Studying 2 languages at once?

[TheWind]

Hello,

 

I wanted to get some input from others on the forum to see if anyone has had experience with this? Is this something that is frowned upon or thought of as inefficient? I want to know if I start another language if it will in anyway disrupt my current studying progress that I'm doing with Chinese (assuming I continue to study the same amount of Chinese every day when I begin the new language)

 

My native language is English, and the language I was interested in learning was Spanish. I can only imagine that it would be far easier and less stressful than Chinese to learn.

 

Thanks

[Michael H]

You can certainly study more than one language at once. (I have experience with this.) But I would recommend not simultaneously studying more than one language at a beginner level. When you are just starting a language, you go through an intense process of building new circuitry in your brain to process it, and it would be very confusing and ineffective to do this with more than one language at once. But once you have the basics of Chinese down (even if you are a long way from mastery) there should be no problem starting Spanish. If English is your native language, it will be much easier. You might also find yourself taking a bit of a vacation from Chinese while getting started on Spanish, but this should not do any long term damage; when you resume Chinese it should quickly come back, possibly stronger.

[Lu]

Spanish certainly is loads easier than Chinese (except for the verbs). It's certainly possible to study more than one language at the same time, especially if they are as different as Spanish and Chinese (I wouldn't recommend learning Spanish and Portuguese at the same time, for example). It does of course cut into the time you have available for each language, so progress will be slower. I don't know if you really need to worry about starting each at the same time. It's probably better to get some progress in one and only then start with the other, but if circumstances don't facilitate that, I don't think that's really a problem.

 

Good luck!

[boctulus]

I'm native spanish speaker and from my perspective, english and spanish has a lot in common but as Lu said latin-languages (spanish, italian, portuguese, french,...) have a lot of verb conjugation which it's hard.

 

I;ve tried to learn italian.... for years... but verb conjugation + many articles made my learning very difficult even when I come from a latin-related language (close to italian)

 

So... now I'm learning japanese and chinese (at beginner level)... but for me it's easier than italian (with many exceptions related with japanese*)

 

 

BTW: japanese has complex grammar and you need to learn two syllabaries (a hundred of characters)  and of course they do not make any sense except you know the sound and meaning of every word written in these syllabaries. So you can't read japanese if you can't speak.

 

In addition, in japanese you have at least two pronunciations for every 'kanji' (and it's not a tone!) ... so... more complexity

 

But... briefly.... you can learn more than one language at once if they are not going to confuse you (because they are very similar as spanish-portuguese, mandarin-cantonese, etc.)

[Friday]

You might also find yourself taking a bit of a vacation from Chinese while getting started on Spanish, but this should not do any long term damage;

I would recommend against taking any break from Chinese studies. In the very least, regularly review what you already know, and maintain your listening, reading, speaking, writing skills at at least your current level. People who take a break tend to lose much of what they learned quickly.

[Flickserve]

I went to UK last summer. No putonghua around. Only the songs on my iPod. Contrary to popular advice about maintaining a rhythm, the break actually helped me. I also noticed when I get one of my moody spells about learning Chinese and drop it, I actually come back stronger. So long as the break is not longer than 2weeks, I am ok. Each one to his own - it is very individual.