How to Learn 10 Languages in 5 Years
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- Опубліковано 26 січ 2024
- Would you like to know lots of languages? It can be done, but it requires many years of many hours of hard work to lay the foundation, and then a lifetime of reading and other use to continue to improve. Join me in a brainstorming session with a proxy student to see how one might structure such a plan for a bookish lifetime of reading great literature in the original.
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Join me at any time in my virtual academy to get a systematic theoretical framework for planning your long-term language learning in the Path of the Polyglot, to read and discuss Great Books of Western Civilization or the Comparative History of Religions in English (suitable for advanced non-natives as well as native speakers), to read and discuss French, German, Italian, and/or Spanish literature, to learn to read sacred languages such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, or Old Norse, or to develop not only literary but conversational abilities in Latin, plus more at : www.alexanderarguelles.com/ac... Subscribe to my monthly newsletter: www.alexanderarguelles.com/ne...
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I commend this young ambitious language seeker. May he succeed in his goals.
I not only do not doubt that he will, but I will do my all to assist him in this endeavor.
😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊@@ProfASAr
10 languages in 5 years is something only highly motivated students can pull off with all the free time they have. One language a year sounds more accessible, while 1 language in 2 years should be possible for almost anybody.
I speak 7 languages and I learned 5 of them in 9 years:
28 yo Italian, 31 yo German, 33 yo French, 35 yo Polish, 36 yo Spanish
Right you are. The target audience of this video and of my academy is highly motivated students.
May I know how did you get started with learning German?
@@user-lm6bn9nx7m First semester, freshman year, Columbia.
I've learnt 4 but I didn't maintain 3 of them, now they are pretty bad. Like Went from B2 to A2, or it is still there somewhere but I struggled to speak/find the words in French now. I can still read it, but my vocab is terrible.
I don't see 10 languages in 5 years a realistic goal at all, despite how motivated anyone is. If their goal is to reach B2 level in speaking, writing, understanding and reading. I am stating B2, due to the reason that is the minimum to apply for post-secondary school. Much less maintain all of them. Even a full time student does about five classes for a semester, then effectively stop and take another five classes in the next semester. Good luck to the guy though.
Pairing difficult with easy was how I used to do it too: combined a Slavic language with a Germanic/Romance language, or some entirely new one.
And thank you for this new video, looking forward to seeing the next ones!
Hello Yan, good to hear from you, as always.
Loved the intro! I also love these long form videos where I get to hear you talk about your knowledge.
I am glad you like them! As mentioned, we have at least a short series planned, so please stay tuned.
Wonderful advice thank you!! ❤
You are so welcome!
Great to see you, Laban!
And great to hear from you, Robbie!
Join me at any time in my virtual academy to get a systematic theoretical framework for planning your long-term language learning in the Path of the Polyglot, to read and discuss Great Books of Western Civilization or the Comparative History of Religions in English (suitable for advanced non-natives as well as native speakers), to read and discuss French, German, Italian, and/or Spanish literature, to learn to read sacred languages such as Arabic, Sanskrit, Greek, or Old Norse, or to develop not only literary but conversational abilities in Latin, plus more at : www.alexanderarguelles.com/academy/ Subscribe to my monthly newsletter: www.alexanderarguelles.com/newsletter/
I personally love this intro, like a shortwave broadcast with even the interval signal.
Also this will be on my watching list for the each week, you're a reason why i get so successful on my learnings.
I am happy to hear it - thanks for letting me know!
Very interesting, thanks!!👏🙏
My pleasure!
I really enjoyed this video and wish him the best of luck on his journey. It's also great to see other people so interested in polyliteracy.
I suspect (hope? pray?) that there are actually enough people out there interested in this kind of project for me to develop it as a discipline for them.
@@ProfASAr You can count me among the ranks 😅 I've been doing this for years now thanks to your inspiration and videos and it has turned into a true obsession, so I don't see myself stopping any time soon.
Very interesting video! I wish him the best in his journey.
Thank you for your kind wishes!
Thank you for the videos, I always appreciate seeing how you map out learning languages. The issue for this plan for this young man I believe is the time. At 22, what career plans does he have? other hobbies, social life/desire for dating? All of this will seriously cut into plans and he even admitted the past 2 weeks he had been taking a break from Latin and Greek. I have found in my 20s-30s I can typically hit 500-low 600s of language study hours/year, so I try to set goals with that limitation in mind.
Realistically, I believe sticking with Latin and Greek this year, and next year JUST adding French and not German is a good plan with his time commitment of 2 hrs/day. French opens Assimil series, German has decent resources, but nothing far superior for.his language list than what you can get with English/French. Then I would wait until he feels fluent (perhaps traveled or lived in France for awhile) in French, a good command of Latin and Greek, and then add by interest either German or Russian (I’m a Russophile, so I wouldn’t want to delay Russian, plus opening up Slavic language family earlier can be fun) and another Romance language. Realistically, that will probably be a good decade spending 2 hrs/day.
The biggest thing slowing down the start of the process I think is the amount of time it will take to learn Greek, which I think will be equally as difficult if not more challenging than Russian. But I’ve failed to learn Greek and just tried for a few months in the past, so I have incomplete knowledge on that.
Well said words!
Thanks for sharing your perspective and experience, David, and here is looking forward to meeting in person this May.
I enjoyed the format. I can see my young self having ambitious goals like those this young man expressed, but perhaps not as many languages, because I wanted to pursue a PhD (and I did). I managed to learn English and French (Spanish is my native language), and much later Brazilian Portuguese. My experience showed me that taking languages to an advanced level pays off over time. I restarted French, because it became rusty for lack of use. Having done that let me learned Italian on my own to a decent level without excessive interference. However, I started studying German and Latin without sufficient time and had to stop, because of burnout. Life gets in the way and I am a busy person. My recommendation is to enjoy the process and avoid counting languages. I will go to Italy for a sabbatical, which should bring my Italian to a better level. Once IT becomes more ingrained, I will jump to other targets, but will stay a user of all my languages. I always read in all the languages I know, because the process never stops.
Hello Vladimir, wonderful to hear from you here, and thanks for sharing the perspective of your ample experience.
This is very inspiring. I think I'm a sequential learner too. I only speak a bit of Spanish and average German, but I love finding vocab in Spanish and then learning it with the German. It seems to sit better in my mind and makes me marvel at the complexity and beauty of language.
Indeed, interweaving language knowledge is an important skill.
Better you than me! It’s been 10 years since I TOUCHED German and I’m still dredging up “Alemañol” by accident on a regular basis! 😂
You are a slave to the German magic! @@sophiaschier-hanson4163
Interesting interview. I've totally imersed into listening to both of you, to be honest. He'll make it, no doubt) Latin is so fun, I admire it)
And big thank you for all the information in your videos - I've found lots of I was searching for, specially about materials)
Thanks for your appreciation and your support! I am glad you find the videos useful.
I would love to see the aftermath of a plan like this. It doesn't need to be necessarily with Laban.. perhaps with another student of yours that is ending his year long plan? What went wrong, if they were able to fullfill their intended deadlines, etc...
Thanks for planting the idea if ever there is someone willing to do this at that stage.
Thanks for your video, it's very interesting! Looks like I've missed something, but why it's better to learn Greek and Latin before French? As I know, you recommend Assimil with shadowing for learning, but for Assimil the very source language is French which opens the door to the rest. It would be interesting for me if you explain this choice. Thanks in advance!
It is not inherently better to learn one set of languages before the other, but his main interests lie in these older languages, so this is where he has already begun his project, and thus we are mapping it out from there.
@@ProfASAr I see, thank you!
I’m a native dutch speaker. I had german/english for 4 years in secondary school. I can only really speak in dutch, english. In the last few years i’ve been trying to learn multiple languages again. German, spanish, mostly for reading in those languages. I can read german up to b1/b2 I think. Spanish A2. In the last few months i’ve been studying Chinese pretty intensely, 3/4 hours a day. I’m at around hsk 1 now. And i’m also learning to write hiragana/katakana, japanese for the future. But my main focus is chinese at the moment. I’m not an expert at learning languages. And i don’t think I have a special talent for it. But even for me this is pretty doable, only because I have specific goals for certain languages. And I don’t study grammar intensely for spanish, not at all for german. Not sure if this is a good way of going about it?
I might want to learn Korean in the future and Pali, (already getting some exposure to pali words) because I’m interested in Theravada Buddhism.
Responding to the video..
10 languages in 10 years seems more realistic to me. But yeah it depends on how much motivation, time someone has, to what degree you want to learn a language, and on what skills you’re focusing on.
I never imagined that I could learn the more harder languages out there, but it’s possible for the average language student.
My overall message is for people like you - people who for some reason conceive of the idea of knowing lots of languages - that this is something you can achieve if you work hard at it.
Great.......
I hope it was useful.
Professor Arguelles, when you talk about reading for a long time each day, how do you process the material? Do you take notes on them, review those notes, etc. or just read one work after another? Thanks!
I don't have a set answer. It depends on my level in the language, and the type of material I am reading. I do take notes on difficult texts, but that is true in English as well, and I also simply just enjoy reading literature by consuming as much as I can, immersing myself in novels.
Ciao Alexander, scrivo in italiano (la mia lingua) penso che non avrai problemi 😅 Avrei bisogno anche io di un consulto come questo; ho paura di star pasticciando un po' con le tempistiche, e metodi, ecc. di studio. Ho molto tempo da dedicare allo studio e già lo faccio da un paio d'anni a questa parte.
Ho studiato francese a scuola, l'inglese l'ho un po' assimilato viaggiando e ascoltando video su youtube, ho studiato per anni (ma poco) il thailandese e da un paio di anni a questa parte ho cominciato a studiare cinese.
Due anni fa cominciai anche l'indonesiano, ma pochissimo e cerco solo di mantenere quello che ho imparato (quasi niente) e da 1 mese circa ho cominciato greco perché tengo la mia barca a vela in Grecia e vorrei poter comunicare con loro.
Ricapitolando: studio principalmente cinese, ascolto qualche video in inglese e qualche volta faccio scambio linguistico, ripasso 1 ora a settimana l'indonesiano, ho ripreso 1 ora a settimana a ripassare il thai perché avevo dovuto interromperlo perché mi confondeva troppo con il cinese, ma siccome ho visto che lo stavo perdendo ho cominciato a ripassarlo. Per il greco che ho cominciato da pochissimo, studio circa 15 minuti circa al giorno. Il francese è lì che fluttua solitario e ogni tanto parlo francese quando vado in giro in viaggio.
Mi piacerebbe avere un consulto con te. Pensi che sarebbe possibile?
Ciao Marianna e grazie per aver scritto. Sarei felice di fornirti un piano individuale per i tuoi studi linguistici. Puoi iscriverti per una consulenza con me qui: www.alexanderarguelles.com/contact/
studying the basics during 6 months and keep consuming from then
Spanish done
English done
Japanese started 9 months ago
French Started one month ago
Russian on list
German on list
Chinese on list
lol
Best of wishes for success in your studies. The way you have typed that out, it looks like a ladder or scale, and I wonder if you are treating your studies this way consciously?
I can see myself learning 10 languages in 10 years. (Considering I want mostly to read and understand them when spoken) Let's see.
Native Brazilian Portuguese speaker. Learned English in a conversational course when I was 15. Lessons with only one to three students. Then, in college, where I studied English and Portuguese grammar and literature. French and Italian in group classes. 3 semesters for Italian and 6 semesters for French. I watched at least 200 hundred movies or TV series in each of those languages. Many more in English. Besides that, I read books in all three. However, I could never become the avid reader I always dreamed of being. I learned lots of Spanish only through watching movies, TV series, as well as listening to music and several fiction books. I had about a 100 hours of German in group classes. Didn't learn much. Just enough to facilitate my current self-study of German. Learned some Catalan by reading a few short story books in Catalan and by watching a couple of TV series in the language. I just feel I need more vocabulary to enjoy even more reading in Catalan.
If I learn German, then learning Dutch might be quite easy.
I've been studying Romanian alongside German. My problem is inconsistency. One day I dedicate 3 to 4 hours to reading literature and studying languages. The following day, only half an hour.
Those three could be done with in 3 years considering my objectives, methinks.
Next, Norwegian and Swedish would follow naturally. But, I see myself studying Norwegian 80% of the time, and Swedish 20% of the time. At the same time, I could start learning Russian. 3 years should be enough for those 3.
I could then start another Slavic language, probably Polish and maybe start Turkish and Latin. 3 more years should suffice. In the final year, just to win the prize, I could learn Afrikaans or Czech.
Good plan: now do it!
@@ProfASAr People like you, Luca Lampariello and Steve Kaufmann give me the certitude I can it. Thank you for your realistic insights and suggestions.
Funny you should mention learning Chaucerian English.
Not long ago I stumbled upon a book that is some of the Canterbury Tales in a dual language edition with English and Middle English.
Published by Bantam, originally in 1964, no isbn number, but a libtary of congress number 63-19053
Thank you for letting people know about a good resource. The Everyman version is also good, with needed vocabulary on the side, and only the more presumably difficult sentences translated at the bottom of the page.
If I'm motivated I feel as if I could tackle as many langs as I want. Or tackle how to approach language learning too. That is for me the real issue that needs solving.
The next video in the "trilogy" to come out of this long conversation will be precisely on the discipline needed to do this.
Sir I have a strong vocabulary and I learned many things in English but when ever it comes to use these things in speaking then I get stop and trying to remember the words but it takes 7 to 40 seconds or more to remind the words or the things that I want to use it in conversation so is it happens to me!
Sorry to hear this, sounds like nerves.
Does spending so much time learning languages not make one lonely at times? I like to learn but I think if you’re doing more than 1/2 hours per day alone then you miss out on socialising / friends / relationships
If you need that much human interaction, and you also have the inclination to learn lots of languages, then you are clearly more inclined to "polyglottery" (speaking lots of languages) than "polyliteracy" (reading lots of languages). This particular video is geared more for those with personality types inclined toward polyliteracy, but the advice in most of my videos is equally valid for either pursuit.
@@ProfASAr thank you for the response professor
I just want to learn one language that is French...how to do it?
If you want to teach yourself using a "bookish" method, then I cannot do better than: ua-cam.com/video/MqR3K1alUio/v-deo.html
@@ProfASAr thank you so much 🙏
Ok
Thanks for commenting.
You both speak in a similar way.
???
@@ProfASAr Lol.
Another person who shares my interest for the exact same dead languages I want to learn.
Thank you for confirming that there are enough of "us" for me to be developing these programs.
It's more like 9 languages rather than 10 since Middle English is still basically English.
Ideed.
инкрэдбл
Thanks for commenting.
It takes a lot of maturity to sit and study a topic 3 hours a day, especially if you’re a young man.
And you know what they say about your plans versus God’s plan.
That is why I suggest annual reviews of the plan, to accommodate changes, and we will talk more about the discipline needed to carry through on this.