learning more than one language?

Hello again all.

I’m curoius, are any of you (or have you) tried to learn more than one language at a time? I ask because I’m very interested in two languages. The first is Japanese. Which I enjoy thus far, and got interested in initially for business purposes (have been working for a Japanese company for 12+ years now, and think it would be a benefit). The other is Swedish. This is purely “just because I’d like too”. I was always attracted to the Scandinavian culture, and Swedish seems the most widely used of the Scandinavian languages. It just sounds so melodical to me.

I thought that maybe they would be dissimilar enough that it would be okay, but curious what others think.

Thanks,

Hey Bob,

I think everyone is different really…I had a hard time as a student learning one language so 2 at once for me us a little too much. But I think if you have the motivation and desire that will take you a long way

I agree with Stephanie, Bob. It depends on the individual. Perhaps also the languages too. E.g. Learning something like Spanish and Italian at the same time may be quite a challenge given their similarities.

Right now I’m picking up learning Spanish again after a couple of years, which I can easily get-by in, but want to improve to fluency. Whilst recently having started to learn Russian from an absolutely fabulous tutor. I really don’t have any problems with the two. Again if I have any issues it’s between Italian that I speak natively and Spanish!

So if you have the time Bob, I think you should go for it. :)

A couple of years ago I read Barry Farber’s book “How to Learn Any Language – Quickly, Easily, Inexpensively, Enjoyably and On Your Own” and somewhere in there he said something that really struck home for me. Even though he’d acquired 25 languages, his greatest regret was that he hadn’t tried to learn more languages simultaneously as he’d found that having so many extra hooks to tie memories into made it easier and easier to learn more languages.

I’ve only been trying to learn several languages at once for a short while but already I’m noticing interesting things happening when encountering new vocabulary. It’s definitely getting harder to find things that are totally unfamiliar or that don’t at least remind me of something in another language.

Good luck with your studies

Interesting point Aalia. How is it with languages that are similar, like Spanish and Italian? Do you get the vocabulary confused?

It’s too soon for me to say on those languages as I’m an absolute beginner in them. It definitely helps tremendously with comprehension eg Arrive, Arriver, Arribar, Arrivare. I’m concerned that for language production this is going to be a big issue and have been working hard on trying to come up with mnemonic strategies that will overcome the problem.

One idea I came across that seems promising is to use a different towns for language vocabularies and to locate mnemonic visualisations in different parts of the town. For example for gendered languages might have all the masculine words in the north, the feminine in the south and if there are neuter words then locate them somewhere in between like a river, road or rail line, I’m pretty sure any meaningful boundary will do as long as you can create good visualisations with them.

This does mean knowing somewhere pretty well for each language. I’ve even toyed with the idea of using game engines to create customised maps of towns with objects, images and audio presented in strange ways in order to make them memorable.

Having studied many languages I would say that when I forget a word I tend to fill it in with a word from a related language so that Spanish will go to Italian, Polish to Russian, etc. Perhaps languages with similar grammars are stored together. It’s easier keeping the grammar and syntax separate than it is individual lexical items.

Tell us more about the game engines, Aalia. And what an interesting name you have. Is Aalia from the Arabic for height or apex?

Interesting concept Aalia – keep us posted. Who knows, someday you might be famous for the Aalia System!

Alfia, I don’t want to hijack Bob’s thread about multi-language learning so I’ll start another thread about those questions.

Bob I think it helps me if I get started in one language and then once I have the basic grasp I can start another while learning the first. But trying to learn both right from the get go is hard for me.

I agree with Christina on this one. I tend to find my groove in the language then feel confident to take on another one. It really is dependent on your learning style.

Since becoming a mom I find it hard to retain information in general, so for me I think one language is enough for me to try to master at one time.

I just found this thread and though to throw in my opinion… :)

First of all, something sad but true: learning two foreign languages may be a luxury if your mother tongue is a widely-spoken language, but if the language you speak natively has zero international usage, you have no chance but learn as many foreign languages as you can!

I don’t have the experience of starting two languages from scratch at the same time, but I can tell you that starting a second foreign language when you already have some knowledge of another one is a great advantage!

Here in Romanian schools, children generally start their first foreign language when they are 8 and usually keep studying it throughout their secondary and high school. A second language is introduced at age 11-12, so from that moment on, children will study them in the same time…

I was too young to make conscious correlations between English and French at 12, but the fact that I was already accustomed to learning made French much easier!

Then I was lucky enough to have my high school introduce Italian classes as well when I was 17, and it was incredible how much my previous knowledge of French helped! The grammar was almost the same, I could make connections between words and this way it was easier… Of course, I have to give credit to the Latin I know, and to the fact that Romanian, French and Italian are all sister-languages…

So in conclusion, starting similar languages a few years one after the other can be very beneficial… :)

Sandra – excellent point and one I think most English speakers, and Americans especially, don’t often realize.

Tina – studying a language has been shown to be great “brain exercise” and will help your memory get stronger!

I kind of have an affinity for languages and accents etc and I could never learn two at once. I already occasionally mix Swedish in when I speak Spanish. My brain will not multitask. :) I’m impressed by those of you who can do it.