I am a native Arabic speaker and (currently) I only speak English as a foreign language at a C1+ level.
I have been motivated recently to start learning more languages, partly due to chytran’s post.
Since I don’t want to learn a language just for its own sake, I have brainstormed several languages that I would love to learn and tried to filter for the highest utility + highest interest.
German stood out, so I switched my English lifetime subscription that I recently bought to German.
I plan to learn German now, and to get B2 in it in under 18 months, before I decide to either stick with it for good or to learn a new language.
If I decide to go the polyglot way, I might learn these languages after German: Russian, French, and Spanish.
And… that’s it really. I can’t think of any other languages that would interest me. And honestly, this is something I will have to decide after 18 months from now, once I am far advanced in German.
But, just for conversation’s sake, is it better to be C2 in English and German (besides my native Arabic) or to speak multiple languages at varying proficiency?
Thank you!
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Only you know the answer to that question. It will depend in part on what you want to do with those languages. It will also depend on the difficulty you have learning them. My viewpoint is that a language has to be maintained, and that is easier to do when you have fewer languages. And as I am a slow learner, fewer is better. You might find it easier to answer your question in 2 years time.
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No pressure for me here but will give my 2cents on this. You always want to do what is most convenient to you time wise, opportunity wise, and entertainment wise. Ideally you want a mix of all 3 so would say this is the first priority, Just know that the moment you start learning multiple, you’re gonna need the willpower and time to do it consistently for a long time. If you don’t need any of the languages now, then go for it. If there’s a language that is required for survival, prioritize that at full force.
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To be conversation in English at least by USA standards, you could do well with B1-B2. There are a lot of foreigners who live here who do not write as well as you do. Some of them don’t speak English at all. They have their children or a family member as a translator. Your English is good for sure. I think for now you could focus 80% on German and 20% on English or something like that as a suggestion. I’ve went an entire year just doing Tagalog. On here, I’m A1 in vocabulary so I switched to writing and speaking. But I focus 55% on Tagalog, 30% on Japanese and 15% on Spanish. Spanish is not a priority at all for me, but I’m racking up the vocabulary that is similar to English for now. Japanese I have more interest in than Spanish, because it’s more difficult than Spanish for me, I put more focus on it. I’ll ramp up my Japanese once I feel I’m fluent enough in Tagalog. Once you go the polyglot route, there’s no turning back in terms of time spent and devotion. A lot of maintaining even if they’re all at the B2 level. I would say work on what’s fun for you and what you have the most use for.
The language levels are not really tied to beeing fluent in a language or able to communicate with native speakers. A lot of them don’t have C1/C2 level. Such a proficiency is only needed if you want to use the language in a wide area of fields at a very high level. If it is about conversing about daily lifes matters, B2 is surely sufficient, maybe even B1 depending on where and how you are going to use the language.
Just out of curiousity: I assume you have learned English in school and partly at University, too. How do you get to the timeframe of 18 months for getting to B2 in German? That seems very ambitional. (I don’t want to sound discouraging, but many native English speakers here struggle quiet a bit with German and afaik there isn’t much German and Arabic have in common, besides German having some arabic loanwords.)
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