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Learning 4 lanuages at once? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Juan M. Senior Member Colombia Joined 5907 days ago 460 posts - 597 votes  | Message 10 of 15 14 December 2008 at 5:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think the only limitation is the amount of time you can devote to each language. If you can study all of them at least an hour and a half every day, and keep up that pace for a year or two, I say go for it!
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| FuroraCeltica Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6873 days ago 1187 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French | Message 11 of 15 16 December 2008 at 5:57am | IP Logged | ||
There are two issues when learning more than one language - time and confusion. That is, will I get these languages mixed up, and can I afford to giveequal amounts of time to each? I speak from experience, as in bilingual Brussels, I have been learning French and Dutch. In terms of confusion, they are different enough to avoid confusion. In terms of time, that is trickier, and I have given French a bit more time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5840 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 12 of 15 16 December 2008 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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I think it's perfectly possible to learn 4 or more languages at once provided you can make the time and have the discipline. The only thing I would say is that you might not make progress as fast as you would like. This is what I have found with certain languages. However I would find it difficult to give up any of the languages I study so I am prepared to accept this. When I plan to visit a particular country, then I concentrate on that language for a few months and I notice that progress is then much quicker.
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| zerothinking Senior Member Australia Joined 6380 days ago 528 posts - 772 votes Speaks: English* | Message 13 of 15 16 December 2008 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | ||
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This is doable. But personally I think it is a waste of time to switch your focus
around to many tasks. The more you aim your focus like a laser on a task, the more the momentum builds up and you have massive gains. Those massive gains motivate you and spur you on to do even more and you can see very tangible results in a shorter time span. I think 2 languages should be the maximum you should do at any one time. Just devote more time to each and then when you're satisfied, move on to the others. But, considering you could do 1.5 hours on each, everyday, you would still make a lot of progress in each of your 4 languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| momtomany Newbie Canada Joined 6347 days ago 18 posts - 19 votes Speaks: English* Studies: French, Dutch, German | Message 14 of 15 05 January 2009 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm no expert, but I have thought about studying more than one at a time (because I couldn't decide which of three to study first). But I look at it this way... it might take about 600 hours to learn a fairly closely related language. With 6 hours a day to study.... wow, you could be speaking very well in only 3 months! Then the next language will be easier to learn (they say learning one foreign language makes it easier to learn the next, even if it's totally unrelated) and you will have less risk of getting frustrated because you will know how little time it took you to conquer your first one. I really struggled with deciding which to do first though (Dutch because I am a Dutch citizen, French because I homeschool my kids and Canada is a bilingual country and I ought to teach them some French, or German because my husband is German and I can't understand much of what he's saying when he talks to his relatives). Well, I just decided to take the advice of some of the more experienced polyglots I've read about... do it one at a time. That's just the way I look at it, but I don't want to discourage you because humans have proved so many times in history that we have a great potential to do some pretty stunning things. I'm very sure it can be done.
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| joaopferrao Pentaglot Newbie Portugal Joined 5812 days ago 25 posts - 27 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Icelandic | Message 15 of 15 06 January 2009 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I studied Gothic and Old Norse at the same time for a few months, but i gave up of Gothic. Not only because I didn't had much time, but also because it's less usefull than Norse.
But I believe that, if you really want it, you can learn all four languages at once. But get prepared because it'll take you a long, long time... 1 person has voted this message useful |
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