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5 languages in a year | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 54 28 April 2007 at 4:42am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm doing 6 at once, although I'm (quite imperfectly) fluent in one, and have at least passive knowledge and basic communication ability in 2-4 of the others (French and German; my Dutch and Esperanto are more shaky). The approach I'm using is heavily influenced by Ardaschir's posts on his study methods - I'm doing 20-30 minutes of Assimil/day in each of the languages except Esperanto, where I'm using lernu.net as I don't like the Assimil Esperanto course. I've only started recently, though I've been dabbling with all of these languages, except Persian, for years, on and off. I'm currently doing my senior project at university, so I can't dedicate, say, 10 hours/day to language study, but putting in a solid 2/day has, thus far, been possible, and I've supplemented it with some exposure to native materials. I'm planning to find some bilingual books to increase my vocabulary and sense for the grammar, but I haven't done so yet. I'm not far enough into this experiment to say how it will go - my French, German, Italian, and Esperanto are improving fairly quickly, while my Dutch comprehension is quite slow to increase (I can understand the next Assimil level easily each time, but I still miss most of the words I hear in native materials, or from native speakers), and my Persian is coming along extremely slowly. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 10 of 54 28 April 2007 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Did you start them all at the same time? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 11 of 54 28 April 2007 at 4:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes and no. I started my current attempt at serious daily study of all of them at the same time, but I've been learning some of them intermittently for years (since I was 8 years old for French, and I apparently had some early exposure to Italian from before I have memories). Only Persian is entirely new to me. My levels of Dutch and Esperanto are quite low, though I've had (written) conversations in Esperanto dating back as far as 2004. My French and German are somewhat better - I've communicated using both of them, both in writing and orally, but far from elegantly. My intention with Italian is to fix my pronunciation, particle usage, and some aspects of grammar (ie, I don't use the subjunctive and conditional as often as I should.) The only language I've put a significant amount of time into that I'm not currently studying is Japanese. I don't believe I would be capable of studying that in parallel with the current set, given my current time constraints. I'd consider myself at most intermediate, if not a beginner, in all of these languages except Italian. I can understand the news in spoken German, or written French fairly consistently (and somewhat less well with written German or spoken French), but anything I write in either turns out embarrassingly incorrectly, and my conversationality is extremely limited. Edited by Volte on 28 April 2007 at 4:45pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| sergiu Diglot Senior Member Romania freewebs.com/invata_ Joined 6442 days ago 105 posts - 108 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English Studies: German | Message 12 of 54 28 April 2007 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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N-as incerca sa invat atatea limbi deodata oricat timp liber as avea.Cum a zis cineva mai inainte ,mai bine te concentrezi pe una singura pana devii fluent iar apoi treci la urmatoarea.Mi-e frica sa nu se faca o prea mare confuzie ,si sa se amestece limbile intre ele
Is it ok if I posted in Romanian? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 54 29 April 2007 at 1:49am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I don't have a problem with it, but the forum rules say "Please post messages in English. f you wish to write in a different language, use the Multilingual Lounge or Private Messaging." The exception to this seems to be a few specific threads which are entirely in another language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vb Octoglot Senior Member Afghanistan Joined 6425 days ago 112 posts - 135 votes Speaks: English, Romanian, French, Polish, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish Studies: Russian, Swedish | Message 14 of 54 29 April 2007 at 7:43am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Aye, confusion might be a possibility, but I don't think I ever got that confused whilst learning several languages at school. There might be some 'vocabulary creep' if I do too much bare list learning, rather than making an effort to use words in a context (which will also be good for grammar learning). An advantage of starting several at once might be that I can get some kind of 'competition' going between them. What is Assimil, by the way? It sounds interesting. Current line-up: am committed to German, Mandarin and Punjabi (have ppl to speak to). Not 100% sure about Esperanto, tho might be interesting to delve into the culture that has grown around an 'artifical' language. Might dump Danish. Any suggestions? Unfortunately, I don't live in Afghanistan :( (will endeavour to change that 'fact'!) Thanks, Bob Edited by vb on 29 April 2007 at 7:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 15 of 54 29 April 2007 at 8:05am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Assimil is basically a bilingual reader with ~100 small lessons (varies by language/edition). A short situation/set of phrases/dialogue is given in the language you're studying, and is also presented on CD; an English transcript is presented across from it, so they can easily be compared. I find it quite good for pronunciation and oral comprehension, plus for giving a feeling of how to put sentences together correctly. It's also been useful to me for de-confusing languages I had entangled. It's been discussed quite a lot on this forum. One recent thread (Assimil Learning Methods)was on how people adapt the course (the instructions it gives vary quite a lot from language to language, but generally say to do about a lesson/day, with a 'passive wave', of just listening/repeating/reading/understanding, preceding the 'active wave', where you translate into the language you're trying to learn.
I'd vote in favor of Esperanto; it'll be a refreshing contrast from everything else you're studying. One further piece of advice: you may want to look at Ardaschir's posts. He's not presently active on this board, but while he was, he posted some amazing and informative material about how he studies, and his results (which involved the ability to read in dozens of languages, and to speak several at a quite high level). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6706 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 16 of 54 29 April 2007 at 8:32am | IP Logged | ||||||||
M-a plăcut să vadă nişte cuvinte româneşti aici, dar în acest forum se scrie în englez - aşa sunt regulile şi mai ales numai puţini dintre membrii forumului inţelegeau limba româna. I agree that it is better (for most people) to start one language at a time, but I don't think that you have to wait with the next language until you are fluent in the first one. When you can read and think and maybe even speak the first one at least at the intermediate level the risk that nr. 2 will kill off nr. 1 is minimal. Edited by Iversen on 29 April 2007 at 10:15am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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