Learning Multiple Languages

My mother studied French, German, and Spanish concurrently during college. She said it was no trouble--she never had an issue with confusing them. As for me, when I started on ChinesePod, I was also trying to improve my French and to get a better foothold in Spanish. But I soon began favoring the Chinese, and the other two fell away. I think it had more to do with the quality of the language instruction than with not being able to study more than one at once, though!

I've just started learning Cantonese, so it's too early to form any conclusions but it feels like it won't be too confusing. When I speak Cantonese it feels like I'm a different person to the person who speaks Mandarin, and my (imaginary) audience is different. Even when reading the characters, even when the whole sentence is exactly the same text, I'll read it in Cantonese and have no idea what it is in the other language, until I read it again in Mandarin. It's not deliberate, it just happens that way. What I never do is try to compare or cross-translate them, though I do explore any startling similarities that spring up and that seems to enrich my understanding of Mandarin too. So what I'm hoping is that as my Cantonese learning increases and I bring back Mandarin study as well, those types of naturally forming partitions will still be in effect and avoid confusion. But at "lesson two" level it's too early to say for sure. Once when I was at university I had to cram for exams in unrelated subjects that contained overlapping content, where the answer to a question would be different depending on the study subject that was being examined. I did several things that seemed to work. I covered all of my books in different colours, used different colours and types of pens (this was pre-computers), studied in different rooms, and studied in the presence of a particular smell for each subject, e.g. eucalyptus, lemon, ginger. I also tried to get into particular mood for each subject - calm and confident, fascinated, determined worker, and for one I confess it was cynical mood. On exam day I could take a scented hanky with me, use the right sort of pen, and wore a shirt of the corresponding colour, and approached each exam paper by employing its familiar state of mind. It seemed to work at the time. So far I haven't needed to use any of those tricks for separating languages, but it's still early days, and I have them up my sleeve. As for putting "ma" at the end of questions, well of course that's just natural. All languages benefit from the use of the question ma particle, and we should continue to apply it to every language we speak ba. :-)

I tend to do languages consecutively in alternation. As in, OK, for the next few months I'll concentrate on, say, Spanish, and other languages go into maintenance mode. Then after that, Chinese. And so forth. One reason is, if you study a language for twice as many hours per day, you get a lot more than twice as much benefit or improvement. In my experience, it seems to be almost a power law: if you study twice as long every day, you get four or more times the benefit. Up to, say, a maximum of four hours a day... beyond that, your brain saturates and it's time to do something else. So if you're splitting your available language study time between two or more languages each day, you're probably robbing yourself of the opportunity to improve faster. Another thing I often find is that after taking a short break from a language, then when you get back into it your mind is very receptive. You can very rapidly get back to your previous level and then make very rapid progress for the next few months. Perhaps the mind craves variety, or something. When a language is in "maintenance mode", conversational ability and active vocabulary does suffer somewhat, although thoroughly-acquired passive vocabulary remains stable. Reading ability remains very stable, listening comprehension falls off only slightly or not at all.

I haven't found it more advantageous either way in terms of academics. With concurrency, I found that I wanted to master one rather than learn two. Others might find concurrency a more interesting method. Any difference in effectiveness was not noticeable to me.

Thanks everyone for the input! pulosm: I bookmarked that guy's blog. That was pretty amazing. It was really interesting how he made all those connections between Vietnamese and languages he had already learned. I would love to be at that point. aeflow: I've found that my brain behaves similarly when I'm learning music. If I take a break for a week or so, it's almost as though it gives my brain time to take out the trash. I'm sure you were talking about longer breaks between languages, but it's the same principle. It's very hard for me to do, because I'm always afraid I'm going to lose momentum. But it usually turns out to be quite beneficial in the end.

I studied Chinese and Spanish concurrently because I never would have thought it possible to confuse the two, but it was. For me, the confusion depends more on how close the two language levels are rather than whether you're actually studying them concurrently. For instance, I'm near-native in both English and Russian, and sometimes (in my thinking rather than speaking) the two mix, which prevents me from expressing my thoughts very coherently in one or the other. When I started studying Spanish after already having an upper-intermediate level in Chinese, I found that I often thought of the Chinese word (because it was more accessible) instead of the Spanish. I suppose my brain groups languages by level and, whenever I try to speak a particular language, it accesses all languages in that language group. The moral of the story might be to get to a very good level in one language before starting another, in which case studying them concurrently shouldn't hinder the learning process.

Lailaash, this is very common. Your mind will cling to what it categorizes as the "foreign language," and will easily confuse the two, so when you grasp for a Chinese word, a Spanish word comes out. As for confusing near-native languages. When I came back from China/Taiwan after being there for a year, when I would speak Spanish (one of my first languages as a kid), I found myself every once in a while adding "ma" to my questions!!! It sounded like I was asking the question to my mother. I would say "Quieres ir ma?" Because in Spanish, as you know, you don't have particles or word order changes for questions--the difference between the question and the statement is just the tone. I felt like it was missing something. You know what I mean ma? ;-)

I guess it depends on your language learning abilities / style, the amount of time you can dedicate to it and the goal you want to achieve. I am on the perfectionist side, wanting to reach 'functional fluency', with a demanding job and a life to live. I don't have the skills of a polyglot, and actually doubt how many people do or that they're even a useful example to follow. Anyway, for me vocab just takes forerever to sink in, but I do have good visual memory and audio-mimicking skills. So when I tried (unsuccesfully) to learn German and Chinese, I failed miserably with both languages. The fascination with Chinese being so much stronger, this is where I put my efforts, even though German would be way more useful on a daily basis. It was not was so much confusion or intermixing as the sheer requirement for brain power. If I had time I think switching between two languages (or two different topics altogether) would actually be advantageous, by alternating chunks of 20-40 minutes, but I don't. BTW, I'm a native French speaker with near-native, self-taught English I've been using in my daily work for many years.

I once tried learning japanese at the same time I was learning chinese. This greatly interfered with my progress. I am a native spanish speaker and found that japanese pronunciation is very easy for spanish speakers, however, the confusion was looking at characters. I was pronouncing them in chinese since it was my strongest language at the time. I don't recommend studying concurrently because you spend extra energy trying to discern the one from the other. Instead I advocate you concentrate in the one that attracts you the most. The advantage is you will improve at a faster rate than doing concurrent studies.

Japanese is actually the only language I seem to confuse with Chinese. Sometimes when I'm studying Chinese, little pieces of Japanese will come to me--which is remarkable, really, since I only had three semesters 15 years ago and never reinforced it by visiting Japan! I wonder what the trigger is? I would guess the 汉字, except that I never did manage to learn many of them back in the day. Maybe it's the occasional cognates. I do tend to pronounce 可爱 in Japanese. :-)

Check this out: http://stujay.blogspot.com/2007/09/part-1-vietnamese-learning-new-language.html He's an amazing polyglot and here he discusses learning Vietnamese. He does a day by day process of what he does to learn, and no joke, by the end of one week, he's kinda got the basics down. Do what works for you. Seriously, everyone's method and skill level for learning languages is different, so don't be overzealous. In other words, know thyself. If you can handle it, do it. If not, don't. That's just general advice. As for me, I have "studied" languages concurrently, but not really in the same way. For instance, when I was studying Mandarin Chinese, I was also learning Turkish from friends, without formal classes. I studied abroad in Armenia for a summer just months before I went to Beijing for a semester (I had been studying Mandarin for two years at that point). It's all very confusing. Right now, I will say, I am studying two languages that are completely different, one is completely new to me and the other I have dabbled with in the past. Also, I have to try to maintain/improve languages I already know pretty well from childhood and from studying. The maintanence gets hard when you are not in the environment. When it comes to languages, I am a big advocate of QUALITY over QUANTITY, though, so maybe just learn one really well, and then start another one.

Children in secondary scholls in the Netherlands learn at least 4 languages concurrently. Dutch, Frernch, English and German. Than extra can be chosen for Latin, Greek,and Spanish. Politicians now want the kids to have the option as well to lean Mandarin. 荷兰是一个小国，所以我们有很多的外国 ！

I definitely know what everybody means about throwing in Chinese words, etc. when you're trying to speak Spanish. My Chinese is fluent and my Spanish isn't nearly as good as it used to be so I throw in "ni" instead of "tu" etc. all the time. One thing I want to bring up is how it's such a shame when parents move to America and don't speak their mother language in the home with the kids. It seems that sometimes the parents insist on speaking English with the kids to fully immerse them. My feeling is that the kids are living in America and can speak all the English they want outside of the home with friends, in school, other activities, etc. It's just a shame to know so many people from China, Taiwan etc. whose parents didn't pass on such a valuable language to their kids. Parents have to start from the very beginning though because otherwise, once the kids are in school, etc. they might be embarrassed to speak Chinese because they want to be "American".

I agree with you, Greg. My parents both come from different countries, and I grew up in different third countries. They each spoke to me in their native languages (though we had Spanish as the "family tongue" for when were all together). Those were the first languages I learned and I still speak them the best, and roll my eyes every time I hear someone say parents should only speak in one language to their children, or risk confusing them. Confusion, alas, comes when one is older.

goulniky, It doesn't matter whether you have the skills of a polyglot or not. To me you are truly an amazing fellow! As far as learning multiple languages at the same time I think it all depends upon one's expectations. You hit the nail right on the head when you talked about the time that it takes to learn a language when you have to balance that time against work, recreation, and personal relationships. I think the problem for most people is that to experience any return on the investment of the time that it takes to become proficient they need to concentrate on one language at a time. I have long ago given up the expectation of becoming proficient in anything but my native English and the Spanish of the country where I now live and work. However, I enjoy learning a about several other languages because it gives me a greater understanding of how other people think and with the language you can't help but pick up some history and culture too. I don't know if I will ever get beyond the high elementary low intermediate level with Mandarin Chinese but the things that I have learned by participating with ChinesePod makes the effort more than worthwhile. For this reason I invite you and everyone else to participate in SpanishSense to some degree and if you are not in an all fired hurry to learn Spanish at least you can pick up some useful phrases and a bit of the culture and have fun doing so. Think of it as a break from Chinese once in awhile. There are two new teachers coming on board, Juan Patricio and Liliana and starting very soon we are going to have a rollicking good time. It is my understanding that Liliana is going to host a cultural show similar to Dear Amber. I am betting that it will become very popular as well. Be sure to check it out. ¡Saludos a todos!

greg I wholeheartedly agree with your comments. One of my abiding regrets is that there was not a conscious effort on my nor my parents' part to retain my Mandarin language skills after immigrating to the US as a young child. It's way harder to gain facility with a language as an adult even if that language was my first tongue.

I've never had any troubles studying more languages concurrently but then I've done most of my basic language learning in school. I began learning English when I was 11 and German at 13 and in high school I added on Italian and I took all three on the highest level possible. When in school it's not really a problem because you're in a situation where you can concentrate fully on your learning. However I've noticed that I sometimes become confused if I have to switch between English and Italian, especially if it has to happen quite suddenly. Somehow my brain is all geared to speak one foreign language and when I then try to switch to another foreign language it has some sort of short circuit making me babble incoherently when I'm actually fluent in both.

lunetta: I've often wondered if switching languages is somewhat like becoming a different person for a moment, almost like when actors get "in character." Switching in and out requires a lot of effort and concentration, which is why some actors never break out of character when they're on the set of a movie. When switching languages, you're not merely switching words around; you're changing your cadence, tone of voice, cultural nuances, etc.

It's funny you should say that because I definitely recognize that feeling. Danish is a very monotone language (which doesn't make it any easier learning mandarin :-) and we don't gesticulate much or talk very loudly. When I speak Italian I do all of these things. I modulate my voice a lot more, I use gestures all the time (is it even possible to speak Italian without moving your hands?) and I become louder as well. It sometimes can result in somewhat embarrassing episodes, e.g. on the train when I answer my cell phone. The unspoken rule here in Denmark is that you don't speak loudly on your phone when in public so I don't do that when answering a call in Danish. However, if the call is from someone Italian I automatically speak a lot louder because that's just what you do in Italian and of course it lands me a lot of annoyed looks from my fellow passengers.

goulniky: I think I'm in a similar situation. I'm sure my job isn't as demanding as yours, but I still tend to divide my time between several different things. And I'm a bit of a perfectionist as well. Perhaps if I devoted most or all of my free time to language learning, I could effectively learn two languages side by side from the ground up. Unfortunately, that's just not feasible at the moment. My plan for right now is to focus on Mandarin for a while longer, and then maybe start a language that would be relatively easier for me (like Spanish). I think staggering the levels might reduce the possibility of brain overload. I wondered what your native language was...I couldn't pick out your accent when you appeared on News & Features. Great job, BTW.