I have no rules for maintaining my languages. The key is to learn the language through lots of input and then you tend not to lose them. I occasionally refresh them by reading or listening to an audio book.
Most of my learning time is just listening while driving or doing other tasks, or reading. All in I think I am at 1 to 1 and a half hours a day. More than half of that is casual listening.
The German polyglot Emil Krebs studied a different language every day of the week and alternated. It works pretty well if you want to balance a lot of languages.
Do what you are comfortable doing. I am also continuing with my listening and reading of Russian, and speaking with our tutors at LingQ, while studying Czech.
Yeah I don't want to be too dogmatic, but just speaking won't get you there, unless you do a lot of it. You have to listen and read, but if you get in a lot of speaking you will get in the listening. You also are best advised to read, and occasionally to review the grammar.
If both Languages are very different is easy learn one, three or whatever you want more. In my case I am a Spanish native speaker my first foreign language of course was English, then I started with this idea of learning two languages at the same time and I did it, I actually doing it right now with Italian and Japanese both completely different languages. Italian for me is a lot easy improving much more faster because it's too similar to my mother tongue and Japanese has a totally different writing system, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatically, etc. The key after all of course is motivation and pasion for that new language.
Hey we're quite similar, I'm learning Filipino and Korean, Filipino is easier for me to improve in cus of how similar it is to Indonesian, and also they use a lot of English. But I started Korean first so I'm better at it than Filipino
Nunca lo pensé de esa manera pero estoy en una posición similar a la tuya, habló español (soy argentino), mi segundo lenguaje es inglés y también tengo un muy buen manejo del portugués. Ahora empecé a estudiar francés que se me está haciendo súper fácil y también japonés que por supuesto cuesta un poco mas pero al ser tan diferentes es fácil de seguir. Así que nada, good advice y gracias!
I'm so interested in this novelty brain boosting memory thing, what you said about one week in Russian, really impacted me...it's like, the more you have fun and shuffle it, the better, faster the brain learns, as aside of just one language and then go for another after fluency. You just sparked a passion on me to learn several languages at the same time. It's like going to school; learn math, science, history and then come back the next day for more novelty on the same subject. It ain't just math for one year and then just history for the next grade.
as for me, it is a great temptation to learn several languages at the same time and to study them theoretically. I'm interested in not only learning languages, but also in academical linguistics, especially in comparative one.
Same for me. That's why I learn Latin and Italian at the same time. I also like reading linguistics in Italian and Latin (the ones in Latin are older).
except those mesh together quite well... unlike languages, they don't have different answers to the same question, but rather complementary observations
Sure. It would be great to interview him. His perspective, and his experience, would be of great interest to others. I have had an exchange with him but not in the form of an online interview.
You have to find your own way. i can only talk about what I am doing. I used to concentrate on one at a time, and now I am trying to do two at the same time. I will let you know how things work out. Why don't you do the same.
Interesting. Novelty is known to lead to neuroplasticity, and that tends to spread beyond the 'novel' domain. I.e., the growth is benefited in all sorts of areas. It probably says that in that book. I like how you're separating out the skills, reading in one, speaking in the other. Seems a cool idea!
Hello Steve, about the point on doing what you enjoy... recently I've done some intensive study in my target language in reading and writing and I really feel the progression in an overall sense, however the best part to languages is speaking, which I enjoy the most, and listening. When I try to study with listening(more) and reading(less), I feel my progress is slower. Of course, my target is to try and get as fluent as a foreigner can be. Great video again!
great obvservations! I think it's universal though, not just being a staple for learning languages. building patterns is great but breaking those patterns and reestablishing new patterns will make any skill push further and stronger than if you had spent even more time pushing through in a more static fashion.
From my experience, learning two languages at the same time is feasible provided that one has enough spare time available per week. In fact, I'm studying Russian and Czech in parallel in order not to overwrite one language with the other. I try to alternate on a daily basis: something like studying Russian on 3 days per week and Czech on another 2-3 days. I also try to listen to news in Russian (on RFI) and Czech (on Radio Praha) every day.
Proč ztrácet čas s češtinou, na světě je tolik skvělých jazyků, proč si zaplevelovat mozek takovým odpadem... I am just trying to learn Japanese through my poor English. Hoping to getting better in both... Greetings from Czechia.
@Ms D I'ts almost two years now since I started learning. And I improved significantly in both. I wanted to take JLPT N3 in this July, but coronavirus smashed my plans into pieces. And because of my Japanese learning, I am now able even to speak relatively fluently. I couldn't do that before. Its because I got used to recalling English words.
@Ms D I never have a language class neither in Japanese nor in English. I initially started with Lingodeer after I finished that I just started translating Anime (cause I am a massive weeb). I am using Anki for sentence mining and I learned all 常用漢字 with Remembering the Kanji. At least English definitions, I am still working on readings though.
I'm learning 3 languages at the same time now: Spanish, English and Chinese. I use Pimsleur for Spanish (wonderful method); effortless english for English; and some chinese textbooks & pimsleur for Chinese. The first thing I do when I wake up is listen to each language audio for each language. I spent around 30 minutes for each. I hope after 3 months I can be quite good, not very fluent at 3. I'm planning to learn Korean next year.
In my opinion and experience it is possible but the two languages need to be really very different. That is, no way to learn portuguese and spanish at the same time, but it is a lot easier to learn russian and mandarin at the same time. This works for me, but may not work for other people.
+elyisus This. I was learning arabic and japanese at the same time..... but was taking two totally different approaches. I was learning arabic comprehensively.... but when I would get a little tired I would focus on learning Japanese characters. I wasn't psychologically training my mind to think in japanese, but just storing kanji recognition in my brain for later.
I know it is an old video but yes you can. 1) I am a Czech and I am still improving my mother tongue (though not that much since I rarely come in contact with challenging content) 2) I learn English all the time from the exposure to it and because I google for anything in English and check English wikipedia first. 3) I am currently learning French, trying to read for about an hour a day. It is slow progress but I am not in a hurry. 4) And from time to time I learn a word in another language. So, I think learning three to four languages is fairly easy if you get enough exposure. In some regions in the world most people is quadrilingual actually because they get exposed to those different languages all the time and they get English on top. Two languages is almost nothing compared to that. Though people usually mean three languages by two, hardly anyone gives up on English or their mother tongue (though I am sure it would greatly boost their progress in other languages).
It fits better to me to use one already learnt and pleasant foreign language for me - such as German for instante, which I love- to learn another completely new.
Hello Steve! There is a question I have been wanting to ask you and that many language learners probably ask themselves once they achieve a satisfying level of fluency in a foreign language and start picking up another language from scratch: How much time should be spent everyday on "mastered" languages in order to maintain a very good level in that languages while starting another language from scratch? How do you manage to maintain a fluent level in more than 8 languages?
Interesting, I was born in Poland and I started learning English since I was 10yo at school, some German but didn't fall in love with the language, I started learning. French just for fun and few years later I came to England. Living here for few years I took on learning French but in English and I am not only able to learn French faster because for English speaking people is easier but I improve my English a lot. Its a new way for me to expand my vocabulary in English where before I git bored with learning new words. I would recommend learning Czech in Russian, there have more in common its hard but I have more joy of learn g this way for example Iam planing on learning Russian in the future and I'll use my Polish to do it. I don't know why you didn't try This method, maybe there are some reasons.. Would love to know what a person with your expirience is thinking on the subject(:
This is just me but I think you really need to interview Alexander Arguelles,Ph.D. He is really a wonderful polyglot and probably one of the best well known.
I wanna learn german and japanese. I already know a little german, and i found out that japanese has a kind of similar sentence structure to german sooo i'm gonna try it! Wish me luck!
@Ms D good luck to you too! By the way, some piece of advice is to listen to music in your target language and try to sing along. You'll improve your pronunciation and you'll intuitively learn sentence structure!
Your channel is very good and informative, thank you so much for your hard work, you helped me a lot with your advice :) I speak English and Spanish, I am going to learn French and German together, I can do it :)
Hi. To me, taking up a language is related to my perpetual effort to ever improve my competence in English. Hence, my pursuit is to combine learning a new language and improving English (I'm not a native English speaking person; my native language is Hellenic; Greek if you prefer, though I'd rather you did not). For example, a primary resolution of mine for year 2017 is to seriously take up at least one new language. I've chosen Swedish. All sources I shall be using will be mostly Swedish, BUT, when it comes to translations, looking up words, meanings, nuances, elaborate, definitions (...you name it...), I will be using English as a counterpart language... I have adopted this method ever since for ever and it works out fine.
I think it depends on the languages. if they are very different like a Asian language and a Slavic language, i don't think there would be any problems.
Been learning Danish and Norwegian at the same time. The advantage is that 80% of their vocab is the same , where they differ it is very slight except when it comes to pronunciation and the sounds of the language. That is proving harder to separate in my mind and not sure if it wise to continue doing both or picking one for now?
When I started learning languages, I signed up for French, German, and Russian all at the same time. And I have found it useful to get a dictionary from my B and C languages...using German to learn French and so forth, without going through English.
Succession/stacking of routines or triggers or anchors... case tables are just a bit more brain accessible if in a succession/table as opposed to store it just under the name - Lokative oder Akkuzative etc.. labels. Btw the numbers in German are same and if you ask old Germans about the falls, some recall them in the 1234= N G D A succession. Succession matters to recall the grammar. To use cases fluently one applies the subconscious knowledge based on the familiar chunks.
I'm too lazy to actually do it... but If the two languages are related at least somewhat, French/Spanish/Italian for example or Mandarin/Cantonese... but something like Arabic and Thai probably will just take longer when they are spread out more because of it. I'm not a master or anything that's just how I think :3
Hi, it's been 4 years since this video was released and I'm still hoping Czech course will be put up on LingQ someday. I know it's in beta, but could you please provide any updates?
I didn't really find in this video an answer to the question in the video title: "Is it effective to learn two languages at the same time?" The video should aim to stay on that topic and not branch off in numerous tangents about methods of learning, experiences, etc.
Hi Steve. I've been working on German for 1.5 years on Lingq and am at 7500 words. Im considering starting working on Spanish but I don't want to stop, take a break, or even slow down with German. Would it better to just not start then? Do you find the alternating between languages affective even now? (I see this video is from 2012.) Thanks very much for your reply.
As a Spanish speaker who wet his toe in German, I'd day you can do it. They sound different, have different vocabulary, very different grammar, very different cultural associations... Unless you are starting both at the same time, I think it would be difficult to mix them up. Btw, depending on your German proficiency, you might study Spanish in German. It works well for some people, but it requires being comfortable with the base language.
@@wulvershon I have a genuine interest in German, however I want to agree with learning the 1K in 10 different languages, versus almost 10K in one unless that's my final tongue.🤪
Hi, I am learning learning chinese for two month and I have a grasp how this language works. but I also want to refresh my french and spanish. is it a good method, according to your opinion, when I alternate between these languages every week? for example the first week I focus on chinese, the second week on french, the third week on spanish, the fourth week on chinese again and so on?
D'une manière spontanée sans avoir lu les ouvrages cités en références et Les principes de Steve relatifs à l'apprentissage des Langues , j'ai appliqué "à peu près les memes méthodes et les résultats sont, dans leurs majorité , nettement positifs ! Quand je lis des biographies d'écrivains: telles que celles de Gustave Flaubert jack , London et leurs efforts pour rédiger leurs chefs d'oeuvre,Nous,nous sommes vraiment gatés: grace aux nouvelles technologies !
I'm learning french and irish. I'm relatively fluent in both ( I can converse at a basic level but probably make mistakes). I think my french is better than irish because I'm more interested in learning it and there are so many more resources to learn it because it's still a widely spoken language. I HAVE TO learn irish in school, which I hate because it's interfering with learning french. :(
I'm learning Irish and a few other languages including french but im not learning them for school just to dabble and figure out what i can learn to understand some what
I would deffo want to learn Irish if I were you. It's also cool because I'm guessing you have Irish heritage. French you can learn whenever and wherever.
Do you have any recommendations for learning Russian and Ukrainian at the same time? I started off learning Russian using Pimsleur (my go-to for jumpstarting language learning in a new language), then following a few weeks later introducing Ukrainian on Pimsleur, as well. I feel very drawn to learning both languages, but I realize they are very similar in many ways. I have been learning to read Ukrainian on DuoLingo and that has been helpful to read Russian, as well, although it is a bit different. I also learned a tiny bit of Polish through Pimsleur about 17 years ago and the similarities between these Slavic languages really intrigued me. I am not learning Polish now, but I may go back to it in the future. Back in college (about 30 years ago), I tried to learn Italian along with Spanish, but it was too similar. Now, my Spanish is more cemented, so I listened to a few lessons of Italian on Pimsleur as well. I can read a little Italian, as well. I know I should probably concentrate on either Russian or Ukrainian, but I don't want to leave either behind. I like your idea of concentrating on speaking more in one language and just reading/listening in the other. I just don't want to confuse myself...too much.
I have a question. I want to learn Russian, but I have to take a French class for my two years of a foreign language to apply for college. Should I focus on the French or Russian?
very interesting video, thanks for sharing! I also find that novelty sparks a temporary increase in performance and retention in my target language. Personally, I end up having a month of high motivation for one language (Chinese) and then about a half a month of decreasing productivity and motivation followed by the same pattern for Japanese. I know this might not be ideal, but do you think this cyclical waxing and waning of motivation will hinder long term success? Thanks again from Toronto!
i m thinking of start to learn finnish and german in the same time but i dont know if its really possible because it will probably take too much time to learn two so different languages in the same time
Well what exactly do you mean by LEARNING two at a time? I speak higher-intermediate SPanish and brand new at Russan. So I spend about 45 min a day learning new Spanish (through movies etc) and 90 minutes on Russian from scratch. So I would not say Im really LEARNING two languages. Im IMPROVING one and LEARNING the other. Or is that a flawed distinction?
hey Steve, so basically I come from Zimbabwe and at my school we learn French,Greek, Shona,Latin and English although are required to drop Greek shona and latin next year as we start to do our IGCSE syllabis at the start of january 2019.Anyway aside from these I also learn chinese and can speak and read it better than all the other languages except for english. so I wanted to take up an extra french thing so aside from doing 40mins from monday to friday ill do from 9;30-12:00 on sat and 11:00-12:00 wheres i only do mandarin from 9:00-10:00 weekly. So do you think that this extra french will effect my chinese although i am young (13) so aren't kids suppose to learn languages easily. And will it help that my chinese is really good at language cuz he's a polyglot his name is Christopher English, works for the UN maybee youve heard of him? anyway so just wanted your opinion
Can you explain me something as poliglot?, I have learn english untill my simple not native level, and after it, I tried to learn french in the same time, I felt that french for me is much easier, but my english became worse at once.
So... I'm learning Chinese, I want to learn Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Thai, Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish, and Italian. Do you think I can learn Norwegian and Chinese at the same time, or Swedish and Chinese at the same time?
You are still young. Work on your French for now, and really commit to it. It will help you when you finally have the time to devote yourself to Russian. You have lots of time.
Steve, I consider myself fluent in English, But I feel like I'm not in the level that I really wanna be.. But learning English when you are already fluent is so damn hard because there's no much I can do to improve.. Do you think I should go for another language already or keep my focus on english? TY
I learn French now, for my new L2, it's been 3 months. I also STILL learn Korean and it's been 3.5 years, because I don't improve much for those years in term of my way of study. So I kinda do both now, with a lot attention more on French of course. So for this case, does it counts as learn two languages at the same time? How's your way to keep improve on your previous languages?
I have a funny and maybe even a weird situation regarding the language learning. Some time ago I started studying Italian and Spanish at the same time and somehow even if I heard from many people and read from various sources that similar languages the ones that come from from the same language family are very easy to mix. However, that issue of mixing somehow did not occur to me. After some time due to certain personal reasons, I have put a temporary stop on my Italian learning journey. These days im again in the two languages at once paradox =), but now instead of Italian im learning Hungarian and to my surprise the moments where I mix Spanish and Hungarian are quite often. Is there are a explanation for this or is just my mind playing some trick on me? I'm not a native English speaker so that is the reasonable explanation for some writing or sentence bulidng mistakes if they were made. Thank you
I would focus on one at a time, Actually if you are motivated Mandarin should be easy. You can already read it. >Do it on LingQ. Japanese is a whole other matter and will require your full attention.
that the problem I only can speak fluenty catonese only know the easy characters. at the moment I am making more progess in Japanese (Hiragana) than Mandarine
crixon6192 i would recommend to study japanese first, because the closeness between mandarin and cantonese could play against your experience of learning a new language. One needs to be challenged and engaged and that's a hard thing when one reaches a certain point midway through learning a language closely related to an already known one.
Where do you find your tutors? Isn't this a great expense? I had the luxury of a German pen pal, while learning German. We are great friends to this day. This was back in High School. It seems, with the advent of facebook, its more difficult to find people with whom to have a voice chat. Any pointers you could offer would be appreciated. Thanks. :)
Hey,In fact I have some basic skills in english and I can communicate and I've a good level in french so I wanna improve my english and french at the same time if is it possible ?
What about speaking three different languages at the same time in a sentence? I'm asking because i just started writing songs in Spanish, Italian and French combining them and translating it in English after in the song. This is more of an artistic approach i'm taking towards my music because i like how they sound in singing and want to sing them all together at the same time. I'm not sure if there are people who do this to the point of creating some kind of system that combines similar languages together like the three i talked about and would like to know where i could find more information about it since i couldn't find any. I don't have a perfect system for doing this myself and would like to improve combining them easier.
+Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve Thank you. So it's possible. Anyway, one of my major goals this year is to be fluent in both French and German because English is my native language. How realistic is that goal too?
+Ugo Ekwegh Starting from scratch I would say becoming fluent in two languages within a year seems pretty unlikely especially if you are new to language learning. I don't want to discourage you, but it is a process and I don't want you to get disappointed. Don't put any timetables on yourself and don't get discouraged if you hit speed bumps. There is no formula for how long any language will take any given person. However, if Spanish is your first language and you also know English you will be able to learn french pretty fast! I think you can definitely get to a very high speaking level of french within a year if you put your mind to it!
you have really great tips, I recently started watching your videos and I find you really similar to Rick Steves =0), (Rick Steves does travel videos) thanks for sharing your knowledge
Try with Slovenian language:) but carefully not Slovakian:) this are totally different countries:) And in our country is one sort of myth that our language is more difficult that Chinese:) but i don't believe 'cause our language is pretty similar with Slavic languages:) And one suggestion those who want to learn language which can be use it in big territory is Serbia-Croatian languages ( this can be use in Serbia, Croatia; Bosnia, Montenegro and you can also communicate in our country):)
I have no rules for maintaining my languages. The key is to learn the language through lots of input and then you tend not to lose them. I occasionally refresh them by reading or listening to an audio book.
Gracias por el conocimiento compartido... SALUDOS DESDE HERMOSILLO SONORA...LA CIUDAD DEL SOL...
Most of my learning time is just listening while driving or doing other tasks, or reading. All in I think I am at 1 to 1 and a half hours a day. More than half of that is casual listening.
What 's your motivation Steven?
I tend to focus on one at a time, or at least 80% on one and 20% on another language where I am already fairly advanced.
The German polyglot Emil Krebs studied a different language every day of the week and alternated. It works pretty well if you want to balance a lot of languages.
Do what you are comfortable doing. I am also continuing with my listening and reading of Russian, and speaking with our tutors at LingQ, while studying Czech.
Yeah I don't want to be too dogmatic, but just speaking won't get you there, unless you do a lot of it. You have to listen and read, but if you get in a lot of speaking you will get in the listening. You also are best advised to read, and occasionally to review the grammar.
10:17 „personally I’m a gangsta“
Lmfao
Can’t unhear that now haha
What did he intended to say actually? Surely not that he's a gangster 🤣
@@arrhazes8198 "personally, I'm against that"
Jämes Männing 😂
If both Languages are very different is easy learn one, three or whatever you want more. In my case I am a Spanish native speaker my first foreign language of course was English, then I started with this idea of learning two languages at the same time and I did it, I actually doing it right now with Italian and Japanese both completely different languages. Italian for me is a lot easy improving much more faster because it's too similar to my mother tongue and Japanese has a totally different writing system, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammatically, etc. The key after all of course is motivation and pasion for that new language.
Hey we're quite similar, I'm learning Filipino and Korean, Filipino is easier for me to improve in cus of how similar it is to Indonesian, and also they use a lot of English. But I started Korean first so I'm better at it than Filipino
Nunca lo pensé de esa manera pero estoy en una posición similar a la tuya, habló español (soy argentino), mi segundo lenguaje es inglés y también tengo un muy buen manejo del portugués. Ahora empecé a estudiar francés que se me está haciendo súper fácil y también japonés que por supuesto cuesta un poco mas pero al ser tan diferentes es fácil de seguir. Así que nada, good advice y gracias!
Aunque en realidad el Japones no tiene una pronunciación tan diferente, comparten una fonética casi idéntica.
I'm so interested in this novelty brain boosting memory thing, what you said about one week in Russian, really impacted me...it's like, the more you have fun and shuffle it, the better, faster the brain learns, as aside of just one language and then go for another after fluency. You just sparked a passion on me to learn several languages at the same time.
It's like going to school; learn math, science, history and then come back the next day for more novelty on the same subject. It ain't just math for one year and then just history for the next grade.
This makes sense. My brain loves novelty. At school we used to learn two foreign languages anyway.
as for me, it is a great temptation to learn several languages at the same time and to study them theoretically. I'm interested in not only learning languages, but also in academical linguistics, especially in comparative one.
Анатолий Орлов yepp. Same
Same for me. That's why I learn Latin and Italian at the same time. I also like reading linguistics in Italian and Latin (the ones in Latin are older).
Is like school learning physics, algebra, english, chemistry, spanish, in one symester.
except those mesh together quite well... unlike languages, they don't have different answers to the same question, but rather complementary observations
And they suck at all of them..
I have been working since I was 21, 45 years. I now have some perks.
Quite interesting. I'm currently learning both French and Danish concurrently and I really like being able to switch between the two of them.
No I think motivation is all important. Do whatever you are motivated to do.
Sure. It would be great to interview him. His perspective, and his experience, would be of great interest to others. I have had an exchange with him but not in the form of an online interview.
You have to find your own way. i can only talk about what I am doing. I used to concentrate on one at a time, and now I am trying to do two at the same time. I will let you know how things work out. Why don't you do the same.
Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve
So how did things work out?
I think it is being aired in early May. I will let you know. Any interest in a Vancouver meet up of language keeners?
Ich werde versuchen dass zu machen.
Just do what you like doing and keep exploring and finding resources to help you. There are lots.
I prefer to focus on one language for longer periods of time, but whatever works for you is fine.
Interesting. Novelty is known to lead to neuroplasticity, and that tends to spread beyond the 'novel' domain. I.e., the growth is benefited in all sorts of areas. It probably says that in that book.
I like how you're separating out the skills, reading in one, speaking in the other. Seems a cool idea!
Steve, você é minha inspiração para eu atingir minha sonhada fluência em Inglês.
Gosto muito dos seus vídeos. Obrigado!
Atingiu a fluência?
Agora estudo português todos os dias. Obrigado por seu comentário.
Sua língua nativa é Inglês?@@chrisbunka
For Russian go to LingQ!
Hello Steve, about the point on doing what you enjoy... recently I've done some intensive study in my target language in reading and writing and I really feel the progression in an overall sense, however the best part to languages is speaking, which I enjoy the most, and listening. When I try to study with listening(more) and reading(less), I feel my progress is slower. Of course, my target is to try and get as fluent as a foreigner can be. Great video again!
great obvservations! I think it's universal though, not just being a staple for learning languages. building patterns is great but breaking those patterns and reestablishing new patterns will make any skill push further and stronger than if you had spent even more time pushing through in a more static fashion.
Steve, good luck in Toronto!
Good the hear the television is discovering the community on RUclips here.
From my experience, learning two languages at the same time is feasible provided that one has enough spare time available per week. In fact, I'm studying Russian and Czech in parallel in order not to overwrite one language with the other. I try to alternate on a daily basis: something like studying Russian on 3 days per week and Czech on another 2-3 days. I also try to listen to news in Russian (on RFI) and Czech (on Radio Praha) every day.
Proč ztrácet čas s češtinou, na světě je tolik skvělých jazyků, proč si zaplevelovat mozek takovým odpadem... I am just trying to learn Japanese through my poor English. Hoping to getting better in both... Greetings from Czechia.
@Ms D I'ts almost two years now since I started learning. And I improved significantly in both. I wanted to take JLPT N3 in this July, but coronavirus smashed my plans into pieces. And because of my Japanese learning, I am now able even to speak relatively fluently. I couldn't do that before. Its because I got used to recalling English words.
@Ms D I never have a language class neither in Japanese nor in English. I initially started with Lingodeer after I finished that I just started translating Anime (cause I am a massive weeb). I am using Anki for sentence mining and I learned all 常用漢字 with Remembering the Kanji. At least English definitions, I am still working on readings though.
I'm learning 3 languages at the same time now: Spanish, English and Chinese. I use Pimsleur for Spanish (wonderful method); effortless english for English; and some chinese textbooks & pimsleur for Chinese. The first thing I do when I wake up is listen to each language audio for each language. I spent around 30 minutes for each. I hope after 3 months I can be quite good, not very fluent at 3. I'm planning to learn Korean next year.
Soo.. are you fluent in those languages now?
I also wanna know, have you became fluent?
I am trying something new now.
This is encouraging. As I'm alternating between Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.
And, also thank you Steve:) i'm using a lot of you're material to learn english and its very helpful:)
In belgian schools you have to learn 2 languages at once and you can take a third one too (for example i have english, spanish and german)
In my opinion and experience it is possible but the two languages need to be really very different. That is, no way to learn portuguese and spanish at the same time, but it is a lot easier to learn russian and mandarin at the same time. This works for me, but may not work for other people.
+elyisus This. I was learning arabic and japanese at the same time..... but was taking two totally different approaches. I was learning arabic comprehensively.... but when I would get a little tired I would focus on learning Japanese characters. I wasn't psychologically training my mind to think in japanese, but just storing kanji recognition in my brain for later.
elyisus Russian and Mandarin are the langauges that i want to learn at the same time haha
elyisus would you say russian and italian are different enough?
Andrej Josifovski Definitely! I studied Italian--very different.
Is there enough difference between Korean and Japanese?
I know it is an old video but yes you can.
1) I am a Czech and I am still improving my mother tongue (though not that much since I rarely come in contact with challenging content)
2) I learn English all the time from the exposure to it and because I google for anything in English and check English wikipedia first.
3) I am currently learning French, trying to read for about an hour a day. It is slow progress but I am not in a hurry.
4) And from time to time I learn a word in another language.
So, I think learning three to four languages is fairly easy if you get enough exposure. In some regions in the world most people is quadrilingual actually because they get exposed to those different languages all the time and they get English on top. Two languages is almost nothing compared to that. Though people usually mean three languages by two, hardly anyone gives up on English or their mother tongue (though I am sure it would greatly boost their progress in other languages).
4:26 Manfred Spitzer : Lernen - Gehirnforschung und die Schule des Lebens
Jari Satta thanks!
Does anyone know this book's English name? Hasnt it been trans yet?
It fits better to me to use one already learnt and pleasant foreign language for me - such as German for instante, which I love- to learn another completely new.
I will try to contact him. Maybe someone here knows him better than I do.
Hello Steve! There is a question I have been wanting to ask you and that many language learners probably ask themselves once they achieve a satisfying level of fluency in a foreign language and start picking up another language from scratch:
How much time should be spent everyday on "mastered" languages in order to maintain a very good level in that languages while starting another language from scratch?
How do you manage to maintain a fluent level in more than 8 languages?
Interesting, I was born in Poland and I started learning English since I was 10yo at school, some German but didn't fall in love with the language, I started learning. French just for fun and few years later I came to England. Living here for few years I took on learning French but in English and I am not only able to learn French faster because for English speaking people is easier but I improve my English a lot. Its a new way for me to expand my vocabulary in English where before I git bored with learning new words. I would recommend learning Czech in Russian, there have more in common its hard but I have more joy of learn g this way for example Iam planing on learning Russian in the future and I'll use my Polish to do it. I don't know why you didn't try This method, maybe there are some reasons.. Would love to know what a person with your expirience is thinking on the subject(:
Okay, thanks. Yes, I would be interested!
I am learning 2 languages at the same time, it is actually working well for me.
This is just me but I think you really need to interview Alexander Arguelles,Ph.D. He is really a wonderful polyglot and probably one of the best well known.
Könten sie die neue sendung auf you toube dann hochzuladen damit wir alle das anschauen können?????Wir haben keine Tv kanal von Toronto!Danke schön!
I wanna learn german and japanese. I already know a little german, and i found out that japanese has a kind of similar sentence structure to german sooo i'm gonna try it!
Wish me luck!
@Ms D good luck to you too! By the way, some piece of advice is to listen to music in your target language and try to sing along. You'll improve your pronunciation and you'll intuitively learn sentence structure!
Your channel is very good and informative, thank you so much for your hard work, you helped me a lot with your advice :) I speak English and Spanish, I am going to learn French and German together, I can do it :)
Hi. To me, taking up a language is related to my perpetual effort to ever improve my competence in English. Hence, my pursuit is to combine learning a new language and improving English (I'm not a native English speaking person; my native language is Hellenic; Greek if you prefer, though I'd rather you did not). For example, a primary resolution of mine for year 2017 is to seriously take up at least one new language. I've chosen Swedish. All sources I shall be using will be mostly Swedish, BUT, when it comes to translations, looking up words, meanings, nuances, elaborate, definitions (...you name it...), I will be using English as a counterpart language... I have adopted this method ever since for ever and it works out fine.
I'm doing the same with japanese instead of English as a referent language (to learn korean atm), it's a great method, I agree :)
I think it depends on the languages. if they are very different like a Asian language and a Slavic language, i don't think there would be any problems.
Been learning Danish and Norwegian at the same time. The advantage is that 80% of their vocab is the same , where they differ it is very slight except when it comes to pronunciation and the sounds of the language. That is proving harder to separate in my mind and not sure if it wise to continue doing both or picking one for now?
Hi Steve, I also live in Vancouver. Can you please tell us the time the program will be airing? Thanks!
When I started learning languages, I signed up for French, German, and Russian all at the same time. And I have found it useful to get a dictionary from my B and C languages...using German to learn French and so forth, without going through English.
OK, thank you for the clarification.
Just curious why do people find it helpful to number cases in Russian or Czech learning as opposed to using names *dative etc
I still don't understand how he uses it.
Succession/stacking of routines or triggers or anchors... case tables are just a bit more brain accessible if in a succession/table as opposed to store it just under the name - Lokative oder Akkuzative etc.. labels. Btw the numbers in German are same and if you ask old Germans about the falls, some recall them in the 1234= N G D A succession. Succession matters to recall the grammar. To use cases fluently one applies the subconscious knowledge based on the familiar chunks.
I'm too lazy to actually do it... but If the two languages are related at least somewhat, French/Spanish/Italian for example or Mandarin/Cantonese... but something like Arabic and Thai probably will just take longer when they are spread out more because of it. I'm not a master or anything that's just how I think :3
我的中文学习是很好 (correct me if I made a mistake)
(My intended sentence was “My chinese studies are going very well”)
Мы любим тебя Стив, спасибо 😘
Hi, it's been 4 years since this video was released and I'm still hoping Czech course will be put up on LingQ someday.
I know it's in beta, but could you please provide any updates?
Czech is not our largest library of content but you can import whatever you want for your own use to study Czech on LingQ. I did.
@@Thelinguist TIENE UN VIDEO DE COMO FUNCIONA Y COMO USAR LINGQ Y SACARLE EL MÁXIMO DE PROVECHO A SUS FUNCIONES ?
Can I got hard at Greek and Ancient Greek and just a little bit of Spanish to improve listening skills?
I didn't really find in this video an answer to the question in the video title: "Is it effective to learn two languages at the same time?" The video should aim to stay on that topic and not branch off in numerous tangents about methods of learning, experiences, etc.
Discussion starts at 2:20
you did not explain 6th and 7th secrets of language learning,if possible do explain it at the earliest.
Hi Steve. I've been working on German for 1.5 years on Lingq and am at 7500 words. Im considering starting working on Spanish but I don't want to stop, take a break, or even slow down with German. Would it better to just not start then? Do you find the alternating between languages affective even now? (I see this video is from 2012.) Thanks very much for your reply.
Nein niemals, Deutsch ist am besten :D
As a Spanish speaker who wet his toe in German, I'd day you can do it.
They sound different, have different vocabulary, very different grammar, very different cultural associations... Unless you are starting both at the same time, I think it would be difficult to mix them up.
Btw, depending on your German proficiency, you might study Spanish in German. It works well for some people, but it requires being comfortable with the base language.
Ellery Prescott german is fn trash why would you want to know 10k Words lmao I would rather have 10 languages with 1k Words each
@@wulvershon I have a genuine interest in German, however I want to agree with learning the 1K in 10 different languages, versus almost 10K in one unless that's my final tongue.🤪
Do you think it works if I learn one language (for two hours) on mon-wed-fri- and the other one on tue-thu-sat- and take a break from both on Sunday?
Thanks, appreciate it and best of luck.
Hi, I am learning learning chinese for two month and I have a grasp how this language works. but I also want to refresh my french and spanish.
is it a good method, according to your opinion, when I alternate between these languages every week? for example the first week I focus on chinese, the second week on french, the third week on spanish, the fourth week on chinese again and so on?
Ja, the same happens to me in my Japanese. I can both read it and understand it really well but when it comes to speak it does become not that good.
AMAZING! BRAVO!
D'une manière spontanée sans avoir lu les ouvrages cités en références et Les principes de Steve relatifs à l'apprentissage des Langues , j'ai appliqué "à peu près les memes méthodes et les résultats sont, dans leurs majorité , nettement positifs ! Quand je lis des biographies d'écrivains: telles que celles de Gustave Flaubert jack , London et leurs efforts pour rédiger leurs chefs d'oeuvre,Nous,nous sommes vraiment gatés: grace aux nouvelles technologies !
Thanks! I just did! Looks good, too.
I'm learning french and irish. I'm relatively fluent in both ( I can converse at a basic level but probably make mistakes). I think my french is better than irish because I'm more interested in learning it and there are so many more resources to learn it because it's still a widely spoken language. I HAVE TO learn irish in school, which I hate because it's interfering with learning french. :(
Stick with the Irish my Celtic brother people will love it when you travel. It's a cool language too.
I'm learning Irish and a few other languages including french but im not learning them for school just to dabble and figure out what i can learn to understand some what
Ah.. Maddie... Celtic sister* lol
I would deffo want to learn Irish if I were you. It's also cool because I'm guessing you have Irish heritage. French you can learn whenever and wherever.
Do you have any recommendations for learning Russian and Ukrainian at the same time? I started off learning Russian using Pimsleur (my go-to for jumpstarting language learning in a new language), then following a few weeks later introducing Ukrainian on Pimsleur, as well. I feel very drawn to learning both languages, but I realize they are very similar in many ways.
I have been learning to read Ukrainian on DuoLingo and that has been helpful to read Russian, as well, although it is a bit different.
I also learned a tiny bit of Polish through Pimsleur about 17 years ago and the similarities between these Slavic languages really intrigued me. I am not learning Polish now, but I may go back to it in the future. Back in college (about 30 years ago), I tried to learn Italian along with Spanish, but it was too similar. Now, my Spanish is more cemented, so I listened to a few lessons of Italian on Pimsleur as well. I can read a little Italian, as well. I know I should probably concentrate on either Russian or Ukrainian, but I don't want to leave either behind.
I like your idea of concentrating on speaking more in one language and just reading/listening in the other. I just don't want to confuse myself...too much.
No special recommendations other than LingQ where Ukrainian is free.
@@Thelinguist Thank you! I am not familiar with LingQ...yet!
I have a question. I want to learn Russian, but I have to take a French class for my two years of a foreign language to apply for college. Should I focus on the French or Russian?
Steve, how many hours do you study in a day and for how many days a week
I learn 2 languages, German and Japanese. I usually do half an hour-2 hours of German per day and around 5-30 minutes on Japanese a day.
+Visof Second year of German and just starting learning the Hiragana :P
very interesting video, thanks for sharing!
I also find that novelty sparks a temporary increase in performance and retention in my target language. Personally, I end up having a month of high motivation for one language (Chinese) and then about a half a month of decreasing productivity and motivation followed by the same pattern for Japanese. I know this might not be ideal, but do you think this cyclical waxing and waning of motivation will hinder long term success? Thanks again from Toronto!
I'm doing this right now with Romanian and Italian.
i m thinking of start to learn finnish and german in the same time but i dont know if its really possible because it will probably take too much time to learn two so different languages in the same time
Well what exactly do you mean by LEARNING two at a time? I speak higher-intermediate SPanish and brand new at Russan. So I spend about 45 min a day learning new Spanish (through movies etc) and 90 minutes on Russian from scratch. So I would not say Im really LEARNING two languages. Im IMPROVING one and LEARNING the other. Or is that a flawed distinction?
I tried learning three languages simultaneously Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu brutal combination never again
+Roman Soiko LOL
Roman Soiko het jy afrikaans toe geleer?
hey Steve, so basically I come from Zimbabwe and at my school we learn French,Greek, Shona,Latin and English although are required to drop Greek shona and latin next year as we start to do our IGCSE syllabis at the start of january 2019.Anyway aside from these I also learn chinese and can speak and read it better than all the other languages except for english. so I wanted to take up an extra french thing so aside from doing 40mins from monday to friday ill do from 9;30-12:00 on sat and 11:00-12:00 wheres i only do mandarin from 9:00-10:00 weekly. So do you think that this extra french will effect my chinese although i am young (13) so aren't kids suppose to learn languages easily. And will it help that my chinese is really good at language cuz he's a polyglot his name is Christopher English, works for the UN maybee youve heard of him? anyway so just wanted your opinion
So, doing it, changing every week, did you improve?
how much time you spend on each of languages each day?
Can you explain me something as poliglot?, I have learn english untill
my simple not native level, and after it, I tried to learn french in the
same time, I felt that french for me is much easier, but my english
became worse at once.
I also like to learn a new language through translation.
So... I'm learning Chinese, I want to learn Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Thai, Swedish, Norwegian, French, Spanish, and Italian. Do you think I can learn Norwegian and Chinese at the same time, or Swedish and Chinese at the same time?
You are still young. Work on your French for now, and really commit to it. It will help you when you finally have the time to devote yourself to Russian. You have lots of time.
Steve, I consider myself fluent in English, But I feel like I'm not in the level that I really wanna be.. But learning English when you are already fluent is so damn hard because there's no much I can do to improve.. Do you think I should go for another language already or keep my focus on english? TY
Learn a new one. When you go back to English you will improve faster.
what's the book's name? I couldn't understand
I learn French now, for my new L2, it's been 3 months. I also STILL learn Korean and it's been 3.5 years, because I don't improve much for those years in term of my way of study. So I kinda do both now, with a lot attention more on French of course. So for this case, does it counts as learn two languages at the same time? How's your way to keep improve on your previous languages?
Listen and read for the most part.
I have a funny and maybe even a weird situation regarding the language learning. Some time ago I started studying Italian and Spanish at the same time and somehow even if I heard from many people and read from various sources that similar languages the ones that come from from the same language family are very easy to mix. However, that issue of mixing somehow did not occur to me. After some time due to certain personal reasons, I have put a temporary stop on my Italian learning journey. These days im again in the two languages at once paradox =), but now instead of Italian im learning Hungarian and to my surprise the moments where I mix Spanish and Hungarian are quite often. Is there are a explanation for this or is just my mind playing some trick on me? I'm not a native English speaker so that is the reasonable explanation for some writing or sentence bulidng mistakes if they were made. Thank you
I find the same. There is no telling which language pathways the brain chooses to go down.
hi, I am catonese living in europe at the moment trying to mandarine and japanese in the same time would the be possible??
I would focus on one at a time, Actually if you are motivated Mandarin should be easy. You can already read it. >Do it on LingQ. Japanese is a whole other matter and will require your full attention.
that the problem I only can speak fluenty catonese only know the easy characters. at the moment I am making more progess in Japanese (Hiragana) than Mandarine
crixon6192 i would recommend to study japanese first, because the closeness between mandarin and cantonese could play against your experience of learning a new language. One needs to be challenged and engaged and that's a hard thing when one reaches a certain point midway through learning a language closely related to an already known one.
Where do you find your tutors? Isn't this a great expense? I had the luxury of a German pen pal, while learning German. We are great friends to this day. This was back in High School. It seems, with the advent of facebook, its more difficult to find people with whom to have a voice chat. Any pointers you could offer would be appreciated. Thanks. :)
I use our tutors at LingQ.
thanks I've joined the service.
Hey,In fact I have some basic skills in english and I can communicate and I've a good level in french so I wanna improve my english and french at the same time if is it possible ?
So can I learn Russian and Finnish at the same time?
Go for it.
Ruben Winters my goodness! Sixteen cases!!! 😱😱😱😧😓 Plus six cases, all at the same time??? 😃 Good luck.
What about speaking three different languages at the same time in a sentence? I'm asking because i just started writing songs in Spanish, Italian and French combining them and translating it in English after in the song. This is more of an artistic approach i'm taking towards my music because i like how they sound in singing and want to sing them all together at the same time. I'm not sure if there are people who do this to the point of creating some kind of system that combines similar languages together like the three i talked about and would like to know where i could find more information about it since i couldn't find any. I don't have a perfect system for doing this myself and would like to improve combining them easier.
Is it possible to learn German and French at the same time?
+Ugo Ekwegh No doubt but I would focus on one language of the time as a matter of personal preference.
+Steve Kaufmann - lingosteve Thank you. So it's possible. Anyway, one of my major goals this year is to be fluent in both French and German because English is my native language. How realistic is that goal too?
+Ugo Ekwegh My native language is spanish but that's my goal too.
+Ugo Ekwegh Remember. Language isn't just data that goes into your head. It is a life skill, there is no rush to get everything in.
+Ugo Ekwegh Starting from scratch I would say becoming fluent in two languages within a year seems pretty unlikely especially if you are new to language learning. I don't want to discourage you, but it is a process and I don't want you to get disappointed. Don't put any timetables on yourself and don't get discouraged if you hit speed bumps. There is no formula for how long any language will take any given person. However, if Spanish is your first language and you also know English you will be able to learn french pretty fast! I think you can definitely get to a very high speaking level of french within a year if you put your mind to it!
Do you also speak / learn polish?
Maciej P I have just dabbled a little in Polish.
you have really great tips, I recently started watching your videos and I find you really similar to Rick Steves =0), (Rick Steves does travel videos) thanks for sharing your knowledge
where are yuo from
+Avery Hotchkiss Vancouver
I thought you sounded canadian
This video is mislabeled, What you are really doing is reviewing and refreshing instead of learning from scratch.
Try with Slovenian language:) but carefully not Slovakian:) this are totally different countries:) And in our country is one sort of myth that our language is more difficult that Chinese:) but i don't believe 'cause our language is pretty similar with Slavic languages:) And one suggestion those who want to learn language which can be use it in big territory is Serbia-Croatian languages ( this can be use in Serbia, Croatia; Bosnia, Montenegro and you can also communicate in our country):)