Learning two languages

Heehee   Sat Oct 22, 2005 10:36 am GMT
My take on learning two languages...

It takes either
1. Willpower
2. Ability to separate things
to learn several languages at a time.

What I mean by "ability to separate things" is that you won't muddle up words in the two languages. For instance, if you're learning Spanish and Italian at the same time, you might substitute a word in one language for a word in another! If you can avoid the confusion, then learning these two languages simultaneously will be easy because grammar is somewhat related and relatively easy to master.

On the other hand, I'm learning Italian and Japanese simultaneously, and it's impossible for me to confuse them because they're so different! However, I have to learn two sets of grammar, two mindsets, etc, so it takes much more willpower. It helps a bit that I'm already fluently bilingual (Chinese and English)... so I can learn Italian with an Italian-English textbook and Japanese with a Japanese-Chinese textbook: that helps a lot in turning my mindset 180 degrees when I switch from one language to another!! ^.^
Geoff_One   Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:01 am GMT
Heehee
<< It helps a bit that I'm already fluently bilingual (Chinese and English)... >>

Which Chinese language?
Geoff_One   Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:04 am GMT
From another thread, I see that the answer is Mandarin Chinese.
Heehee   Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:24 am GMT
Yep, Mandarin ^.^

But it doesn't matter because I'm learning Japanese from a textbook, and written Chinese is all the same (well, there's traditional and simplified, but words, grammar, syntax, etc. are all the same).
Heehee   Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:26 am GMT
Actually... Cantonese too, because I live in Hong Kong, but I'm not fluent at it because my family's from Taiwan (or mainland, going back 60 years) and I go to an international school. Haha ^^
Frances   Sat Oct 22, 2005 2:03 pm GMT
Guest - you are quite a cathartic individual. I hope you feel better now.
greg   Sun Oct 23, 2005 2:20 pm GMT
Impressionnant ! (de bĂȘtise)
Abraham   Tue Nov 01, 2005 7:31 pm GMT
Learning languages is not that difficult . Any person with average intelligence can learn many languages. Six months is enough to learn a language like French. All you have to do is:

1)
2)
3)


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Dave M   Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:37 am GMT
I taught myself 6 languages and I am currently learning Mandarin with Faid. He speaks many languages with native or near native fluency and speaks like a college professor at the minimum in most of them. His Chinese,French,Arabic,English and Portuguese are native and his Spanish and Italian are pretty muc so as well. Those are the languages I am positive of and not counting the others he knows that he is at that level too.

He is also a very cool guy and believe me 99% of the peoplee underestimate their language learning ability. For anyone who is not language gifted but extremely motivated - 30 is not out of the question. For those who are gifted fluency in up to 60-80 in alifetime is possible and more so if you count dialects, dead languages etc...........
Geoff_One   Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:49 am GMT
This is the said topic.
Ahmed Ashraf   Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:46 pm GMT
hi, Dear friend :
really i whant to learn english