Too many languages?

[Celso Pin]

I feel (perhaps wrongly) that if I were to live in Brazil, with my background knowledge of Spanish and English, and with my strong work ethic, I could probably learn Portuguese to a decent level within six month to a year.

I agree, and considering the opposite (portuguese speakers understanding spanish) is easier. We dont need translation to understand spanish on news or music... reading is even easier. And if you speak portuguese, you can understand galego pretty well.

[wushijiao]

But then again Celso Pin, I’ve also heard that there is a term for people who speak Spanish and advance very quickly when learning Portuguese, but then at some point reach a major barrier. Do you want I’m talking about?

[jie2li4]

I'm intrigued by this discussion and I figure I might as well add my own two cents to it.

I took Spanish in junior high school, and then began studying Japanese on my own soon afterwards. A few years later I was required to take a language class in high school, and I chose to take French. Though I had long left Spanish behind, in college I continued to study both Japanese and French. In my third year of college I started learning Mandarin Chinese, and spent a semester in Beijing. Now I speak Japanese pretty fluently, and my French is close to fluent. My Mandarin is still just conversational at this point. As for Spanish, I can understand it pretty easily most of the time, but I can't form a coherent sentence in Spanish to save my life.

My goals at this point are to bring my French and Mandarin both up to fluency, while at the same time still keeping up my Japanese skills. I think that once you master a language to a certain level, so that the only time you have to invest in it goes toward maintaining your skills and perhaps increasing your vocabulary, it's definitely safe to begin studying a new language with next to no risk of confusion. I also don't think I'll have a problem studying French and Mandarin at the same time, because the two languages are so completely different that there's pretty much no way I'm going to confuse them.

I would, however, hesitate to begin learning, say, German and Norwegian both at the same time. In this case I'd try to master one of the languages before beginning to learn the other one, because the languages are just too similar and therefore too easily confused.

Basically, if you have enough time on your hands to devote a sufficient amount of time to each of the languages you're learning, and if the languages aren't too similar to each other, I'd say go for it. I don't think there's a limit to the number of languages a person can learn. Call me crazy, but personally I aspire to learn at least ten. =P

[Navison]

Very interesting thread.

I have started learninq quite a few languages, (I'll count them up some time). I am almost fluent in Czech these days, though many of the others just went by the way side. (German is OK).

The reason for bringing it up, is that I for some reason decided to learn Czech and Russian at the same time. Czech grammar and pronunciation is much more complex than Russian, but it uses a latin based alphabet which helps. What I found, is that I could not learn Russian and Czech at the same time. Most nouns are identical, and many verbs look similar. The russian pronunciation is much softer than Czech.

What ended up happening, was that I was always mixing up words, and as my Czech got better, I tended to use Czech words with a softer accent thinking it made sense (which it doesn't). Definitely I agree with wushijiao that learning similar languages is much easier than having to start form scratch. But getting back to xiaojiang216 I would say that if two languages are very similar, its best to learn one properly and then learn the second.

I eventually had to give up either Czech or Russian, and I had more motivation for Czech than Russian, so chose czech. I did learn azbucha though, so I can read Russian to an extent. I would compare this to a Portugese reading Spanish, and where most Czechs have no problem reading Russian (even if they never learnt Russian, but understand azbucha), its very rare to find a Russian that can read Czech.

Anyway just my two cents. I think that now that my Czech is fluent, I would be able to learn Mandarin and Russian at the same time, though I really don't have the motivation for Russian anymore. So I will learn Mandarin and C# at the same time instead.

[atitarev]

azbucha

azbuka - alfavit - kirillitsa (азбука - алфавит - кириллица)

I eventually had to give up either Czech or Russian, and I had more motivation for Czech than Russian, so chose czech. I did learn azbucha though, so I can read Russian to an extent. I would compare this to a Portugese reading Spanish, and where most Czechs have no problem reading Russian (even if they never learnt Russian, but understand azbucha), its very rare to find a Russian that can read Czech.

You had more motivation for Czech because you live in the Czech Republic and I am not trying to discourage you from that. Russian is much bigger - it's the lingua franca for intercommunication of all former Soviet republics, widely spoken in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakstan, Uzebikistan, etc and Russia itself has the population of about 150 mln - (Czech Republic - 10 mln.)

Knowing Czech could help learn Russian but they are quite different. Russian doesn't have a fixed accent, which makes Russian more difficult - in Czech it's always the first syllable, no matter how long the word is (but it's much lighter than Russian and you have a long vowels (Russian doesn't have any long vowels). As you said Russian is softer, more palatalised consonants. I learned some Czech - covered one textbook and read through a phrasebook, also I knew Polish and Ukrainian quite well but still I had trouble following Czech. Among Slavic languages I think Czech and Russian are the most distant apart. However, I am sure I would need about three months in the Czech Republic to understand it well.

As for the Cyrillic - it's a pure phonetic script, which you can learn in a day.