Studying several languages at once (Advice Center) Language Learning Forum

Studying several languages at once
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11 messages over 2 pages: 1 2

patrickwilken
Senior Member
Germany
radiant-flux.net
Joined 4344 days ago
1546 posts - 3200 votes

Studies: German

Message 9 of 11

19 July 2012 at 12:54pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

patrickwilken wrote:

As this is presumably an iterative process it takes a finite amount of time/learning before two distinct languages are distinctly defined cortically.

I would assume that it would be much harder to train up your brain with five separate inputs simultaneously.

There's also the fact that language learning gets progressively easy. After maybe 6 of them (not all fluent) understanding without translating has become MUCH easier for me. So no, in my experience it's not "much harder" though in general I agree that it's better to reach basic fluency in one language first.

That's interesting. I wonder if there is any empirical data on this? I wonder if it matters how closely related the languages are too? For instance, you might suppose that learning two Romance languages simultaneously might interfere with each other in ways that less similar languages didn't (e.g., Spanish & French vs Spanish & Russian). Then again maybe learning similar languages at the same time is easier?

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Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6408 days ago
9753 posts - 15779 votes

4 sounds
Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 10 of 11

19 July 2012 at 2:00pm | IP Logged

For getting your brain hard-coded, unusual and different languages are needed. You don't need to be fluent though. Esperanto and Indonesian are considered quite easy, yet they're certainly unusual, and although I'm just intermediate in both they've been as important as Finnish.

Interference is overrated. It's just more noticeable than simply making mistakes, but essentially that's just the feedback that your level might not be as high as you thought. The benefits outweigh any possible confusion, in my experience: related languages keep one another alive even if you do very little; if you're at least intermediate in one language, you can reach a very high level passively by listening and later reading. (the only language where this has been a total failure is Danish :((( it's just too unclear when spoken) And of course you get the active skills at a discount as well, as long as you have the right attitude and are aware that even mutually intelligible languages are very different.
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Majka
Triglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
kofoholici.wordpress
Joined 4468 days ago
307 posts - 755 votes

Speaks: Czech*, German, English
Studies: French
Studies: Russian

Message 11 of 11

19 July 2012 at 2:49pm | IP Logged

I spent quite a lot of time studying 4 languages at once.
Good idea is to stage the learning - I started with German and one year later added Russian. Another year later, I started to learn English and 2 years later French. The only interference for me was in the beginning between French and English - meaning sometimes I pronounced words "English" instead of French.

What did help me at the time was to be bound by the course schedule. I needed this enforced structure to keep up. Not because I needed to keep the languages separate, but because one needs to rotate the languages systematically. It is very easy to let one of the languages take a backseat.

I am currently studying only one language actively. Sometimes, I stop and cram basic survival phrases in completely different language (the last time it was Turkish for a 5 days before my trip to Turkey) and then forget about it and go back to the one I am studying.

Should I start again to learn multiple languages at one time, I would stage it. I would take a weekend or a week off, cram as much of the language as I can reaching for at least a weak A1 and then continue at more moderate tempo for either one year or up to B1. Only then, I would again take the time for cramming new language - again, trying to reach A1 level as fast as possible. This first push works very well for me - it gets me motivated and one can see results immediately. I wouldn't start several languages at the same time unless I had really important reason.

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