Hi everyone!
I’m looking for some wisdom or advice from people who have reached this title from being monolingual or bilingual but decided to learn many more languages. I wanted to know how you guys maintained conversational fluency since time could cause a delay if not used regulary. Does it consume your time to maintain them? Do you have a have a problem prioritizing things because of it? Does it get tiring? Stressful? Etc.
Thank you!
I would hesitate to label myself a polyglot, but I’ve managed to form meaningful long-term relationships in all four of the languages I consider myself fluent(?) in all languages I speak, that said I mess up regularly in all four, possibly with the exception of English, so take that as you will.
I think that both Steve Kaufmann and Olly Richards are quite on the mark here. You will backslide in all your languages orally if you don’t use them regularly, but as specifically for conversational fluency, Richards has said that at around B2 he estimates that none of his languages have ever escaped his grasp. I’d consider this true.
In my French, despite almost never using it, I can still communicate with professors and strangers without any meaningful delays and so on even now, about a year after having touched it soon. So I believe the sense of urgency à propros maintenance isn’t as severe as it’s made out to be. I might be wrong, though.
But also, I think, maybe ask yourself, what do you expect from being conversationally fluent in all of your languages? Depending on your metric for fluency, it could be from conversing albeit clearly with mistakes but workable or perfectly without any trip ups.
To me, I think it’s all about being very clear with your purpose and intent, especially from the start. You don’t need to be conversationally fluent in all languages you’ve learned to be a polyglot. If you wanted to learn how to read and write Chinese, but not to speak it, would that still not be an accomplishment?
Focusing on your question, I rarely speak any of my languages, but even past a year of studying French at a very lacking B2 level I still manage to communicate with some friends and professors without it being a chore for anyone involved to participate. So if you can see yourself using a language a few times per year, maintenance is probably not a real issue.
I’m fluent in English, conversational in German, and I am fairly competent at reading simple French and Spanish texts. For German, I find keeping up conversational fluency is not that difficult, and this despite the fact that I have sometimes gone months without practicing . Every time I go to Germany, I worry that I might have lost ground, but it very quickly comes back. Once you reach a certain point with speaking, it seems to be like riding a bike - you never seem to forget. The hard part, I think, is getting to that point.
I’m about a year into a hopeful polyglot journey, when I started my fourth language, German.
When I started German, I decided to pick back up Japanese rather than let it sit dormant any longer. With Japanese being unused for years, I had lost a lot vocabulary but the grammar was still quite naturally retained. I concur with Dominic about what Olly Richards says about B2 to, but for me, I’ve observed a difference between grammar retention and vocabulary retention.
For about a year, I’ve done something in four languages every day. English is my mother tongue in used in home and professional life. I consume news and personal entertainment mostly in French. I’m also taking French lessons three to five times a week. For Japanese, I mostly engage podcasts and read a little to help with kanji input. I don’t bother any more with an ability to write Japanese, certainly not by hand. With German, I’m taking lessons two or three times a week and work on vocabulary every day and sometimes engage easy podcasts.
I have also developed a system where I have “quick” and “deep” engagement with the languages that are different from each other. Every day, I do “quick” engagement, like back-to-back 10 minutes in each language. I think this helps my brain keep every little language in its tidy little box. For “deep” engagement, here I include structured lessons, watching something on Netflix, reading a book, etc. Sometimes, I even engage my weaker/newer languages through my second language rather than my mother tongue. I love to listen to YouTubers teaching Japanese to French natives where they explain Japanese grammar, vocabulary, idioms, etc. comparatively with French. I think this helps my brain make links that don’t have to channel everything through my mother tongue.
Does it consume time, yes. I do at least ten minutes in every language every day. But it’s a good hobby.
Do I have a problem prioritizing things? Not, really, but this is perhaps in part related to how I differentiate everyday “quick” engagement from not quite as frequent, but more exhaustive “deep” engagement.
Does it get tiring? No, but I don’t think I’ve figured good methods to quickly master the pronunciation of everything.
Is it stressful? No, not at all. I never really confuse things across languages.
Finally, my lifetime goal is five languages. I want to add Spanish in after I get German up to a B1 or so.
Please note though, I don’t really share any of this as “wisdom” per se, as I too am figuring this out. The online apps, sites, tools, creators, and content that make all this possible are revolutionary.
@chytran Even if I have changed my goal right now, I’m still fluent in Italian (native), English, French and Spanish because I’ve lived, struggled and worked in all these native speaker countries. I have lost vocabulary, writing, grammar rules, and a better pronunciation but I’ve never lost my fluency even after decades. I could regain the other abilities quite fast if I needed to. But I was at C1/C2 level on all of them, more around C2. I have never gotten even close to that with German because of other situations and also because I’ve never lived in Germany, I had it planned for 2020 but never went there.
I have no idea how you can reach that level of confidence and fluency at home.
As others have mentioned, depends on the level you are in the language and really the amount of degredation you are happy with. If you are at least solid (say B2 or above) and stop the language entirely, you will degrade, but it’s really not that bad, unless we are talking decades. Even several years of limited, patchy use, you are only a bit rusty in speaking and listening. When you use the language again, you’ll be a bit rusty, having forgotten only a little, but can still converse. If you want to maintain your ability to converse, most of your maintenance time can just be listening. A few hours per week would be more than enough to have only a very minor degradation in speaking, but with full maintenance (and even improvement) of listening. If you want to pretty much keep your speaking level fully, my guess is throwing in a single conversation per week as well would more than suffice. (Edit: By single conversation, I was thinking of one session with an iTalki tutor, as you’ve mentioned before you do those, @chytran. I.e. an hour-ish long conversation.) All in all, if you set up a routine and are only maintaining one or two languages, it’s not that bad nor tiring nor stressful. The key is to just integrate the maintenance into your life. And if it degrades, nothing really to worry about, as the vast majority of it comes back reasonably fast.
As a side note, I find if I don’t touch a language in months or more and I’m going to have a conversation shortly, a few hours of listening that day or the day or two beforehand really kicks my brain into gear. A few hours of podcasts beforehand is kinda like a warm-up to get the brain oiled up in preparation. Then during the conversation, I literally notice the language coming back in front of my eyes to a decent level, just a bit lower than the peak.
Thank you for the comments everyone! I’m aware and more confident now
I would never label myself a polyglot, but I “maintain” the languages I have acquired by them being a part of my normal life. I am parts of local communities or have friends that speak each language natively or at least proficiently. We only communicate with each other in that language.
When I am picking up a new hobby, interest or even simply Googling something, I do so not in English unless I cannot find anything in another language, but this almost never happens because at the very least there is something in German.