say that I love this forum. I joined it a few years back when I was trying to reach fluency in Mandarin, but haven't been here in a while. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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