Hi!
I’ve been taking Spanish in school, and have found that I could take another language with Spanish next year. i would most likely choose either French or German. In your advice, would I confuse myself, or should I take the oppurtunity? I have some previous study in French… I know this is sort of a personal subject, but in general, what is your opinion?
What can I say? I learned German, Spanish, Italian, Latin, French and English at the same time. A couple of years later I learned Dutch, Russian, Polish, Czech and Basque and then a couple of years later Macedonian, Swedish and Danish (I must confess I got quite confused with Swedish and Danish, so I dropped Danish for a while) and now I’m learning Japanese. I don’t know, it hasn’t done me any harm (at least so I hope ;D).
I don’t think that it would be a problem to study two languages at a time!
BD, is hardly a good example though. He is a prodigy, but remember that even he had problems keeping to very similar languages seperate
So unless your Spanish is well-entrenched, you might
want to choose German, which would have less interference with Spanish.
With French you would have alot of similarity, which could give you an advantage, but you may have some bleed over from Spanish into French, which French teachers really hate.
Yeah, you’re right, this is something that may vary greatly from person to person.
I’d been trying lately to learn both Dutch and Finnish and, at a certain point I noticed I was starting to get them all mixed up, at least in what concerns pronounce.
For instance, I was unconsciously pronouncing double consonants in Dutch as they are in Finnish (hard to get rid of this one…), and pronouncing the vocals differently in Finnish, depending if they are followed or not by two consonants.
Now when it comes to grammar (and vocabulary, for that matter) I don’t think there has been much intereference, as the concepts differ radically from each other here. It’s been quite simple to switch directly from thinking in Dutch to thinking in Finnish, no intermediate status here.
For that very reason I’d choose German, if I were in your place, even having some previous knowledge of French. But, then again, your brain will hardly work the same way as mine, so what’s an obstacle for me may well not be one for you.
I’d grab the opportunity; if you really love language learning and have enough free time to dedicate to the study of a new one, don’t you think that would be nice ? Lack of free time is what’s been preventing me from getting deeper into the few languages I managed to understand a little so far. I just wish I could add two more to the list (Swedish and Japanese), but I can’t see when this is gonna happen. Sigh.
WQuinette, from Brazil.
PS: If you’re a language lover, this is the place for you.
You see, if English had feminine forms for adjectives, I would know by now if J_22_M is a man or a woman. Unless M stands for male, well I don’t know squat about that, either.
I’ve tried a couple of times. When I was much younger, two at a time was a challenge but manageable, and three (Spanish, elementary Latin, and Sanskrit) possible but exhausting.
Two years ago, I tried Russian and Bulgarian (at 25% intensity) and Chinese (full) (all entry level). A total failure, when counting credits. Perhaps working 50% at the same time wasn’t a good idea.
I now try to concentrate on one language at a time, rehearsing all those that I followed but skipped/failed tests.
The above relates only to university courses that I have attended. In High school, we had English, German and French; for two or three years all of them. No problem at all at that age. Some guys even added Spanish. I asked for Latin, but that wasn’t allowed in the science branch in Senior High. The "full classical" branch had Latin and Greek as well.
Thanks for all your suggestions. I’ll keep you updated on the outcome of my schedule. ;) I didn’t realise how many language many of you speak. I counted 13 languages from BD. Whoa. Thought i was going overboard with 2. I guess language learning has a different set of norms based on the country. I’ll answer to J, or any variation on that theme…
Finally, Estoy athletico, Je suis jeun, get it yet?
The world’s most prolific living polyglot is Ziad Fazah (born 1954) who apart from his mother tongue Arabic is reported to speak 55 other languages. Calculations as to how many languages now-dead polyglots spoke is difficult, since no one can offer an objective description of what is required to "know a language" fluently, but the greatest polyglot in history is believed to be cardinal Giuseppe Gaspardo Mezzofanti (1774-1849), who is reported to have spoken up to a hundred languages fluently (though about fifty of them were "only" dialects). On a visit from the Lord Byron, he surprised Byron by showing a more extensive knowledge of local London slang than the poet himself.
<<< So unless your Spanish is well-entrenched, you might
want to choose German, which would have less interference with Spanish.
With French you would have alot of similarity, which could give you an advantage, but you may have some bleed over from Spanish into French, which French teachers really hate.<<<
I have similar experiences as Sitran (and others)... And also for me the age issue (mentioned by? sorry!!) is a kind of a problem .
At a younger age, we had Latin, Greek, French, English and German in secundary school. I can’t remember ever having mixed up things. THEN.
When i started to learn Portuguese, my French, which i didn’t speak often at that moment, got completely messed up and infested with Portuguese words, sometimes without even realising it immediately.
When learning Chinese and Farsi, languages which haven’t anything in common, i sometimes mixed up things, so i decided to go for Chinese first and then advance with Farsi.
At home, we actually speak three, four languages, and sometimes English words pop in my French, or Farsi words in her English or Dutch.
On the other hand, these are just personal impressions: i also know a few people who don’t have problems at all.
I have been always learning multiple languages ever since I discovered all the wonders of Latin in my first year in Junior High. Through high school days I learnt English, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian (all the L family) and Ancient Chinese and Greek. I must confess that my progress on the L languages are rather disappointment. I know exactly how to sound native and do sound so but, ehkumm, I talk like a four-year old.
French and then Hebrew followed by Arabic, modicum of German and flashy pieces in Modern Chinese came much later. I find Arabic and Chinese are most resistant to my effort at sound mimickery.
Hebrew is the easiest for me to sound native. Not so much big consonant clusters, simplified sound palette and regular intonation create a facile yet strong and beautiful phonaesthetic imagery. I can continue enumerating speech samples of male and female singers/artists to discuss why I regard them beautiful but that is going too off the topic.
Back to the confusion and all, I never confuse languages unless I intentionally let myself. Perhaps sound difference helps (I can sense foreign words or grammatical structures sound strange in the language I am speaking at the moment), but distances between those languages I study (and never finish) account for most of my intuition.
Thanks for all of your help. In the end, I found that my school won’t offer it this year :( They only have like three students for French I, so I wonder what will happen to those three? Maybe next year….
They only have like three students for French I, so I wonder what will happen to those three?
when I was at highschool they forced us to sit at the back of the german class for 3 out of our 5 lessons (there were 5 of us to begin with). The other two lessons were held in the teacher’s office.
Eventually we got down to two students, a boy from Mauritius and myself. We "studied" in the library, and had 1 face to face lesson with the teacher per week.
When I went to do my oral exam, they commented on my slightly unusual accent, and that I seemed to be using regional words in my essays and responses.
As I left the room, my fellow pupil walked in. I turned around as I closed the door, and saw that they’d figured out where I was learning my vocabulary
I started studying Portuguese and Italian more or less at the same time. I wouldn’t say it was difficult, because it wasn’t, but I used to speak in Italian in my Portuguese classes.
Now I have to decide what to do next year: start a new language (French or German) or improve any of the others (English, Italian or Portuguese).
.
