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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 |  | |
| 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 9 of 20 10 August 2012 at 4:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Petteri, thank for your insight. I do think that achieving C1 comprehension in three
Scandinavian languages (+ Dutch, as Serpent wrote) wouldn't be all that difficult. But do you think you could achieve and maintain active C1 in all of them?
That's exactly what would in my opinion pose the biggest problem: how to separate the languages, so that your Swedish stays Swedish and your Norwegian is real Norwegian (even though dialects are very important in Norway). I have almost no experience in Scandinavian languages but from my general learning experience would say this can't be easy. I may be wrong, though. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4521 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 10 of 20 10 August 2012 at 5:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
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2 foreign languages at C2 would be the hardest for me because of speaking. I could only achieve C2 in speaking in any language by living and working in a relevant country for a long period of time (like 10years+). Maintaining that while living in a country with another foreign language would seem pretty hard to me.
However, 4 languages at C1 seems pretty easy to me. If you are not a native English speaker, you get English almost for free at least in western countries. I had about an upper B1/lower B2 in English after grammar school without much input. In a lot of countries, people have better English skills than that after graduation. A lot of input does most of the rest, and it's easy to get input because of Hollywood, massive amount of TV Shows etc. The other 4 languages can be the Scandinavian ones as mentioned before. The rest seems hard and certainly time consuming, but it's doable. The first phase of language learning has always been easy for me, the advanced stage is what worries me most (and where I lack motivation). 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 11 of 20 10 August 2012 at 5:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's definitely easier to learn proper Swedish if you speak Norwegian than to learn Russian :)
IDK, I'm 22 and I think I should definitely be able to get my Portuguese and German to the level of my English and Finnish (more C2 than C1) before I'm thirty. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 12 of 20 10 August 2012 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I voted for four languages at a C1 level.
If they're related languages, they may indeed be somewhat easier to maintain, but if they're four unrelated languages, the situation gets more difficult for maintaining the languages. As someone mentioned earlier, going from B2 to C1 and C2 typically requires more rigor, especially if the language(s) you're studying have relatively few resources for advanced students. Aside from having a C2 in my native languages (Guarani and Spanish) and Quechua, I've managed to get to that level in Arabic and Persian as well - both languages in about 10 years (five to six years for Arabic [in each: MSA, Egyptian, Moroccan, and Levantine] and about four years for Persian). With French, I'd put myself at a C2, though I use the language less often than the others, I prefer to place it at C1 sometimes. I'm currently working on Portuguese - my third Romance language - and I'm projecting that it'll take me at least another year to reach a C1, despite the fact that I already have Spanish and French under my belt. In all, working consistently with one language and reaching a C2 (as I've done, one language at a time), is very possible. Twenty languages at A2 may seem like a lot, but I'm sure that as far as difficulty goes, it's not as demanding as reaching a level above B2. Yes, it would probably take more time, but A2 is usually just beginning to scratch the surface of a language. 3 persons have 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 13 of 20 10 August 2012 at 5:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
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When you're at A2, you can't maintain your skills as easily as at B1-B2, and especially maintaining your speaking at this level while not improving would be insanely boring.
2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4638 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 14 of 20 10 August 2012 at 6:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
Good point. Kurdish is one language that I never managed to get past an A2 level with (extreme lack of resources), and the last time I touched it was about 2003. I remember several vocabulary words and some grammatical features, but overall I would definitely need to practically start from scratch again. With Turkish, however, I reached about a mid-to-high B2 level, and haven't done much related to it since 2001. Yet I can still function in very basic situations and have somehow retained most - not just a little bit - of the vocabulary and the grammar that I managed to learn. At A2 there is only so much that you know of a language and thus it is easier to get very rusty in it. With B1 and higher I at least have the foundation and from there it's possible to advance without having to review absolutely everything I already learned. Of course, it varies depending on the individual, but I can imagine that staying at A2 in multiple languages can be difficult. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4521 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 15 of 20 10 August 2012 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
I don't see why high levels of English would be a problem. Never once had anybody switched to English in Norway, not even when I had very obvious troubles with the dialect one spoke. Same thing in Stockholm. I've never learned Swedish, but I've read Swedish books and watched Swedish movies, so I knew more or less what I had to change of my Norwegian to sound more or less Swedish. Nobody switched to English, I even had to ask the receptionist at the hotel I was staying to switch to English after he tried to explain some technical stuff about the problem with my key card in Swedish. As with active skills in Scandinavian languages: there shouldn't be much of a problem between Norwegian and Danish, they actually help each other. C1 in both should be very much doable. Spelling between Danish/Norwegian and Swedish is different enough that it should be no problem. Talking might be more problematic, switching between a Norwegian and a Swedish accent takes a bit of time. But then, I think you would get your C1 in Swedish even if you talk with a Norwegian accent. You might not be able to take a C1 exam at the same day in all 3 Scandinavian languages though, even if you speak all of them at a high level. But with a few days separation, these languages shouldn't negatively influence each other too much. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maydayayday Pentaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5219 days ago 564 posts - 839 votes Speaks: English*, German, Italian, SpanishB2, FrenchB2 Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Polish, Persian, Vietnamese Studies: Urdu | Message 16 of 20 11 August 2012 at 10:49am | IP Logged | |||||
Twenty languages at A2 does seem a lot and therefore difficult but I personally don't need (or want) twenty - at the moment I want Spanish, French, German at C1, Russian, Arabic, a Scandinavian language, Hindi/Urdu at B2. As someone suggested it would be possible to get to A2 by bulk learning a phrasebook. Indeed this is how I start any language. I therefore voted for 4@C1 Edited by maydayayday on 11 August 2012 at 10:50am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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