In school I had to learn French and English (starting 1 year apart) at the same time. Mixing them up was actually no problem at all, I guess they are far enough apart. However, I later studied in Japan and took Japanese classes. At that point I haven't used any French (I had reached level B2, although just barely, so it wasn't just a few sentences) for 1-2 years and whenever I tried to speak French later on I could only remember the Japanese words for whatever I was trying to say. The most interesting thing for me is your experience with mixing up your mother language. It happens to me so so quickly. After a few weeks of only speaking English I struggle with speaking German, like sentence structure and specific words. Conjunctions and filler words are especially bad for me personally. Sometimes I also sound like an absolute idiot when speaking German because I overcompensate by using archaic German words for things that have long been replaced by anglicisms in everyday German speech but I completely forgot (or am unsure) about that.
It is definitely possible! Learning languages simultaneously is the only way that language learning stays fun for me. When I get bored with one language, I just switch to another. Although at this point, I am probably using at least 3-4 languages a day. (Though by "using", it may be something as simple as listening to a song or writing a comment on a YT video in that language). A lot of people seem worried that they will mix languages up if they are studying multiple at once, but I have never had that problem. Also, if I don't use a language for a few months and then come back to it, it seems like I have gotten better at the language despite it lying dormant. In short, take a break if it stops being fun. Language learning is usually a waste of time unless you enjoy it.
I remember that time in school when i was doing both finnish, swedish, russian (native) and english and i remember how my Russian was kind of sad in comparison. I didn't have bad grammar but I had tougher time expressing thoughts in russian. And it was actually really hard to express emotions finely. I feel like talking one language half-decently is so much more impressive than remembering this much information as 4 languages.
I am mixing up Korean and Japanese quite a bit. I suspect it's because I'm old. When I was in college I got into language learning and studied German, French, Spanish all at the same time pretty much. My boss at work who was Greek American thought I would mix them all up but I didn't. That was college. Older me decided to study Japanese at age 34 and then moved to Japan at age 39 for two years. I had problems switching between English and Japanese. Mostly, if I were having a conversation in Japanese and then switched to English, switching back to Japanese was hard. Then after returning to the US I decided to learn Korean at age 42. The beginner grammar and stuff went well because of my Japanese studies (similar word order, post positions instead of prepositions etc) but then when I tried doing free talking instead of just textbook style short conversations Japanese would get mixed into my Korean. And I didn't even realize it unless the person I was talking to couldn't understand me and then I would think hmmm maybe I'm mixing in Japanese... I've found that choosing an iTalki tutor who speaks both languages can be a better choice since Koreans that don't speak Japanese tend to get annoyed at me if I speak Japanese to them (go figure!). I'm blaming my age and too many years of sleep deprivation but it could be other reasons too - like even though I am conversational in Japanese it's still a distant hard language for me while European languages sink in better. Interesting and very relevant topic for me. I'll look for your other videos.
I'm learning spainsh and Italian. Both are Very similar! I'm moslty learning spainsh so I can talk to spainsh speakers here in the states. Italian I'm just doing for fun on my breaks, also because I love how they talk and I'm 1/4 italian. I've been translateing spainsh words, sentences from spanish to italian. It helps me reinforce spainsh and i feel like I have no problem keeping them separate. Spainsh: El serpiente verde vive en los árboles. Italian: il serpente verde vive sugli alberi.
When I was working at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin I was learning German, Russian, Romanian and Italian at the same time. German by using it at work, reading a lot and socialising. Romanian by daily reading and listening to Assimil, talking to neighbours and later listening to history podcasts. Russian by daily reading and listening to Assimil and talking to neighbours. Italian by hanging out with Italians and listening to history podcasts. It's all a matter of good habits and time management.
I'm a native English speaker (USA), somewhat conversant in Spanish, with a smattering of Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Russian. I've decided to give Romanian a try, and as was stated in the video, it's different enough from the other Romance languages that I'm not getting confused. There's also a Slavic influence to it, which makes me grateful for having studied Russian to some extent. Be that as it may, currently, in addition to Romanian, I'm going to study Russian again. And I'm using Duolingo for both, not as a main source, but as one source, based on a previous video on this channel.
With multiple languages, at some point the infamous "false friends" accumulate to form an awkward barrier to progress. In addition to learning more new words you have to focus a lot of energy to stay alert to all kinds of fine distinctions and avoid confusion. So I find keeping languages completely apart and making an effort to not translate or switch is much easier. I had a stunning experience when I returned from Japan. I am German. My first foreign language was English which I perfected by the age of 17. I went to Japan where I only spoke Japanese, but I also sometimes spoke English with people from America Australia and England. When I returned with Singapure Airlines I found myself to be able to speak only German and Japanese. But when I wanted to ask a stewardess to give me an orange juice in English because nobody on that flight would speak German nor Japanese my English was completely blocked. Somehow the "main storage" of the brain only allows for two "code pages" i.e. languages to be present at the same time.
Outstanding! Neurological similarity between woodworking and welding. You are not going to mix them up, but if you do, your will find out quick enough!
I'm Italian and I studied Japanese, living in Japan for one year. When I came back to Italy for a few weeks I kept answering very basic questions in Japanese (like saying はい instead of sí and もちろん instead of certo) Of course after a while it did not happen so much, since I was not surrounded by Japanese anymore. But I kept using it for work. After a couple of years I started learning Spanish, and guess what? When some word would not come up in Spanish (during lessons, mainly) I had the Japanese term coming up instead. Not English, that is my best foreign language. Maybe it was because of the phonological similarities between Japanese and Spanish, who knows... Anyway I find it really hard to maintain the level of previously learned languages. I had never thought of using your method, I will give it a try! Thanks!
I had this happen to me when I returned to the USA from Japan. A lot of filler words or things you say reflexively without thinking were just coming out before I realized it. I was so embarrassed but I don't think anyone I was talking to even noticed. They didn't speak Japanese and just filtered it out I think.
Many thanks for these helpful tips! When I was at university I used to write on a notebook sets of words and phrases for different usages in different languages. My idea was to learn many languages related to a similar language branch, in order to have less difficulties with the grammar, but after a while I started noticing some confusion, so I decided to learn languages from different families (like Hebrew and Japanese) at the same time and the results improved.
Been learning Mandarin, Thai, Korean & Japanese with tutors for each and about an hour a day for each. Seems perfectly doable for me but I’m rich, less resources you have I imagine the more difficult it becomes, especially for HSK Books or TTIMK books.
I’d say possible, but ineffective. Better focus on one at a time. If you have to learn simultaneously, make the two languages as different as possible. Preferably, the ones in different language group.
I Would love a language learning routine. I'm completely new to learning a second language and feeling overwhelmed. The last time I tried to learn was 35 years ago in high school. It took me 4 years to get through 2 years of beginner French. Yes, I had to repeat each class because I failed the first time. I guess I'm a slow learner. Just hearing your strategy of narrating your day was eye opening for me. It would never have occurred to me to do that.
French *_IS_* a notoriously difficult one; and I had to quit it, in high school, due to our middle school French education being dogwater (we spent the last half of each lesson, singing the same 1 or 2 songs; was fun, but didn’t help learning the more advanced stuff, later on). It also didn’t help that I went to high school, in the Classical High School of Tampere; a language-emphasizing elite high school; the bar was pretty high 😅.
I tried learning a couple of languages on my own through hard study and failed. Now, clarify, I'd say I am only around N4 level in Japanese, but I just relaxed and don't take it too seriously. I do daily exercises similar to some, he said, but don't beat myself up if I fail to do them. Read, watch tv, do app exercises, formal study, Italki, just keep sprinkling in when I can. Ultimately, there are lots of times when I fall off and feel like I come back stronger because I let myself digest. Side note: nothing wrong with hard study, it is very personality dependent and what works for you. Try a few ways and see.
I'm learning Italian and Spanish together. I've been learning spanish for longer but I'm not fluent yet. Any other spanish/italian learners keep getting those 2 languages mixed up? 😆 I'll be trying to speak italian and the only words that will come up are spanish. I have to "push" away the spanish and try to reach for the italian ones. Sometimes my mind feels completely blocked or ill be speaking spanish without realizing it. How do I get over this? I think there are pro and cons. Pros are that it reinforces your second language. So I think in spanish which is good. Cons are I mix up words. This is the video I needed. Grazie 😃
I studied French around 15 years ago. Haven't practiced since. I notice when I try to speak French, short words like 'but' accidentally get replaced by a more recent language I learned. I accidentally used Chinese and Russian words mixed through my French sentences 😂
I am working (actively taking classes in) French (B1), German and Swedish (A1 both) - I am also fiddling around with Latin and Greek, but nor very actively. My classes are on different days, and then 3 days later I'll do the homework and study, with the extra day each week taking a little time for Latin and Greek (I have a tutor and every 2-3 weeks we meet and go over the assignments in the GCSE series by Taylor - I'm most of the way through the 1st book in both). I have not really had a problem mixing them up, and it actually helps that German and Swedish have words that are cognate, but not cognates with the English (or French) word. Latin and French are different enough that they don't get mixed up, but they do both help each other a bit (with vocabulary - their grammars are fairly different) - also nice that Latin and Greek are helping me negotiate the case system of German. I do the Duolingo 'lessons' for French, German, and Swedish daily - I find Duolingo to be a pretty decent vocabulary tool, even if it isn't great at teaching grammar, and the pronunciation - both listening and speaking - isn't great. For an 'on' day, in addition to the class or homework, I will also fit in some UA-cam videos or other online resources in my target - which really helps too. For French, I do have a conversation group that I join online as well (through the Alliance Francaise), but I haven't found something similar for German or Swedish - but I am also not yet ready to try free-conversation in either language, maybe in a year or so. I don't think I could squeeze another language in and be at all effective at learning them all. I may even end up dropping one if it becomes overwhelming, but I have managed fairly well since the start of the year, and seem to be keeping up with my classmates. So - until I get to my goals in these languages, I won't be adding any others - though I do want to learn another six eventually, I won't be starting another until maybe 2029/2030; and won't be finished until ... well, never? Because maybe by then I will have a couple of others I want to add too.
A very fun and enlightening way of language learning, I was struggling with this because I'm mainly learning Japanese but wanted to pick up Arabic for my fourth language.
With respect, this is a solid basis which will depend on a lot of factors. I worked with Poles and my listening and speaking skills are better than my reading and writing. I've been in England for decades but I learnt it in school, so my reading and writing are above average. At the moment, I can communicate in Italian at work but it's done through emails, so again it tips the balance. As the famous Hungarian polyglot, Lomb Kató once wrote: knowing a language is the only skill which can be imperfect and still useful at the same time.
I learned German 🇩🇪 1 year after I learned French 🇫🇷. Being Catholic ⛪ , I learn Latin but I have been learning that slowly 🐌 since high school 🏫. I am learning Tagalog now. I echo his last words of advice: if you want to learn more than 1 language on 1 year, I recommend learning languages which are dissimilar. Example. German has more than enough vocabulary and grammar which did not interfere with learning French.
I think one thing that can help to prevent mixing up language is viewing them almost like people with personalities, traits, and oddities. I also find looking up the etymologies and cognates of the words I am learning help a lot. I find it helps prevent false friend situations while maximizing the advantages of learning languages that are related. For my studies, the biggest thing that helps to remember words is building a context around the word. This can be a funny observation ("kaka" brother in Swahili sounds like "caca" poo in several other languages), an interesting etymology (Spanish "hablar" and Portuguese "falar" are both from Latin "fabulor"), and actual language use (especially regarding topics you are interested in). I am studying twenty different languages at the moment, but I devote different amounts of time depending on my language goals for that language. I would say most of my time is spent on three, but I still find that things I learn from the other languages help in various ways. And I do try to focus on switching fairly frequently. With the romance languages especially, you might have a situation where the standard word for something in Language 1 is like the word in Language 2, but the word used in a regional dialect is more like a word in Language 3.
I did not manage to learn Spanish and Italian at the same time. So I quit Spanish and being fluent in French learning Italian became very easy. Then I started Arabic and was afraid of forgetting French and Italian, but since I had a very good level in both languages I could easily dig it out again. Starting Hebrew after Arabic was actually easier since they are closer than i thought but still different enough to not mix them up :-)
I initially set out only to learn Spanish and to an extent I still only really focus on Spanish in terms of book work, however over the past few years I keep finding myself gravitating towards Catalan, Portuguese and the occasional bit of Italian media either here or Netflix etc and just through exposure i at least learned to understand stand them spoken while trying to expand on my Spanish and have fun with the Latin languages but I think it would be rather difficult to study them all at once being so similar
It's easy for you because you are very intelligent! I speak English and Spanish because I grew up with them but I've tried to learn German and French and it's just too much of a struggle. I'm not too bright.
After focusing exclusively on Japanese for more than 10 years, I decided to brush up my German, and also started learning Icelandic and Russian. I achieved my first target which was to become able to sing in those languages, and be able to discuss about chess. My method (?) is to learn one tonguetwister, one song, one bad word, basic greetings, the numbers from one to ten, and one joke in every language. And of course the names of chess pieces. I have studied the basics of many more languages. Sometimes, it is benefitial to study simultaniously languages with similar alphabets, for example Arabic and Persian or Cambodian and Thai, because of shared or similar script. After studying Chinese, Korean and Armenian, I managed to understand the difference between aspired and unaspired consontans. Japanese helped me understand pre-alphabetic Greek, written with Linear B' script, because it is almost the similar system. Kurdish (Sorani) helped me to improve my arabic, because of the same script. Russian is helpful if you study Serbian, Bulgarian or Mongolian, thanks to common Cyrillic script. Vietnamese helped me understand the Chinese tones, because I could focus only on the pronunciation. Pre-modern Japanese is benefitial with Traditional Chinese. Same letters. Korean grammar and Japanese grammar is quite similar. Coptic was very interesting because of the Greek letters. Conclusion: Some languages have common characteristics and you will understand the benefit if you study them simultaniously.
It's a very interesting point of view. Until now, I've always heard that it's better to separate languages and you recommend to practice swiching them 😅. Actually that might work for me because I can't switch between langages that I speak pretty well. My brain has to go on certain language mode so when someone switch a language all of the sudden, I'm really confused
I’m an American and I caught myself trying to pronounce my Italian like I pronounce my Japanese! I was really surprised by that, because I hadn’t practiced Japanese in a long time.
I am trying to learn 2 languages (Italian and German). Apps like Duolingo and Babbel will ask for a reason like "to improve skill" or "for fun" or "for business". My reason is a bit more direct. I now have Italian (and soon, Austria) citizenship and want to move to the EU (from the US) in a few years. So, my goal is to become as fluent as possible so that I can integrate into Italy and Austria more easily. I hope to be able to meet new Italian and Austrian friends soon after I get past A2.
Back in middle high school I had Latin, Old Greek, French, English and even German for just a year (just for an hour; which is absolutely ridiculous, but hey, I guess it's a Belgian thing). Learning 5 languages at the same time is possible, but learning them to a level that you're capable of having abstract conversations? Well... you'll need a very good approach and have a considerable amount of time to spend on them. I learned enough German to order things (my native language does really help out with understanding German); I learned enough French to understand about 70-80% of what's said in movies (for 8 years, which means it's seriously underwhelming for that time period), I was already fluent in English (5 years) by the age of 12, so I never really had any major issues there. And as for Latin (4) and Old Greek (5)? I can read texts (since that's what we practiced for) and the complexity of those depends on whether I have a dictionary or not. Though especially my Old Greek is quite rusty. However, the underwhelming level is, in my opinion, mostly due to poor teaching practises. There's no consistency; it's more about taking tests and getting grades than actually learning something useful (in fact, the only language for which vocabulary was taught with regular repetition were Latin and Old Greek). Everyone here in Flanders jokes about how they studied French for years, but really just have basic-mediocre knowledge of the language. How we live in a country where about half of the population is a Francophone and few Anglophones are present, yet everyone knows better English than French. When I decided to learn Spanish (the language I'm currently spending most of my time on) - though obviously with some knowledge of other Romance languages at that point - I reached the same level I had in French in just 1 year (without even studying as much; I had 3-5 hours of French a week minus the time I spent on it at home; I studied Spanish for about 2-3 hours a week). When I went to Spain I could speak with much more confidence than I ever had with French (probably because I didn't care as much about making mistakes). Perhaps there's also the matter of motivation. I never actually chose to learn French, I was forced to do it. Of course, there's only so much time one can spend learning a language in high school when you have a curriculum that mainly focusses on maths and science. So, also in my experience, the methods you use to learn a language indeed make a huge difference.
Ive been learning italian on the side. Im mainly learning spainsh, but i like to switch over to italian when i get bored (ive been playing around with german too). Its very a similar language so how i keep it separate is translate spainsh words into italian, that way i reinforce spainsh while learning a different language. Learning it that way helps me keep the 2 separate....or at least it works for me.
Thank you very much for your advice of how to train the brain for switching several languages! You are 100 per cent right! I am Czech with a fluent English and intermediate German. When I speak German there are always moments when the English takes over if the German starts waver. I first thought it's all my fault I wasn't good enough Ishould dump the German! You brought the light into this problem! Thanks once more!! 👍👍👍❤👌🙏
Great video! I just started German on Duolingo (which I have existing experience with) but decided to try Latin as well. I was just thinking today that might be a problem, and then this very timely video comes out! Thank you! So far the only problem I've had is accidentally saying "ist" instead of "est". Hard to believe that the simple German word for "is" was probably a loan word from the Romans; there's no way that's just a coincidence.
Buongiorno. Thank you for creating this "sub-channel". I am here in Italy learning Italian, but I have Erre moscia, which totally kills my ambition to learn the language, I know some regions' citizens have the same issue(ex. Parma), just wanted to ask is it common and is it difficult to understand people who have "Erre Moscia"?
My immediate guess, before starting the video, would be; it might be plausible if the different languages were part of the same family, and possess similar phonetics and structural elements. Making progress on learning those languages more manageable. Now to watch the video to see if my hypothesis has merit.
Hmmmm, I remember learning Chinese and Japanese at the same time as a Korean and actually finding the similarities between simplified Hanzi and Japanese Kanji more helpful than confusing. I would study Chinese in the morning and Japanese in the afternoon -- the same symbols would be there but just read differently, so it was a quick review! BUT I think the same cannot be said for Slavic languages. Studying Ukranian and Russian at the same time is confusing me much more than the Chinese-Japanese pair. So I think yes it definitely depends on your background and the extent of differences between the target languages.
Hey Metatron! Awesome video as usual! I have a rather unusual question: Going from the absolute beginning, until fluency, at what point in learning a language is it best to start focusing on slang words, swear words, and expletives? Much appreciated!
I worry this is a daft question, but when you say "advanced beginner/early intermediate" or "fluent", how would you compare those labels to something like CEFR levels? (I ask because they can mean different things to different people/in different contexts: i.e. people tried to encourage me by saying my German was great at baaaaarely B1 level; now I've lived here for a couple of years, I'm fluent enough to use German as my day-to-day language, read Die Unendliche Geschichte, and watch German TV/films [having to look up at least a few words each time I read/watch]; but I can't make head nor tail of Goethe's Faust, so definitely not fluent enough to be a schoolteacher-I end up getting super confused as to what 'good' is. 🤷♀) *Wow, how badly did I overexplain that? 🤔
"Advanced beginner" to me means somewhere around A2 and "Early intermediate" probably around B1. These CEFR levels reflect not just speaking skills, but also listening and reading skills, and language knowledge. To me "fluent" is limited to speaking skills, at any level of language. I teach English, and I have students who are fluent speakers at a level of A1, but also others who are clearly at B2 or above in terms of language knowledge, reading and writing, but really struggle with listening and speaking - these are by no means fluent speakers.
Working on trying to do Polish while I'm working on my German. I've been doing German for quite a while now, so I feel like I gave myself enough of a focused start on that
I am fluent in 6 languages learning 4: spanish (Pretty advanced), italian (keep mixing with spanish 😂), mandarin (love it!), french (hate the language, dont understand why people call it language of love, language of love is Italian ❤, french is just Throat acke, so I guess I will never master this aweful language😂).
the tips sound great. I have a huge difficulty to learn spanish as a native Portuguese speaker because I mix up verbs conjugations of the same word that have in both languages. If I try to learn Mandarin and japanese at same time would the kanji overlap cause similar issue? I am trying to learn as a kid would first spoken then after read and writing sound a good plan for my mild dyslexic self.
Course, it's easier study simultaneously two similiar languages, for example is more easy study two indo-european languages like italian and franch or italian and german that study two language from two different language family as for example spanish and chinese.
To get a job working in a ski resort in Andorra, in Europe, I need English, Spanish, French, and Catalan. I have a difficult job ahead of me, don't I?...
Lol, native Mandarin speaker (though moved to European speaking countries very young) learning Japanese - I frequently run into scenarios where I see a string in either Chinese or Japanese but the only way I can read it (without looking it up) is by mixing the two languages. Whoopsie.
I am not fluent in any of these but I took French, Portuguese and Japanese classes and is possible to learn them. Plus in college one can use them daily. Is fun. However, it took me a couple of weeks to stop mixing up French and Portuguese. 😂😂
At school heading for university I had to learn two foreign languages besides my mother tongue, the dialect of Palatinate Electorate, and Standard German (others even had three) in my case English and French. No problems encoutered. I became fluent in making spelling errors in all of them. Much later, in my 30'ies I learned Castellano at public university. After a few months into it, I was no longer able to speak French, and the same happened with to mates who both lost their abilities in French and Italian respectively. I suspect that romance languages are stored at a place in brain where the capacity is limited. Btw I never mix up languages.
I took 5yrs of French between high school and college. That was 30yrs ago , I just tried Spanish for 1st time , my brain 🧠 immediately meshes it French . Tangled mess of French in my 🧠. However I stopped trying to learn Spanish. And tried Polish ans some Ukrainian and it was easier for me and no French meshes . I think if the 2 languages are vastly different it is easier to learn .
I had a switching problem when I was studying English and German and coudn't read Japan in English, I was stuck reading in German in the English class, to the amazement of my English teacher 😅
A language-switching tutorial would be an immense help for me. I am that Anglophone, who having acquired some Italian, has started learning Spanish. When I do speaking practice I can concentrate on the language and its phonology - and it's not too bad (at the level I am currently at). However, when I need to concentrate on the message - when talking to a bank or a mechanic or instance - the word-salad that comes out of my mouth nothing short of comical...
unfortunately I'm an ADD language learner. Learned some Spanish , French, Russian, & Vietnamese as a kid. As an Adult I learned some Scottish and Irish Gaelic since both are similar. Worked a bit on Welsh before getting sidelined with Taekwondo Korean and some Japanese as pertained to Judo, Kendo etc. s and Chinese. Since I like tablet weaving Old Norse and Swedish became important since the patterns are written in these. Big medieval history buff so kind of pick on stuff as it comes along.
Oi gente Rafael ,I would really like to see a detailed " my daily language learning routine " video from you . I'm sure lots of people/ subscribers would and I bet it would be one of your highest view counts and sub collecting videos for this channel
I don't recommend learning Dutch and the same time as Norwegian. Not only do their vowels sound similar, but the identical pronunciation of "het" (Dutch neuter definite article) and "et" (Norwegian neuter indefinite article) leads to semantic mix-ups, as does the fact that Norwegian has been heavily influenced by Low German and thus looks more like Dutch than even High German does.
I worked with a woman. that sometimes speaked Swedish with American Grama. I think It was when she was tired. she falled back to american gramatics. I don´t know how common that is.
Consigli utili davvero. Io, una volta 'imparato' l'italiano, ho abbandonato completamente lo spagnolo perché confondevo le parole. Solo dopo tanti anni sto cercando di risuscitare il francese e lo spagnolo che ho studiato a scuola.
I have a question topic: when I have a basis of a language, should I listen to media without subtitles if I understand the concept of the sentences? Or should I put on the subtitles and see new vocabulary?
In the book Cat in the Hat...Dr Seuss uses at least 5 different languages and I remember every word to that song...of course I was a child they say it's easier to learn then. But yes... XD
my main foreign language in school was english, and i started german in high school. ye that didnt work at all :D cant form a sentence in german even after 5 years of having 2 lessons a week. to be fair i did give up in the 2nd year
One thing I wondered was why languages don't sink in when trying to learn them? (English isn't my first language (thanks to dyslexia) so forgive me if I ask confusing question). English I remember a lot although I live in Britain so that is less surprising and I had extra English language lessons, though I might forget the correct way to address someone and say "Katov?" rather than "What is it?" or "How can I help?" or "You called?" and say "Da" instead of "Yes" and "Tak" instead of "Thanks" or even the Northern variant of "Tar". German I remember somewhat and I did it in GCSE. Russian I remember some bits here and there and I did it on Busuu back in 2020 (I wanted my Soviet characters to seem more real). Spanish I can remember some words and phrases and native Spanish speakers even think I have good pronunciation, with the caveat that its Mexican pronunciation and I've had no formal Spanish training. French I did in school years 6, 7, 8 and 9 but I can't remember much about it, as for pronunciation I have been told by some native French speakers "it sounds archaic, like you're doing a medieval French re-enactment".
@@pxolqopt3597 I've no idea, I know from my Norwegian family it means "Thanks" or "Thank you" in Norwegian. Granted my own native language is a dyslexia construct (although I can see why its often mistaken for Russian) so I'd be happy to hear from a speaker of a Slavic language.
@@edspace. Your "native language" is your first language, which is the language that you first picked up from the people that raised you when you were a small child, before you could read and write. Dyslexia is difficulty with reading and writing, so it has nothing to do with language acquisition in infancy. So what was your first language really?
@@omp199 I'm not entirely sure, neither were the doctors when they were trying to understand why my language acquisition was not happening as quickly as expected. They ruled out hearing impairment and eventually diagnosed me with autism (which might explain the mistakes of communication, granted there is a theory of dyslexia that it causes sound comprehension jumbling (hence a more common symptom being greater propensity to mishear lyrics) but you are right in that this is not confirmed to be a result of dyslexia and could equally be an autistic trait or something else entirely). I remember back at school I law my language listed as "English L 1.5" as opposed to "English L 1" like most of my friends or "English L 2" and sometimes my native language was put down as "Scottish English" (although this may have been a mistake since my family mix is Irish, Northern English, Norwegian and so on), most commonly its put down as "Non-Standard English Variation". Sorry for being confusing, hope this helps.
@@edspace. That is interesting. Thank you for explaining further. Although I will admit that some of what you wrote above confused me, I would say that the English that you have acquired now seems pretty much in line with the standard and is pretty good. I'm sure you must have worked on it a lot since you were a child.
I would love to learn every language and I wish every one did too. Everyone understanding everyone. I would speak French when flirting or being romantic. I would speak German talking about engineering. Russian when I'm pissed. Arabic when I talk about the stars. Japanese with my kids lol they love Japanese cartoons. I'd speak English with my wife because she wouldn't play ball and learn any new language lol.
In school I had to learn French and English (starting 1 year apart) at the same time. Mixing them up was actually no problem at all, I guess they are far enough apart. However, I later studied in Japan and took Japanese classes. At that point I haven't used any French (I had reached level B2, although just barely, so it wasn't just a few sentences) for 1-2 years and whenever I tried to speak French later on I could only remember the Japanese words for whatever I was trying to say.
The most interesting thing for me is your experience with mixing up your mother language. It happens to me so so quickly. After a few weeks of only speaking English I struggle with speaking German, like sentence structure and specific words. Conjunctions and filler words are especially bad for me personally. Sometimes I also sound like an absolute idiot when speaking German because I overcompensate by using archaic German words for things that have long been replaced by anglicisms in everyday German speech but I completely forgot (or am unsure) about that.
I'm doing it right now with Finnish and German. Sometimes I'll mix up words, but overall it's not that hard to keep them separate.
German and Finish are two pair of shoes.
Sind zwei paar Schuhe :)
German and Dutch however could lead to mixing them up into a combined language.
@heartraidersofficial4839 At least you already know Spicy Spanish 😉.
Onnee Suomen opiskeluu
It is definitely possible! Learning languages simultaneously is the only way that language learning stays fun for me. When I get bored with one language, I just switch to another. Although at this point, I am probably using at least 3-4 languages a day. (Though by "using", it may be something as simple as listening to a song or writing a comment on a YT video in that language). A lot of people seem worried that they will mix languages up if they are studying multiple at once, but I have never had that problem. Also, if I don't use a language for a few months and then come back to it, it seems like I have gotten better at the language despite it lying dormant. In short, take a break if it stops being fun. Language learning is usually a waste of time unless you enjoy it.
I remember that time in school when i was doing both finnish, swedish, russian (native) and english and i remember how my Russian was kind of sad in comparison. I didn't have bad grammar but I had tougher time expressing thoughts in russian. And it was actually really hard to express emotions finely. I feel like talking one language half-decently is so much more impressive than remembering this much information as 4 languages.
Pakkoruotsi fiilis🤲
I am mixing up Korean and Japanese quite a bit. I suspect it's because I'm old. When I was in college I got into language learning and studied German, French, Spanish all at the same time pretty much. My boss at work who was Greek American thought I would mix them all up but I didn't. That was college. Older me decided to study Japanese at age 34 and then moved to Japan at age 39 for two years. I had problems switching between English and Japanese. Mostly, if I were having a conversation in Japanese and then switched to English, switching back to Japanese was hard. Then after returning to the US I decided to learn Korean at age 42. The beginner grammar and stuff went well because of my Japanese studies (similar word order, post positions instead of prepositions etc) but then when I tried doing free talking instead of just textbook style short conversations Japanese would get mixed into my Korean. And I didn't even realize it unless the person I was talking to couldn't understand me and then I would think hmmm maybe I'm mixing in Japanese... I've found that choosing an iTalki tutor who speaks both languages can be a better choice since Koreans that don't speak Japanese tend to get annoyed at me if I speak Japanese to them (go figure!). I'm blaming my age and too many years of sleep deprivation but it could be other reasons too - like even though I am conversational in Japanese it's still a distant hard language for me while European languages sink in better.
Interesting and very relevant topic for me. I'll look for your other videos.
I'm learning spainsh and Italian. Both are Very similar! I'm moslty learning spainsh so I can talk to spainsh speakers here in the states. Italian I'm just doing for fun on my breaks, also because I love how they talk and I'm 1/4 italian. I've been translateing spainsh words, sentences from spanish to italian. It helps me reinforce spainsh and i feel like I have no problem keeping them separate. Spainsh: El serpiente verde vive en los árboles. Italian: il serpente verde vive sugli alberi.
When I was working at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin I was learning German, Russian, Romanian and Italian at the same time. German by using it at work, reading a lot and socialising.
Romanian by daily reading and listening to Assimil, talking to neighbours and later listening to history podcasts.
Russian by daily reading and listening to Assimil and talking to neighbours.
Italian by hanging out with Italians and listening to history podcasts.
It's all a matter of good habits and time management.
I'm a native English speaker (USA), somewhat conversant in Spanish, with a smattering of Portuguese, French, Italian, German, and Russian. I've decided to give Romanian a try, and as was stated in the video, it's different enough from the other Romance languages that I'm not getting confused. There's also a Slavic influence to it, which makes me grateful for having studied Russian to some extent. Be that as it may, currently, in addition to Romanian, I'm going to study Russian again. And I'm using Duolingo for both, not as a main source, but as one source, based on a previous video on this channel.
With multiple languages, at some point the infamous "false friends" accumulate to form an awkward barrier to progress. In addition to learning more new words you have to focus a lot of energy to stay alert to all kinds of fine distinctions and avoid confusion. So I find keeping languages completely apart and making an effort to not translate or switch is much easier. I had a stunning experience when I returned from Japan. I am German. My first foreign language was English which I perfected by the age of 17. I went to Japan where I only spoke Japanese, but I also sometimes spoke English with people from America Australia and England. When I returned with Singapure Airlines I found myself to be able to speak only German and Japanese. But when I wanted to ask a stewardess to give me an orange juice in English because nobody on that flight would speak German nor Japanese my English was completely blocked. Somehow the "main storage" of the brain only allows for two "code pages" i.e. languages to be present at the same time.
Outstanding! Neurological similarity between woodworking and welding. You are not going to mix them up, but if you do, your will find out quick enough!
I'm Italian and I studied Japanese, living in Japan for one year. When I came back to Italy for a few weeks I kept answering very basic questions in Japanese (like saying はい instead of sí and もちろん instead of certo) Of course after a while it did not happen so much, since I was not surrounded by Japanese anymore. But I kept using it for work. After a couple of years I started learning Spanish, and guess what? When some word would not come up in Spanish (during lessons, mainly) I had the Japanese term coming up instead. Not English, that is my best foreign language. Maybe it was because of the phonological similarities between Japanese and Spanish, who knows... Anyway I find it really hard to maintain the level of previously learned languages. I had never thought of using your method, I will give it a try! Thanks!
I had this happen to me when I returned to the USA from Japan. A lot of filler words or things you say reflexively without thinking were just coming out before I realized it. I was so embarrassed but I don't think anyone I was talking to even noticed. They didn't speak Japanese and just filtered it out I think.
Many thanks for these helpful tips! When I was at university I used to write on a notebook sets of words and phrases for different usages in different languages. My idea was to learn many languages related to a similar language branch, in order to have less difficulties with the grammar, but after a while I started noticing some confusion, so I decided to learn languages from different families (like Hebrew and Japanese) at the same time and the results improved.
Thanks for mentioning the "skill" of language switching. I think that's something I need to practice more as I'm learning 3 languages simultaneously.
Been learning Mandarin, Thai, Korean & Japanese with tutors for each and about an hour a day for each. Seems perfectly doable for me but I’m rich, less resources you have I imagine the more difficult it becomes, especially for HSK Books or TTIMK books.
I’d say possible, but ineffective. Better focus on one at a time.
If you have to learn simultaneously, make the two languages as different as possible. Preferably, the ones in different language group.
I was going to ask the very same question in your previous videos but I didn't. Glad you made this video.
Thank You very much for THIS topic ! It's really important !
I Would love a language learning routine. I'm completely new to learning a second language and feeling overwhelmed. The last time I tried to learn was 35 years ago in high school. It took me 4 years to get through 2 years of beginner French. Yes, I had to repeat each class because I failed the first time. I guess I'm a slow learner. Just hearing your strategy of narrating your day was eye opening for me. It would never have occurred to me to do that.
French *_IS_* a notoriously difficult one; and I had to quit it, in high school, due to our middle school French education being dogwater (we spent the last half of each lesson, singing the same 1 or 2 songs; was fun, but didn’t help learning the more advanced stuff, later on). It also didn’t help that I went to high school, in the Classical High School of Tampere; a language-emphasizing elite high school; the bar was pretty high 😅.
I tried learning a couple of languages on my own through hard study and failed. Now, clarify, I'd say I am only around N4 level in Japanese, but I just relaxed and don't take it too seriously. I do daily exercises similar to some, he said, but don't beat myself up if I fail to do them. Read, watch tv, do app exercises, formal study, Italki, just keep sprinkling in when I can. Ultimately, there are lots of times when I fall off and feel like I come back stronger because I let myself digest.
Side note: nothing wrong with hard study, it is very personality dependent and what works for you. Try a few ways and see.
I'm learning Italian and Spanish together. I've been learning spanish for longer but I'm not fluent yet. Any other spanish/italian learners keep getting those 2 languages mixed up?
😆 I'll be trying to speak italian and the only words that will come up are spanish. I have to "push" away the spanish and try to reach for the italian ones.
Sometimes my mind feels completely blocked or ill be speaking spanish without realizing it. How do I get over this?
I think there are pro and cons. Pros are that it reinforces your second language. So I think in spanish which is good. Cons are I mix up words.
This is the video I needed. Grazie 😃
I studied French around 15 years ago. Haven't practiced since. I notice when I try to speak French, short words like 'but' accidentally get replaced by a more recent language I learned. I accidentally used Chinese and Russian words mixed through my French sentences 😂
I am working (actively taking classes in) French (B1), German and Swedish (A1 both) - I am also fiddling around with Latin and Greek, but nor very actively. My classes are on different days, and then 3 days later I'll do the homework and study, with the extra day each week taking a little time for Latin and Greek (I have a tutor and every 2-3 weeks we meet and go over the assignments in the GCSE series by Taylor - I'm most of the way through the 1st book in both).
I have not really had a problem mixing them up, and it actually helps that German and Swedish have words that are cognate, but not cognates with the English (or French) word. Latin and French are different enough that they don't get mixed up, but they do both help each other a bit (with vocabulary - their grammars are fairly different) - also nice that Latin and Greek are helping me negotiate the case system of German.
I do the Duolingo 'lessons' for French, German, and Swedish daily - I find Duolingo to be a pretty decent vocabulary tool, even if it isn't great at teaching grammar, and the pronunciation - both listening and speaking - isn't great. For an 'on' day, in addition to the class or homework, I will also fit in some UA-cam videos or other online resources in my target - which really helps too.
For French, I do have a conversation group that I join online as well (through the Alliance Francaise), but I haven't found something similar for German or Swedish - but I am also not yet ready to try free-conversation in either language, maybe in a year or so.
I don't think I could squeeze another language in and be at all effective at learning them all. I may even end up dropping one if it becomes overwhelming, but I have managed fairly well since the start of the year, and seem to be keeping up with my classmates. So - until I get to my goals in these languages, I won't be adding any others - though I do want to learn another six eventually, I won't be starting another until maybe 2029/2030; and won't be finished until ... well, never? Because maybe by then I will have a couple of others I want to add too.
Your ability to language swop is amazing
Great advice! Many thanks, mòran taing, viel danke :)
A very fun and enlightening way of language learning, I was struggling with this because I'm mainly learning Japanese but wanted to pick up Arabic for my fourth language.
With respect, this is a solid basis which will depend on a lot of factors.
I worked with Poles and my listening and speaking skills are better than my reading and writing.
I've been in England for decades but I learnt it in school, so my reading and writing are above average.
At the moment, I can communicate in Italian at work but it's done through emails, so again it tips the balance.
As the famous Hungarian polyglot, Lomb Kató once wrote: knowing a language is the only skill which can be imperfect and still useful at the same time.
I learned German 🇩🇪 1 year after I learned French 🇫🇷. Being Catholic ⛪ , I learn Latin but I have been learning that slowly 🐌 since high school 🏫. I am learning Tagalog now.
I echo his last words of advice: if you want to learn more than 1 language on 1 year, I recommend learning languages which are dissimilar. Example. German has more than enough vocabulary and grammar which did not interfere with learning French.
I think one thing that can help to prevent mixing up language is viewing them almost like people with personalities, traits, and oddities. I also find looking up the etymologies and cognates of the words I am learning help a lot. I find it helps prevent false friend situations while maximizing the advantages of learning languages that are related. For my studies, the biggest thing that helps to remember words is building a context around the word. This can be a funny observation ("kaka" brother in Swahili sounds like "caca" poo in several other languages), an interesting etymology (Spanish "hablar" and Portuguese "falar" are both from Latin "fabulor"), and actual language use (especially regarding topics you are interested in). I am studying twenty different languages at the moment, but I devote different amounts of time depending on my language goals for that language. I would say most of my time is spent on three, but I still find that things I learn from the other languages help in various ways. And I do try to focus on switching fairly frequently. With the romance languages especially, you might have a situation where the standard word for something in Language 1 is like the word in Language 2, but the word used in a regional dialect is more like a word in Language 3.
I did not manage to learn Spanish and Italian at the same time. So I quit Spanish and being fluent in French learning Italian became very easy. Then I started Arabic and was afraid of forgetting French and Italian, but since I had a very good level in both languages I could easily dig it out again. Starting Hebrew after Arabic was actually easier since they are closer than i thought but still different enough to not mix them up :-)
I'm improving my English while learning Japanese, wish me luck 🤞
I initially set out only to learn Spanish and to an extent I still only really focus on Spanish in terms of book work, however over the past few years I keep finding myself gravitating towards Catalan, Portuguese and the occasional bit of Italian media either here or Netflix etc and just through exposure i at least learned to understand stand them spoken while trying to expand on my Spanish and have fun with the Latin languages but I think it would be rather difficult to study them all at once being so similar
This is crazy, I was just thinking about asking Metaton to make a video about learning multiple languages at the same time, and here we are! 👍✨
It's easy for you because you are very intelligent! I speak English and Spanish because I grew up with them but I've tried to learn German and French and it's just too much of a struggle. I'm not too bright.
After focusing exclusively on Japanese for more than 10 years, I decided to brush up my German, and also started learning Icelandic and Russian. I achieved my first target which was to become able to sing in those languages, and be able to discuss about chess.
My method (?) is to learn one tonguetwister, one song, one bad word, basic greetings, the numbers from one to ten, and one joke in every language. And of course the names of chess pieces.
I have studied the basics of many more languages. Sometimes, it is benefitial to study simultaniously languages with similar alphabets, for example Arabic and Persian or Cambodian and Thai, because of shared or similar script.
After studying Chinese, Korean and Armenian, I managed to understand the difference between aspired and unaspired consontans.
Japanese helped me understand pre-alphabetic Greek, written with Linear B' script, because it is almost the similar system.
Kurdish (Sorani) helped me to improve my arabic, because of the same script.
Russian is helpful if you study Serbian, Bulgarian or Mongolian, thanks to common Cyrillic script.
Vietnamese helped me understand the Chinese tones, because I could focus only on the pronunciation.
Pre-modern Japanese is benefitial with Traditional Chinese. Same letters.
Korean grammar and Japanese grammar is quite similar.
Coptic was very interesting because of the Greek letters.
Conclusion: Some languages have common characteristics and you will understand the benefit if you study them simultaniously.
It's a very interesting point of view. Until now, I've always heard that it's better to separate languages and you recommend to practice swiching them 😅. Actually that might work for me because I can't switch between langages that I speak pretty well. My brain has to go on certain language mode so when someone switch a language all of the sudden, I'm really confused
French is pretty unique as well. I can't see myself mixing it up with another language.
I’m an American and I caught myself trying to pronounce my Italian like I pronounce my Japanese! I was really surprised by that, because I hadn’t practiced Japanese in a long time.
I am trying to learn 2 languages (Italian and German). Apps like Duolingo and Babbel will ask for a reason like "to improve skill" or "for fun" or "for business". My reason is a bit more direct. I now have Italian (and soon, Austria) citizenship and want to move to the EU (from the US) in a few years. So, my goal is to become as fluent as possible so that I can integrate into Italy and Austria more easily. I hope to be able to meet new Italian and Austrian friends soon after I get past A2.
Back in middle high school I had Latin, Old Greek, French, English and even German for just a year (just for an hour; which is absolutely ridiculous, but hey, I guess it's a Belgian thing).
Learning 5 languages at the same time is possible, but learning them to a level that you're capable of having abstract conversations? Well... you'll need a very good approach and have a considerable amount of time to spend on them. I learned enough German to order things (my native language does really help out with understanding German); I learned enough French to understand about 70-80% of what's said in movies (for 8 years, which means it's seriously underwhelming for that time period), I was already fluent in English (5 years) by the age of 12, so I never really had any major issues there. And as for Latin (4) and Old Greek (5)? I can read texts (since that's what we practiced for) and the complexity of those depends on whether I have a dictionary or not. Though especially my Old Greek is quite rusty.
However, the underwhelming level is, in my opinion, mostly due to poor teaching practises. There's no consistency; it's more about taking tests and getting grades than actually learning something useful (in fact, the only language for which vocabulary was taught with regular repetition were Latin and Old Greek). Everyone here in Flanders jokes about how they studied French for years, but really just have basic-mediocre knowledge of the language. How we live in a country where about half of the population is a Francophone and few Anglophones are present, yet everyone knows better English than French.
When I decided to learn Spanish (the language I'm currently spending most of my time on) - though obviously with some knowledge of other Romance languages at that point - I reached the same level I had in French in just 1 year (without even studying as much; I had 3-5 hours of French a week minus the time I spent on it at home; I studied Spanish for about 2-3 hours a week). When I went to Spain I could speak with much more confidence than I ever had with French (probably because I didn't care as much about making mistakes). Perhaps there's also the matter of motivation. I never actually chose to learn French, I was forced to do it.
Of course, there's only so much time one can spend learning a language in high school when you have a curriculum that mainly focusses on maths and science.
So, also in my experience, the methods you use to learn a language indeed make a huge difference.
Ive been learning italian on the side. Im mainly learning spainsh, but i like to switch over to italian when i get bored (ive been playing around with german too). Its very a similar language so how i keep it separate is translate spainsh words into italian, that way i reinforce spainsh while learning a different language. Learning it that way helps me keep the 2 separate....or at least it works for me.
Your mandarin tones are excellent!
Thank you - very helpful video!
Thank you very much for your advice of how to train the brain for switching several languages! You are 100 per cent right! I am Czech with a fluent English and intermediate German. When I speak German there are always moments when the English takes over if the German starts waver. I first thought it's all my fault I wasn't good enough Ishould dump the German! You brought the light into this problem! Thanks once more!! 👍👍👍❤👌🙏
Hi Metatron!!! First time commenting on this new channel! A question: you ever try speak or learn Hungarian???
Great video! I just started German on Duolingo (which I have existing experience with) but decided to try Latin as well. I was just thinking today that might be a problem, and then this very timely video comes out! Thank you! So far the only problem I've had is accidentally saying "ist" instead of "est". Hard to believe that the simple German word for "is" was probably a loan word from the Romans; there's no way that's just a coincidence.
It's not a coincidence, but it's not a loan word either. They both come from the same word in Proto-Indo-European.
Buongiorno. Thank you for creating this "sub-channel". I am here in Italy learning Italian, but I have Erre moscia, which totally kills my ambition to learn the language, I know some regions' citizens have the same issue(ex. Parma), just wanted to ask is it common and is it difficult to understand people who have "Erre Moscia"?
My immediate guess, before starting the video, would be; it might be plausible if the different languages were part of the same family, and possess similar phonetics and structural elements. Making progress on learning those languages more manageable.
Now to watch the video to see if my hypothesis has merit.
Interesting. I didn't consider the possible difficulty of language switching
Hmmmm, I remember learning Chinese and Japanese at the same time as a Korean and actually finding the similarities between simplified Hanzi and Japanese Kanji more helpful than confusing. I would study Chinese in the morning and Japanese in the afternoon -- the same symbols would be there but just read differently, so it was a quick review! BUT I think the same cannot be said for Slavic languages. Studying Ukranian and Russian at the same time is confusing me much more than the Chinese-Japanese pair. So I think yes it definitely depends on your background and the extent of differences between the target languages.
Hey Metatron! Awesome video as usual! I have a rather unusual question: Going from the absolute beginning, until fluency, at what point in learning a language is it best to start focusing on slang words, swear words, and expletives? Much appreciated!
I worry this is a daft question, but when you say "advanced beginner/early intermediate" or "fluent", how would you compare those labels to something like CEFR levels?
(I ask because they can mean different things to different people/in different contexts: i.e. people tried to encourage me by saying my German was great at baaaaarely B1 level; now I've lived here for a couple of years, I'm fluent enough to use German as my day-to-day language, read Die Unendliche Geschichte, and watch German TV/films [having to look up at least a few words each time I read/watch]; but I can't make head nor tail of Goethe's Faust, so definitely not fluent enough to be a schoolteacher-I end up getting super confused as to what 'good' is. 🤷♀)
*Wow, how badly did I overexplain that? 🤔
From what I understand, intermediate is basically the B-levels.
"Advanced beginner" to me means somewhere around A2 and "Early intermediate" probably around B1. These CEFR levels reflect not just speaking skills, but also listening and reading skills, and language knowledge. To me "fluent" is limited to speaking skills, at any level of language. I teach English, and I have students who are fluent speakers at a level of A1, but also others who are clearly at B2 or above in terms of language knowledge, reading and writing, but really struggle with listening and speaking - these are by no means fluent speakers.
Working on trying to do Polish while I'm working on my German. I've been doing German for quite a while now, so I feel like I gave myself enough of a focused start on that
I am fluent in 6 languages learning 4: spanish (Pretty advanced), italian (keep mixing with spanish 😂), mandarin (love it!), french (hate the language, dont understand why people call it language of love, language of love is Italian ❤, french is just Throat acke, so I guess I will never master this aweful language😂).
Great vid! Your language learning routine would be great too!
Hi Raf! Great video! Do you know if Latin and Greek are close to each other?
the tips sound great. I have a huge difficulty to learn spanish as a native Portuguese speaker because I mix up verbs conjugations of the same word that have in both languages.
If I try to learn Mandarin and japanese at same time would the kanji overlap cause similar issue?
I am trying to learn as a kid would first spoken then after read and writing sound a good plan for my mild dyslexic self.
You’ve made a video about this before, but I will watch this one again anyway. ^_^
Thank you.
Course, it's easier study simultaneously two similiar languages, for example is more easy study two indo-european languages like italian and franch or italian and german that study two language from two different language family as for example spanish and chinese.
I'm at a B1 level at Mandarin, and I want to learn either Greek, Mongolian, Russian, Burmese, or Ukrainian
To get a job working in a ski resort in Andorra, in Europe, I need English, Spanish, French, and Catalan. I have a difficult job ahead of me, don't I?...
Lol, native Mandarin speaker (though moved to European speaking countries very young) learning Japanese - I frequently run into scenarios where I see a string in either Chinese or Japanese but the only way I can read it (without looking it up) is by mixing the two languages. Whoopsie.
I am not fluent in any of these but I took French, Portuguese and Japanese classes and is possible to learn them. Plus in college one can use them daily. Is fun. However, it took me a couple of weeks to stop mixing up French and Portuguese. 😂😂
At school heading for university I had to learn two foreign languages besides my mother tongue, the dialect of Palatinate Electorate, and Standard German (others even had three) in my case English and French. No problems encoutered. I became fluent in making spelling errors in all of them. Much later, in my 30'ies I learned Castellano at public university. After a few months into it, I was no longer able to speak French, and the same happened with to mates who both lost their abilities in French and Italian respectively. I suspect that romance languages are stored at a place in brain where the capacity is limited.
Btw I never mix up languages.
I took 5yrs of French between high school and college. That was 30yrs ago , I just tried Spanish for 1st time , my brain 🧠 immediately meshes it French . Tangled mess of French in my 🧠. However I stopped trying to learn Spanish. And tried Polish ans some Ukrainian and it was easier for me and no French meshes . I think if the 2 languages are vastly different it is easier to learn .
Thank you, that was helpful.
It is
I had a switching problem when I was studying English and German and coudn't read Japan in English, I was stuck reading in German in the English class, to the amazement of my English teacher 😅
A language-switching tutorial would be an immense help for me. I am that Anglophone, who having acquired some Italian, has started learning Spanish. When I do speaking practice I can concentrate on the language and its phonology - and it's not too bad (at the level I am currently at). However, when I need to concentrate on the message - when talking to a bank or a mechanic or instance - the word-salad that comes out of my mouth nothing short of comical...
unfortunately I'm an ADD language learner. Learned some Spanish , French, Russian, & Vietnamese as a kid. As an Adult I learned some Scottish and Irish Gaelic since both are similar. Worked a bit on Welsh before getting sidelined with Taekwondo Korean and some Japanese as pertained to Judo, Kendo etc. s and Chinese. Since I like tablet weaving Old Norse and Swedish became important since the patterns are written in these. Big medieval history buff so kind of pick on stuff as it comes along.
Oi gente Rafael ,I would really like to see a detailed " my daily language learning routine " video from you . I'm sure lots of people/ subscribers would and I bet it would be one of your highest view counts and sub collecting videos for this channel
I don't recommend learning Dutch and the same time as Norwegian. Not only do their vowels sound similar, but the identical pronunciation of "het" (Dutch neuter definite article) and "et" (Norwegian neuter indefinite article) leads to semantic mix-ups, as does the fact that Norwegian has been heavily influenced by Low German and thus looks more like Dutch than even High German does.
I'm learning german and english from the first grade and I see no problem
I worked with a woman. that sometimes speaked Swedish with American Grama. I think It was when she was tired. she falled back to american gramatics. I don´t know how common that is.
I hope I can master Indonesian, English, Mandarin, French, Italian
Consigli utili davvero. Io, una volta 'imparato' l'italiano, ho abbandonato completamente lo spagnolo perché confondevo le parole. Solo dopo tanti anni sto cercando di risuscitare il francese e lo spagnolo che ho studiato a scuola.
I have a question topic: when I have a basis of a language, should I listen to media without subtitles if I understand the concept of the sentences? Or should I put on the subtitles and see new vocabulary?
I study japanese and a little spanish. What happens is that sometimes my mind put in japanese particles in the spanish sentence.
In the book Cat in the Hat...Dr Seuss uses at least 5 different languages and I remember every word to that song...of course I was a child they say it's easier to learn then. But yes... XD
Dude, why don't you make Latin-language vlogs on your city in Italy?
I'm just kinda very slowly learning every language whose music I listen to, like 20 at the same time but only one word per month
Is It Possible To Learn Another Language Without realizing you are doing it? (spoiler alert yes, but how can you perfect them)?
my main foreign language in school was english, and i started german in high school. ye that didnt work at all :D cant form a sentence in german even after 5 years of having 2 lessons a week. to be fair i did give up in the 2nd year
Java, JavaScript, html, css must me learnt at the same time v:
yes
Take Java off the list and keep the other three then the list will be accurate
Right now I'm learning English and French and German and Latin
Yes it is. And now I watch your video 😂
One thing I wondered was why languages don't sink in when trying to learn them? (English isn't my first language (thanks to dyslexia) so forgive me if I ask confusing question).
English I remember a lot although I live in Britain so that is less surprising and I had extra English language lessons, though I might forget the correct way to address someone and say "Katov?" rather than "What is it?" or "How can I help?" or "You called?" and say "Da" instead of "Yes" and "Tak" instead of "Thanks" or even the Northern variant of "Tar".
German I remember somewhat and I did it in GCSE.
Russian I remember some bits here and there and I did it on Busuu back in 2020 (I wanted my Soviet characters to seem more real).
Spanish I can remember some words and phrases and native Spanish speakers even think I have good pronunciation, with the caveat that its Mexican pronunciation and I've had no formal Spanish training.
French I did in school years 6, 7, 8 and 9 but I can't remember much about it, as for pronunciation I have been told by some native French speakers "it sounds archaic, like you're doing a medieval French re-enactment".
Why does "Tak" in each slavic language always mean something completely different
@@pxolqopt3597 I've no idea, I know from my Norwegian family it means "Thanks" or "Thank you" in Norwegian. Granted my own native language is a dyslexia construct (although I can see why its often mistaken for Russian) so I'd be happy to hear from a speaker of a Slavic language.
@@edspace. Your "native language" is your first language, which is the language that you first picked up from the people that raised you when you were a small child, before you could read and write. Dyslexia is difficulty with reading and writing, so it has nothing to do with language acquisition in infancy. So what was your first language really?
@@omp199 I'm not entirely sure, neither were the doctors when they were trying to understand why my language acquisition was not happening as quickly as expected. They ruled out hearing impairment and eventually diagnosed me with autism (which might explain the mistakes of communication, granted there is a theory of dyslexia that it causes sound comprehension jumbling (hence a more common symptom being greater propensity to mishear lyrics) but you are right in that this is not confirmed to be a result of dyslexia and could equally be an autistic trait or something else entirely).
I remember back at school I law my language listed as "English L 1.5" as opposed to "English L 1" like most of my friends or "English L 2" and sometimes my native language was put down as "Scottish English" (although this may have been a mistake since my family mix is Irish, Northern English, Norwegian and so on), most commonly its put down as "Non-Standard English Variation".
Sorry for being confusing, hope this helps.
@@edspace. That is interesting. Thank you for explaining further. Although I will admit that some of what you wrote above confused me, I would say that the English that you have acquired now seems pretty much in line with the standard and is pretty good. I'm sure you must have worked on it a lot since you were a child.
hi metaron, what new language will you learn next?
bengali
I would love to learn every language and I wish every one did too. Everyone understanding everyone. I would speak French when flirting or being romantic. I would speak German talking about engineering. Russian when I'm pissed. Arabic when I talk about the stars. Japanese with my kids lol they love Japanese cartoons. I'd speak English with my wife because she wouldn't play ball and learn any new language lol.
Your mandarin is not bad
no, guys dont do it
Oof bad advice. You should focus on input, not output. That comes later.
You still have to output at some point
I've been learning Chinese as a third language for like 2 years and now I'm thinking about starting to learn Spanish 🥲❤️❤️