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How Do You Maintain Languages? | ||
Tags: Maintaining Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| languagefreak Diglot Groupie United States Joined 5252 days ago 51 posts - 52 votes  Speaks: Russian, English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 18 09 January 2011 at 9:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Some people on this board speak 4 or more languages, which is a lot I think. So, my question is, how do you guys
maintain the languages? I grew up speaking Russian (I was born there, but moved to America at 3 years old), but even I find it hard to maintain my Russian. I speak well, with little accent, but my problem is that my vocabulary is small and I don't know grammar (mainly the cases). Generally, I have a good intuition for what case ending to use, but occasionally I get it wrong. But if you know 4 or more languages, it must be that much harder, no? I should also say that it might be slightly easier with other languages, since Russian is considered a pretty hard language. Perhaps French, Spanish, Italian, German, etc, are a bit easier to maintain? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lichtrausch Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5965 days ago 525 posts - 1072 votes Speaks: English*, German, Japanese Studies: Korean, Mandarin | Message 2 of 18 09 January 2011 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||
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I have a news website bookmarked for each of my advanced languages. I read at least a
couple articles a week in each language. That provides sort of a minimum amount of maintenance. On top of that I just try to occasionally read a book or watch a movie in those languages. I don't worry much about output because for me maintaining a high passive level is the priority. I only have three languages to maintain though so I'm not sure how effective and time- efficient my current system will be once I have a couple more languages to maintain. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| wenevy Bilingual Pentaglot Newbie China Joined 5082 days ago 28 posts - 36 votes Speaks: Spanish, Mandarin*, Cantonese*, Catalan, EnglishC1 Studies: French, Italian | Message 3 of 18 09 January 2011 at 12:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have the same doubt.
Even I could speak 5 languages. I don´t really know how to maintain languages. Because I am studying in spain, and I go back to china when I am in holiday. So for me it´s easy to maintain Mandarin, Catonese, Spainish and Catalan. And English, there are many resources, we can find English news, films, songs, books easily. By the way,I think it´s more easy to maintain a language if you level is high, just like people normally don´t forget their native language even he o she lives in another country for many years. All you have to do is keep using it regularly. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| translator2 Senior Member United States Joined 6924 days ago 848 posts - 1862 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 18 09 January 2011 at 3:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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My cable company offers international channels and I watch TV in French (TV5), German (ProSieben), Italian (RAI), Spanish (30+ channels) and Portuguese (TV Globo & RTPI). I watch at least one channel every day while I work (usually the same language I am translating).
I also watch multilingual TV and clips (youtube, etc.) on my computer. I have a huge collection of movies and TV shows from other countries (I am currently watching the TV series Berlin, Berlin (German), the show RIS: Delitti Imperfetti (Italian) and Los Simuladores (Spanish) as well as the Taxi series of movies in French. I subscribe to several international magazines (Epoca, Veja, Le Figaro, Panorama, Focus, Der Spiegel, Stern, L'espresso, etc.). I purchase newspapers (German, French, Arabic) at my local bookstore and magazines at local ethnic mom and pop stores (Spanish, Russian). I read blogs and forums in all my languages every day. I live in Florida so I speak some languages every day (Spanish and Portuguese). Other languages I speak with family (French) and friends on random occasions. I read novels in all my languages. I read several books at the same time. (Example: I am currently reading No habra final feliz (Spanish) and "Der, die, was?" by David Bergmann (German)). With regard to reading, I do not have any specific routine. I read articles that interest me regardless of the language. However, for listening practice, I try to make sure that I watch something in each of my languages at least once every other day. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6788 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 18 09 January 2011 at 3:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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My plan is to read books. Right now I'm reading books to learn languages, but later I
expect to read to keep in touch with them. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Guido Super Polyglot Senior Member ArgentinaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6533 days ago 286 posts - 582 votes Speaks: Spanish*, French, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, Norwegian, Catalan, Dutch, Swedish, Danish Studies: Russian, Indonesian, Romanian, Polish, Icelandic | Message 6 of 18 12 January 2011 at 9:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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My schedule right now looks something like this:
MO TU WE TH FR SA SU pl pl pl pl pl pl pl sv nl de it sv nl fr pt (pl: Polish, sv: Swedish, nl: Dutch, de: German, it: Italian, fr: French and pt: Portuguese My main language is Polish, which I'm learning since December last year. Swedish and Dutch have two slots each (those are the last languages I learnt before beginning with Polish, and I don't feel fluent in those two). On Wednesdays (my day off at work) I practice three languages. English has no day... is the language I use everyday at work togheter with Italian. My future plan is to speak 13 languages in total, and the schedule should be something like this: MO TU WE TH FR SA SU pl tu ru pl tu ru it sv fr dn nl no pt de (tu: Turkish, ru: Russian, dn: Danish, no: Norwegian). So, basicly, the three harderst languages (Polish, Russian, Turkish) will have 2 days each, all the other only 1 (1 slot means 1 1/2 to 3 hours practice). This will take me at least 3 hours each day for the rest of my life. Edited by Guido on 12 January 2011 at 10:02pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| polyglHot Pentaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5071 days ago 173 posts - 229 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, German, Spanish, Indonesian Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 18 12 January 2011 at 11:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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As I have only mastered Norwegian and English, these don't need to be maintained, they
just... are. My Spanish and German could both be described as rather rusty as I only have an intermediate level and I learned them 5 and 10 years ago. My Indonesian... I suppose I speak it a bit online and listen to some music. I'll use it if/when I go back there. These three are in the back of my mind and not currently active, Indonesian is currently fighting Russian to stay in the game, but Russian is winning. Norwegian isn't really active, only when I'm in my country. Hard to deactivate/forget though. I haven't found a way to keep more than 3 languages active at once, and I haven't been able to master more than 2. Try putting a picture of say a shoe or a man running (the verb run) in front of you, put the numbers 1-5 or 1-10 (depending on the number of languages you speak) on a piece of paper. Write down the word for it in the first language that pops into your head, without thinking. Do this with a few different nouns and verbs and you will find out which are the most active languages in your head. I did this and English was always number 1, Russian or Indonesian number 2, Spanish number 4, Norwegian 5 and German 6. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Naomi Chambers Newbie United States thepolyglotexperienc Joined 5076 days ago 23 posts - 30 votes Speaks: Spanish Studies: FrenchC1, Swedish | Message 8 of 18 18 January 2011 at 6:35am | IP Logged | ||
That is very impressive. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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