Learning multiple languages

If you find anything in Hebrew aside from ran levi’s podcasts netbook.co.il for ebooks and icast.co.il for audio, please let me know. The whole app based reading of evrit is driving me crazy as I can only enter a few pages (privately) into lingq at one sitting.

I’d go with learning Italian and German, even though they are pretty much new languages, and every now and then check out a bit of Spanish, French & Hebrew.

Since you already have some pretty sound foundations in those languages it will be easy to re-learn and improve in them.

Learning Italian will give you some help reviewing Spanish & French with noun & adjective genders, verb conjugations, sentence structures and grammar being similar.

Good luck

TamL, I wish I had more advice I could give on Hebrew, but I am also still looking for sources myself for learning. I’d concentrate on learning the alphabet first, and then basic grammar with a book. That is what I’m doing.

No problem do all five if you can and it makes you happy. Though there will be days you don’t finish all of what you want to do and you’ll feel a sense of failure.

I started of studying a few languages at the same time in part because they felt so easy compared to the first language I learnt which is Chinese. I ended up focusing on French. Though the time where I dabbled in several languages allowed me to make an informed decision to concentrate on a specific one.

I’m glad I did this as I’m making much faster progress now and read and enjoy mid level French material in what has been a few months of focusing on French. This small achievement and the fact that I’m on enjoyable material spurs me forward on the learning process. I want to study because it’s fun. Had I been focused on several languages I would still be at beginner level with them all. Slow and boring would be demotivating. Might as well be using Rosetta Stone.

I’ve promised myself that I’ll start Spanish once I get to 30000 words in French, assuming I feel comfortable in my French level. The similarities of French should help Spanish. Also once you’re at a high level in a language it is easy to maintain the level through daily use and emersion in that language through watching TV reading books for pleasure or talking to friends. The learning process for a strong language becomes effortless.

I think concentrating on one language at a time is the quicker road to success in becoming fluent in a number of languages. However from my experience and no doubt yours too, considering your using lingq, you have to take control of your own language learning and you have to enjoy it. So do as you like. You’ll soon see if your current policy works for you. Let history be the judge and adjust what you do according to your own needs and in accordance with your own definitions of success or failure.

<<I’ve promised myself that I’ll start Spanish once I get to 30000 words in French, assuming I feel comfortable in my French level. The similarities of French should help Spanish.>>

I’m planning to do just that in reverse, once I get to between 33,200 and 35,000 words in Spanish. I’ve always wanted to do French. However, there’s also Russian. If I get impatient and want to starting impressing the Ruskie ladies, or are concerned about “confusing” French and Spanish, I’ll do the Russian.

Either way, I’m hoping this is true:

<<Also once you’re at a high level in a language it is easy to maintain the level through daily use and immersion in that language through watching TV reading books for pleasure or talking to friends. The learning process for a strong language becomes effortless.">>

This has been my assumption. Glad to know it’s true, because I would hate to “lose” any of my Spanish.

My current strategy, based on what we’ve discussed, is to focus mainly on Spanish. But Hebrew doesn’t interfere and is important to me, so I want to work on that. Finally, French is already in my mind from those 8 years, so some French review each week is also an easy thing to maintain and to revive my French.

I’d say it is:

Spanish 70%
Hebrew 20%
French 10%

That is the plan for now :slight_smile:

Good luck on your journey.

At least it’s easy to pick up again if you completely out the language down.

How are you with Spanish? I see you’re past the 30k mark. Do you think this is a reasonable mark for defining fluency?

“…I would freak the freak out. (Is that how you say :slight_smile: - I always wanted to use it, is this the correct way?)…”

Hmm, to my ear the second “freak” really needs to be another short word beginning with “f” :stuck_out_tongue:

(This is, it should also be said, not exactly the language of polite salons!)

EDIT
Okay, I just noticed, Darkside already made the point.

I know 30,000 words? I think that may be an error, I haven’t even done many of the lessons here, actually I’ve only done a few. How did I reach 30K, haha…

I think that the second reply was meant to be for @LILingquist, who indeed have over 30k known words.

I missed this, but thanks to Beware, I see it now.

My Spanish is very good. I consider myself “fluent” in that I can converse easily with native speakers on a lot of topics of interest to me, including the ones I encounter at my job and in social situations (impressing the senoritas and talking about my day and the telenovela I’m watching). Put more clinicly, I’m within b2 on the framework scale. However, I haven’t really tried watching Spanish movies and shows without the Spanish subtitles. In other words, the naked audio. So, I might not be confident with that. However, with the subtitles going, so I can read and listen at the same time, there are works that I don’t know peppered throughout, but it doesn’t inhibit meaning. If I read certain novels, it’s harder, but manageable without Lingq. Academic texts can be a challenge, but I don’t do it often. I’m working on a friend’s grad thesis right now.

I think 20-30,000 is a good number. I’m going to head for 33,200 (completing advanced level 3 on lingq) or perhaps 35,000 to be “sure” and then move to French or Russian. Because lingq no longer works on my iPad (come on, guys!), I’m stuck working on my listening (through subtitles televelas) to build up that comprehension and letting it “catch up” to my reading prowess. When I get a new iPad, I’ll move back to mroe reading and listening to texts.

Also, we know that 12-15,000 words in English is enough to have “potential” fluency in English. I really wish someone would take a story like “Who is She” and other stories so we can calculate a “conversion rate” for other languages. So, for example, if we know that fluency takes 15,000 words in English and there are twice as many Spanish words as English words in a story, we know that it’ll take 30,000 for potencial fluency. I think the original level numbers in LingQ were set to something like this, but they screwed them all up earlier this year so that someone could move up a level with 90 days of study.