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When to start learning a new language? | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Beginner | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Zorlee Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 4875 days ago 2 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Japanese | Message 1 of 8 07 October 2013 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi everyone! First of all, thank you guys so much for creating this wonderful forum. I've been lurking around for years, but just lately started to get active. I have a question that probably a lot of you have faced before, and that is - when should one start learning a new language?
A short background story: I'm from Norway and have been using Norwegian, as well as English (Playstation!) as long as I can remember. 4 years ago I started learning Japanese, and now I would definitely consider myself fluent in it. I passed the JLPT N1 (Highest level of the Japanese Proficiency Test) after 2,5 years of study, and in addition to that I've lived in Japan for 2 years, so I feel pretty comfortable with production (speaking / writing) as well. Here's a short video of me and a Japanese friend doing a Japanese Manzai, a sort of a Japanese stand-up, last month (this will probably give you guys a better impression of my current Japanese level): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TS9CUo8pl0o Anyway, I've been playing with the thought of learning a new language or two over the years to come, but since I suffer from extreme perfectionism I just can't seem to make the plunge. It's not because I don't want to, I'd love to speak French or Italian or something, but it's just that I always say to myself "your Japanese could still need some work! You still make mistakes, man!" etc. For you polyglots out there - after how much study in one language did you make the decision to move on to another? What would you recommend - learn 2-3 languages to the max (5-10 years of study, getting it close to native level) or doing 4-5 getting it pretty good? I love Japanese, and since I know it fairly well now, I absolutely love doing stuff in Japanese: reading books, playing video-games, making friends etc. But I've just come to think about - what if I could do this in more languages? What if I could travel to France, Italy or Spain (which would be WAY closer and WAY cheaper than Norway - Japan) and have a blast? I'm sorry about the wall of text here, but I'd love some input from all of you, as I'm always amazed by the wealth of knowledge I find on these boards. Thank you -Z Edited by Zorlee on 07 October 2013 at 5:42pm 4 persons have 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 8 07 October 2013 at 7:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm not a polyglot, but I was in a somewhat analogous situation. After English and German I had moved on to Japanese. I passed JLPT level 1 (before the test reform) after about three years of study. Then I got a strong desire to study some more languages, so I indulged it and spent various amounts of time with Korean, Mandarin, Persian and Spanish. Then somewhat recently, I became more aware of how much room for improvement I had with Japanese listening comprehension. So I put all those other languages on hold and started reading and listening to a lot of Japanese again. I've been doing this for a while and although the improvements are extremely gradual, I'm really satisfied by how it's going. Looking back, my mistake was equating JLPT level 1 with proficiency, but it seems like you have avoided making that mistake. As it stands now, I'm going to keep going with Japanese until I'm satisfied with my listening comprehension, and then I'll jump back into Korean.
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| g-bod Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5987 days ago 1485 posts - 2002 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, German | Message 3 of 8 07 October 2013 at 7:19pm | IP Logged | ||
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I would say you could start a new language as soon as you can devote enough time to it. I put
Japanese more or less on hold twice this year in order to work on European languages because my travel plans took me to Germany and France rather than Japan. The price has been that my Japanese has barely advanced this year, but it was worth it in the sense that it really improved my travel experiences. The good news is that you won't need to make half as much effort with a language like French or Spanish in order to get it to a level where you can interact with real people as you did with Japanese. Why not plan a trip, learn the basics of the language, and decide later whether you think it's worth a longer term commitment. Even tourist level language is worth having when you travel, so as long as you can bear to steal some time from your precious Japanese it will be worth it. I hope you don't mind me asking but I'd love to know more about how you studied Japanese. Zero to N1 in 2.5 years is pretty rapid improvement, I'm sure I could learn a lot from you! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Zorlee Triglot Newbie Norway Joined 4875 days ago 2 posts - 7 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Japanese | Message 4 of 8 07 October 2013 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you guys so much for your replies :)
I'm currently a university student, so I do have a lot of spare time. However, I've always struggled with doing something "on the side", as I tend to fall in love with one thing, and do that 100% of my spare time (I've had a drum phase, Japanese phase, composition phase, you name it :D), but I guess it wouldn't hurt to do 1 hour of French a day and see where that can take me :) g-bod: No problem! I actually wrote a post about my study-method on a different forum, so you can read about it there: Study method If you have any other questions, feel free to ask :) 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| oziohume Bilingual Hexaglot Newbie Belgium Joined 4743 days ago 30 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, Catalan, Italian, French, German Studies: Dutch | Message 5 of 8 08 October 2013 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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By the way you have described yourself, I would say you will never be 100% sure if you
have enough level of Japanese to start a new language. Because of this, I'd say just go for it and if you have the time and commitment you can surely start another language and still improve more slowly your Japanese by listening to podcasts, TV, etc. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4712 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 6 of 8 10 October 2013 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
Strongly depends on the language I was learning, the context I was learning it in. I generally move on to another language when I have a grammatical overview of the language and can construe longer sentences more or less grammatically (with mistakes, but getting the point across). In Swedish that was a month or 6, in Russian it was longer. I'm also not averse to doing more at the same time. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4449 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 7 of 8 11 October 2013 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's never too late to start learning a new language as long as you have the time and commitment. Keep in mind
that once you get started, you need to set goals for yourself how to get up to the conversational level. I know 1 lady who is studying Spanish for the past 5 years. Besides knowing a few words & phrases, she is nowhere near the conversational level required for asking for directions on the street. On the other hand, she thinks of language learning as an activity / hobby to fill up her time otherwise going between her home and office everyday. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JiriT Triglot Groupie Czech Republic Joined 4802 days ago 60 posts - 95 votes Speaks: Czech*, English, German | Message 8 of 8 15 October 2013 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | ||
It is certainly good to reach a good conversational level. But a language learner can also have other goals. E.g. at school the goal is to provide students with the main grammar of a language and some vocabulary. Though the conversation is said to be the goal, in practice people get rather passive knowledge. It can be very useful when one is immersed into the language environment. A self-learner gets similar knowledge of the language. Maybe he focuses less on grammar and more on vocabulary. When a person lives in the environment of the target language, it is easier to learn the language, especially speaking. But before going there it is better to know as much as grammar and vocabulary as possible (and to memorize useful conversational phrases). But it is useful to know the language only passively too. You can read in that language or listen to native speakers. This skill has its own value, not only as a step towards active command of the language. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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