Name: Learning more than one language at a time: some useful tips
Uploaded: 2014-06-15T16:49:51.000Z
Duration: 13 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Adverbs of frequency

Hello. One of the most frequently asked questions, as far as a language learning is concerned,

is without a doubt the following: A lot of people asked me:

Past simple

Luca, did you ever learn more languages at the same time and how do you go about it?

Now, I think that, in general, everybody could learn more than one language at a time.

It's possible. Nobody can forbid you from, can keep you, hamper you from doing that

At the the same time, though, I think that choosing more than one language at the same time

is something that you have to think about cautiously, you have to think about quite a lot

before doing that, because there is a lot of factors involved.

As far as I'm concerned, until recently, until 2008, late 2008, 2009,

I never learnt more than one language at a time. And the first time that I actually dealt with two languages

was with Chinese and Portuguese. The main reason why I didn't, I was constantly learning just one language at a time

is mainly due to the fact that, first, I was never in a hurry lo learn foreign languages,

secondly, once I chose a language I was so interested in that one, that I didn't care about the others.

It was just that one, I was just courting that one girl, so to say,

and learning one language at a time gave me the possibility to concentrate, to focus

on that given language, and that was very important for me, because, as I will say later,

the problem, especially, as far the first six months are concerned, is always to build a core.

That's the main goal, six months, when you depend on the difficulty of a language.

Now, I wrote a couple of things here, but don't worry about it, you can find them,

you can find the article on my blog. I just wanted to make a video to make it more entertaining.

I just wanted to, before diving into this problem, you know, the technical details,

I just wanna tell you three main factors that you that you have to think of when you wanna learn

two, three, four languages at the same time. The first one is, that haste is your worst enemy.

I think, personally I think, that the modern world is obsessed with here and now compulsion,

which is particularly harmful for language learning. It means that, there'a a lot of people who ask me,

this is another very common question: how can I learn a language quickly? Is there any shortcuts?

Well, in English, Italian, as well as other languages, you can find a lot of sentences like:

"Slow and steady wins the race", "Haste is a bad counselor" and there's a lot of Latin saying as well,

because actually, you know, that's true, haste is, you know, the worst fiend for quality,

that's what I think at least. As I said before, the first three, six, nine months are very important

and, especially at the beginning, quality work is absolutely essential for the rest, for the future outcome.

So I think that haste, I keep saying that, haste is your worst enemy. So learn things step by step,

not necessarily super slowly, but consistently, and do it every day.

And don't worry about the future, just concentrate and focus on the moment.

Secondly, building a language core is the most important thing for every learner,

Building a language core means that we build a net in our head, it is not just a matter of accumulating words,

it's also a matter of putting them together, give them a phonetic dress, so to say,

the main goal is to build a net in your head , it means that once you have built that net

you are able to speak the language more or less, you have the language inside you,

and even if you don't speak it that much, in the future you quickly go back to it.

Just with a little practice. That's the meaning of building a core.

Building a core means to have a general grasp and understanding of how the language works.

And it means that it's ingrained in your brain. In order to build a language core,

you have to focus very much on one language. The problem of the core is that, as I said before,

it is not just a matter of words, grammar and pronunciation, but it is also a matter

of emotions, colors, you know, you remember, when you start to learn a language,

it was a period in your life, so everything is entangled with emotions and grammar,

with colors and words, everything is put together and it forms the so-called core.

If you learn two, three, four languages at the same time, you risk, you run the risk,

you seriously run the risk of mixing things together, and you don't wanna do that.

Thirdly, it is probably the most obvious here, is optimizing your time.

I think that time schedule is very important in language learning, it is not just a mater of

what things you do, what actions you do, but also how and when you do it, the so-called time schedule.

Now, in the article that I wrote and you can read it on my blog, I compared two students:

student A and student B, and they both wanna learn ten languages within ten years.

One goes for two languages every two years, so studies, for example, I don't know, French and German,

and then, he's Italian, let's suppose that both students are Italian,

let's suppose that students A wants to learn German and French for the first two years,

if he can just focus on two languages, which is already not bad, you know, two languages

is a big quantity as far as I'm concerned. And then he spends these two years focusing on these two languages

then at the end the second year, he decides to learn, say, Swedish and Chinese

so what he can do is that after two years he has already a very good grasp of the first two languages,

that he had been learning. So what happens is that, this way he can actually start learning other languages

while perfecting the ones he had previously learnt. And he can do it every two years.

At the end the ten years he will probably be able to speak four, five languages very well,

and the other ones he dabble in these languages, he will speak them, probably not as well, it's normal,

he will not have the same level in all his ten languages, but he'll have built a core in four or five,

and this is the main goal. Student B thinks that it's better, it's a wise choice

to go for ten languages at the same time, he thinks that he can spare time,

so he just learns ten languages every day. But even if he wanted to learn, say, six or four.

Four languages every day is a lot, so it means that you have to divide your time schedule,

your energy, and you're actually not focusing on anything in particular.

At the end of the ten years he would probably have built a core in a couple languages,

but there are very few language learners, who are able to learn ten languages for ten years

every day, every single day, there will be days when he forgets to do his homework,

there will be days when he just doesn't wanna do it. So, if you have ten years, five years,

certain time budget, I strongly suggest to stick to one or two languages, and then

once you have built a core to move on to learning others. This is what I've been doing for the last twenty years,

more or less, and I think it paid off, hopefully. Now, the last part of this video

is on tips and guidance on learning multiple languages at the same time. I think that,

if you wanna go for more than one languages, that is two or three, multiple languages at the same time,

I would suggest these things. First of all, if you have the following, if you have a fair amount of time

to dedicate to language learning, will power, some experience at language learning and good time management skills,

these are the four factors, key factors, for learning multiple languages at the same time.

If you decide to take on this multi-language challenge, here are, what I think, some useful tips.

First, choose the maximum of two languages at any given time. Three languages is already too much,

as far as I'm concerned, and will impair whatever language core you're trying to build.

So, two languages max. Second, choose a language, two languages that are possibly different from each other,

languages that are similar can overlap in so many ways, so in words, grammar,

and as I said even emotions and memories, as well as other factors.

So, it obviously causes confusion, so what I think, for example, learning Spanish and Italian

if you are a native English speaker, or Dutch and German, as far as I'm concerned, is not a good idea.

Third, try to choose an easy language and a relatively difficult one,

and by easy and difficult, I always refer to the fact, that they are easy or difficult, you know,

in relationship with your own native tongue. For a native English speaker Dutch would be an easy language,

and Chinese would be a difficult one, for example. And forth, if you choose two languages that are

at fairly opposite ends of the complexity scale try to give 80%, dedicate 80% of your time to the difficult one,

and 20% of the time to the easy one. That's what I did, for example, as far as Chinese and Portuguese were concerned.

Portuguese was very easy, I mean , no language is extremely easy, but I have to say that,

Portuguese was a matter of, mainly a matter of adjusting your pronunciation