Although it is probably more efficient to study one language at a time, life--in the form of school, employment, personal interests--sometimes asks for two or more.
Has anyone had experience studying more than one language at at time? Did it matter if the languages were similar or dissimilar? Did it matter whether one or more were at the beginner's level?
I'd like to hear any success or failure experiences.
I was studying both Latin and Modern Greek in Grade 10, and I found that they complemented each other, rather than mixing me up. It was useful to look for similarities and cognates between the languages. Also, the two languages sound different enough that I never really got confused between the two. I'm studying Arabic now though, and I've noticed that I occasionally think of a Greek word or construction instead of the Arabic one I want.
i often muddle up dutch / german because they are very similar, but I don't muddle up them with spanish. Sometimes I can't remember if a word / strcture is english / dutch as well.
Conclusion for me: if the languages are very similar, it's more quickly muddling, so I recommend that you would learn two languages not related (closely) .I don't know your mother tongue, but evidently you speak english, so
for example you can learn:
German & spanish
French & german
Russian and german / french / spanish / italian
Italian & german
It's btter to avoid combinations as :
italian & french
french & spanish
spanish & italian
dutch & german
Then your question about the level:
I find that this has influence. I learned for my 1st foreign language dutch, then after I learned german. during sometime I made a complete muddle up mess!!! Then I can separate better, only occasionally now I disocver that I've mixed them. English and spanish I've learned next, but I don't muddle up those, except sometimes (as I wrote) english with dutch, as they can be very similar. My problem now is to improve especially my english and spanish, but not to forget dutch & german!!!
@ Josh,
I agree, similarities and cognates help very much, especially for undertsand a text, or to guess a word. But it can become a difficulty if there are very many and the level of similarity is too much. I admit, that mostly how I've started to learn english & spanish is to see those cognates and relate them to dutch / german and to french.
PS
I didn't include some asian and other languages because I havn't knowledge of them - I didn't intend the implication they don't matter.