|
 |
To those learning more than one language | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| healing332 Senior Member United States Joined 5621 days ago 164 posts - 211 votes  | Message 1 of 14 04 October 2009 at 11:24pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
Hi, To those learning more than one language at a time how do you do this? I know many people study 2 languages successfully and to you my congratulations.
I am curious because I could not do it. Do you schedule it all out each week? I feel it would confuse me and hurt my swedish How do you find the time? I give about 3 hours a day or 20 hours a week to Swedish. I am able to do this because I work traveling and use the movie breakdown method on a portable dvd player (with a grammar book and writing so everything is neat and on the go) I have to absorb everything in the new language to learn(reading..writing..speaking), i do not even like when i hear Spanish because my brain starts to process that. Also, to those studying 2 or more languages don't you enjoy one more than the other? Are you casually studying 2 which i can understand but for me i would be a mess because I can only do total immersion in 1 new language. Can you please explain to those who maybe trying to do more than one language 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2 of 14 04 October 2009 at 11:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Once you have already learned one foreign language, learning another is much easier. Then it's just a matter of how much time you have. Have you learned a foreign language before?
Personally, I don't follow a strict schedule. I just study whatever I feel like studying at the time.
I spend most of my free time studying or thinking about foreign languages. If I'm not at work chances are I'm doing something language-related. I used to waste so much time doing pointless things like watching TV in English, aimlessly surfing the Internet, playing video games, getting drunk, daydreaming, or just sitting around with no idea what to do. All that time is now spent on languages, and I'm never bored. I love it. If you want to learn multiple foreign languages, you need to learn how to cut out all the wasted time in your day and put it to good use. And once you do, you'll wonder how you ever lived otherwise. Most people waste enough time every year, I think, to teach themselves a foreign language. You also have to be realistic about your goals. If you're going to study six languages like me, then clearly you're not going to progress in any one language as quickly as you could studying that language by itself. What's best for you depends on what your motivations are and what your reasons are for studying the language(s). If you are looking to move overseas or to achieve fluency in a foreign language, then it's probably not a good idea to try tackling so many. But if you're just a language enthusiast like me who wants to create plenty of options for the future, it is possible to make substantial steady progress in multiple languages. Even really hard ones.
Personally, I do not have this problem. I don't find that my languages interfere with each other in any significant way. If I'm listening to German radio and they play a clip of someone speaking in French, my brain will happily switch over into "French mode" for that sentence and then back to "German mode".
I find my interest in different languages ebbing and flowing. Sometimes I'll be particularly interested in one or another of my languages, and I'll just study whatever I feel like studying (which right now is Mandarin Chinese and Japanese). After all, I'm not under any deadlines to be fluent in any of them. My goal right now is just to make steady progress in all six. I find them all beautiful in their own unique ways, which actually gives me a lot of motivation to learn them all well.
I don't see why you couldn't do a sort of immersion in 2 languages. Just do immersion in each language every other day. Edited by Levi on 05 October 2009 at 12:22am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| The Real CZ Senior Member United States Joined 5650 days ago 1069 posts - 1495 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 3 of 14 05 October 2009 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
I study both of the languages a little bit every day, and when I have more time, I'll study more, watch more TV/dramas, etc. in whatever language I want. For example, when I'm watching an addicting Korean drama, Japanese probably will only get 30-60 minutes in a day and vice versa. I don't try and do "I'm gonna study X for X minutes and study Y for Y minutes." I do however much I want, but at least try to do something in both everyday.
I never get the two mixed up. Both of them are pronounced pretty differently that it's hard to mix up words. Only some words in Korean remind me of the Japanese equivalent. Ex: gieok and kioku. They're basically pronounced the same, but there aren't that many words like that. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Woodpecker Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5812 days ago 351 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Written), Arabic (Egyptian) Studies: Arabic (classical) | Message 4 of 14 05 October 2009 at 12:47am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
I split my evenings between a Latin dance club where everyone speaks Arabic and a Latin dance club where everyone speaks Swahili.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| LatinoBoy84 Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5576 days ago 443 posts - 603 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Latvian | Message 5 of 14 05 October 2009 at 4:56am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
I am studying Russian exclusively through audio methods at the moment. While doing more formal study on French. Russian in the Morning and French from noon until I go to bed. I will switch to written materials for Russian in about 3-4 more months. Once you have a strong enough base in one language. It's easy to study two simultaneously as long as 1)You study one a bit more casually 2)They have a degree of distance that impedes interference. I love the fact that French gives me a small discount on Russian vocabulary.
The key is Constant exposure. Every single day expose yourself to your target languages. Edited by LatinoBoy84 on 05 October 2009 at 4:57am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6866 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 6 of 14 05 October 2009 at 5:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
I am learning French and Dutch simultaneously. I work it by setting myself a target of 200 hours in each language. I then just casually go back and forth, record how much time I do each session, until I hit 200.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 8 of 14 05 October 2009 at 6:56pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
|
I'm not actively studying two right now, but I find that languages that I study simultaneously don't get confused, but languages that I learn one after the other get a bit mixed up.
If that's really the case (maybe I'm just imagining it -- it's impossible to monitor yourself objectively) then while learning one at a time may seem like you get to learn it better, you might be setting yourself up to "overwrite" it with your next one. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
