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What’s the hardest to achieve ? | ||
Tags: Quality or Quantity of Languages | Poll | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6151 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 1 of 20 10 August 2012 at 10:14am | IP Logged | ||
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In terms of language skills, which of these is hardest to achieve ? If you had to pick one of these as a goal, which would you opt for ? At the higher levels, the languages can be from the same family. E.g. Romance, Slavic, etc.
I'd also like the opinions of those who have achieved it. Edited by DaraghM on 10 August 2012 at 10:17am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 2 of 20 10 August 2012 at 11:59am | IP Logged | ||
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Definitely 20 languages at a true A2 level, without forgetting them. Especially if you do plan to reach B2 or higher in one or two of them.
Also, while your 7 languages can all be Romance, if you try to learn 20 related languages, you have to include some obscure languages/dialects with barely enough resources. So the number will probably require you to choose some languages that are different vocabulary-wise, even if they're easy grammatically. My eventual goal is C2 in 10+ languages, I'm 22 and I have the rest of my life to achieve this :) as of now, getting 7 non-fluent languages to B2 is the closest to my goals out of these. Edited by Serpent on 10 August 2012 at 1:53pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4932 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 3 of 20 10 August 2012 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think 2 languages at C2 or four at C1 is the easiest and 20 at true A2 the hardest. But generally C2 skills require immersion if the foreign language is not English. C1 level is possible achieve without long immersion.
I would opt for 4 x C1. I currently have one strong C1 language and three languages at B1-B2 range. Last year I used around 800 hours to study languages. If I continued at the same rate using the optimal strategy I could possible reach 4 x C1 in 5-10 years. But it is not my goal. Currently I aim for C1 in Spanish as well as concentrate on expanding my English vocabulary closer to "academic native" level. I think I could already pass Cambridge English Proficiency test really easily, but without living and working in the country where language is spoken it is really hard to achieve true C2 skills. Well. Then I think again I could possibly reach 7 x B2 faster than 4 x C1. Just some minor improvements for Spanish, Swedish and German which I have currently at B1-B2 range (German and Swedish active, Spanish passive). Then just quickly learn Portuguese, Danish and Dutch. :) Edited by petteri on 10 August 2012 at 3:16pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 4 of 20 10 August 2012 at 3:16pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think 2 languages at the C2 level and 7 languages at the B2 level (or higher) are the
easiest goals. I think I've managed to achieve the first one and I hope to achieve the latter in 3-4-5 years (I need three more languages). I voted for 4 languages at the C1 level as the hardest goal. It is definitely doable (and many HTLAL users have achieved it) but for me, it's difficult. I was very close to C1 in one of my languages but it has deteriorated significantly since that time. I doubt I'll achieve C1 in my French any time soon either (my writing is really poor). Maintaining active skills at the C1 level is really not easy. Obviously, 20 A2 languages or 13 B1 languages are not easy either, without forgetting them, and at the 'true' A2 or B1 level, as Serpent has rightly pointed out. But it all depends on the choice of languages. I've just counted Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages I could learn pretty easily (because of the available materials and my interests), and I've come up with as many as 17 of them, and I could easily expand this list to 20. Obviously, it would be much harder to actually learn all of them, and even harder to maintain active skills without risking too many interferences. It does seem doable though (although it wouldn't really interest me). For sure, learning unrelated languages would be much harder. Serpent, I'm impressed with your eventual goal :). I guess my goals are not that ambitious :). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6597 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 5 of 20 10 August 2012 at 3:36pm | IP Logged | ||
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One thing about A2 is that a shortcut to it is to memorize many stock phrases. It's easy in one or two languages, but it doesn't make sense if you want to learn many languages, especially if you eventually want to reach fluency in them. For A2 in 20 languages, it's more efficient in the long term to actually acquire the grammar.
Also while the three Scandinavian languages+Dutch would be considered a good choice for 4 C1 or one half of the 7 B2, these levels are quite difficult to reach in them due to the high level of English in these countries, so reaching this sort of level in even one of them would take a lot of perseverence. More than one would be even harder. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6903 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 6 of 20 10 August 2012 at 3:45pm | IP Logged | ||
Irrespective of the high level of English in these countries, I think it's very hard to achieve C1 or B2 in four languages which are related so closely! Obviously, you have a head start in listening and reading comprehension but C1/B2 active skills would be a huge challenge. I don't say it's undoable (probably there is somewhere a HTLAL users who would prove me wrong ;)) but probably harder that, let't say, English, German, a Scandinavian language and a Romance or a Slavic one (or two, if English is the mother tongue) Edited by Julie on 10 August 2012 at 3:47pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| BaronBill Triglot Senior Member United States HowToLanguages.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4689 days ago 335 posts - 594 votes Speaks: English*, French, German Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Persian | Message 7 of 20 10 August 2012 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I went with 4 languages at C1. I was tempted by 20 at A2 due to the amount of time it would take. Full-time, I would guess each language would take 3-6 Months to reach a comfortable A2. That would put 20 languages at around 5-10 years (maybe more for maintenance). However, I think that 4 languages at C1 would prove to be a tougher challenge.
The reason for this (my opinion of course) is two-fold. One, once you get past B1/B2 it is very difficult to progress without massive amounts of input and output. Certainly much more than would be required for learning up to A2. I find that last leg of the journey to be very difficult and time consuming. Of course, immersion would help enormously. Secondly, the maintenance would be brutal. To keep C1 skills sharp, you would have to devote a good chunk of your time to actively using the language. To summarize, 4 languages to C1 MIGHT be a little quicker, but 20 to A2 would probably be a little easier. Edited by BaronBill on 10 August 2012 at 4:34pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| petteri Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 4932 days ago 117 posts - 208 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Swedish Studies: German, Spanish | Message 8 of 20 10 August 2012 at 4:14pm | IP Logged | ||
Well. I can understand and speak Swedish. I used to have B2 skills, but nowadays my rusty Swedish is probably B1. In Finland I have learned Finlandssvenska dialect. It is written just like Rikssvenska (official Swedish), but pronounced bit differently. To me Oslo dialect sounds just like one more Swedish dialect, not an individual language. On the other hand Bokmål is written bit differently, but to read Norwegian newspaper I do not need that much extra effort. On the hand I really cannot understand spoken Danish, West Norwegian dialects or Swedish Skåne dialect. But reading Danish newspaper is not more difficult than reading Norwegian one. Edited by petteri on 10 August 2012 at 4:17pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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