|
 |
When to start another Romance language | ||
Tags: Romance Languages | Study Plan | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Almond Diglot Newbie Yugoslavia Joined 5824 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishB2 Studies: Spanish, French | Message 1 of 8 24 December 2008 at 4:09pm | IP Logged |
|
I have been studying Spanish for one year and a half. I'm at B1 level at the moment. I want to start studying French. I even bought books. But I'm afraid that I will confuse those two languages. Do you think that I am able to learn them both at the same time, or to wait? If I should wait - for how long?
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6911 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes  5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 2 of 8 24 December 2008 at 4:59pm | IP Logged |
|
I think it's very individual. I wasn't mixing both languages at all when I was beginner in both. Right now I'm mixing Spanish and French very much - I had 1,5 year almost without using Spanish (I was at B2+ level before) and I'm not able to speak it any more now, mostly because of my immersion in French! But I'm not worried about it, it shouldn't take me long to brush up my Spanish - I will do it when I speak better French.
You can try learning French now - if you notice that you're confusing two languages, you can just stop learning French for some time. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| crackpot Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6309 days ago 144 posts - 178 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 8 27 December 2008 at 5:35am | IP Logged |
|
Don't start a second Romance language until you can learn it through your first Romance language. If you can't use a Spanish-French dictionary or understand an explanation about French in Spanish and understand almost everything then the time has not yet come. This is what I'm doing to an extent but in reverse and I can understand 95+% of what is presented. Bonne chance!/¡Buena suerte!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| TheBiscuit Tetraglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 5931 days ago 532 posts - 619 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Italian Studies: German, Croatian | Message 4 of 8 27 December 2008 at 4:44pm | IP Logged |
|
What's wrong with mixing languages? Most languages are a mixture of various languages anyway. Kids mix them up. I think it's part of the process once you start a 3rd or 4th and natural to mix them at first until the brain compartmentalises them, as it were.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| hypersport Senior Member United States Joined 5889 days ago 216 posts - 307 votes Studies: Spanish | Message 5 of 8 28 December 2008 at 11:51am | IP Logged |
|
I agree with crackpot.
So many on this site just get bored and can't dedicate once the newness of the language wears off. It's like someone who gets really motivated to get in shape and diets or goes to the gym for a couple of weeks, and then that gets old...they do this for years and nothing changes. People do this with language studies too, just go for a bit, then something else, then back to the first one and that gets boring even faster. I see so many on this site that are trying to learn several languages at the same time. If that's fun for some, to get a dabble of so many different languages and maybe impress their friends with a couple of phrases of each at a party, more power to them. But if someone truly wants to learn a language and be able to understand it when spoken and carry on a conversation then there has to be serious dedication. It helps immensely if you develop an interest in the culture and want to watch movies and read books in the language. If you can make friends and speak with them. If you can watch tv and listen to the radio every single day in the language. I think for everyone who asks these kinds of questions the answer is already obvious. The person attempting to learn a language has to ask himself why he's doing it and what are the real goals. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Eimii Groupie United States Joined 5840 days ago 44 posts - 47 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Polish | Message 6 of 8 29 December 2008 at 1:55pm | IP Logged |
|
I like crackpot's idea too. I'm going to do that when I learn Bulgarian.
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6019 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 8 06 January 2009 at 6:45am | IP Logged |
|
I'm in the learn-in-parallel camp.
First of all, yes crackpot -- we do get bored. Sticking at it when you're bored is not "dedication", it's "pig-headedness", whether it's a language or an exercise regime. If you're bored, you're doing something wrong and it's time for a change. I go to the gym regularly, but I sometimes take time off and do something else (dancing, climbing, anything). Now the perfect example is skiing. I hadn't done it in years, and over the last two months I took two hours of lessons on a dry ski slope before spending a week in a ski resort. I probably won't do any more skiing for another year. I could force myself to travel to the dry ski slope every week to make sure I keep doing it, but why should I? I want snow. It's the same with languages -- I won't be putting a lot of effort into Italian this year (I've got a Spanish exam to be worrying about!) but last month I did about 24 hours of study before spending a week in a house full of Italians. Again, I probably won't do much Italian for another year... until I'm getting ready to go skiing in Italy. However, every week of the year I will be talking French, Spanish and Gaelic, so I'm happy to leave the Italian to one side. Yes, I'll have to work to regain lost ground in Italian, but the same can be said of my skiing. Regardless, at the end of next year's skiing trip, but my Italian and my skiing will both be better that at the end of this year's trip. Furthermore, I initially learned French and Italian at high school, in parallel. I didn't really mix them up. I learned Spanish and Gaelic completely in parallel. I very rarely mix them up. But my Spanish mixes with my French and Italian, and my Gaelic mixes with my French and Italian. The ones I learned together learned to live with each other, but the ones that I didn't learn together get confused. Edited by Cainntear on 06 January 2009 at 7:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| andee Tetraglot Senior Member Japan Joined 7085 days ago 681 posts - 724 votes 3 sounds Speaks: English*, German, Korean, French | Message 8 of 8 06 January 2009 at 7:40am | IP Logged |
|
I'm of the opinion that not confusing languages comes with experience and experimentation.
When I first started studying language I confused whatever I was studying. The most notable was being a raw beginner in both Mandarin and Korean and discovering that it wasn't working for me. I concluded I couldn't study two languages simultaneously. But that was too fast an assumption. Now that I have experimented and studied for a longer period of time I have no such problems. My brain has learnt to separate and categorise languages individually.. so no confusion these days. The more varied your study, the fewer problems you will encounter. That's from my experience anyway. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
