I think the biggest issue might be time. How much time can you realistically dedicate to language learning per day?
I agree time is a massive issue. It takes several hundred to a couple thousand hours per language depending on the distance.
Compounding the time factor is that there might be some interference from one language to another.
That said, Steve Kaufmann does multiples at the same time.
I personally try to stick to a single language with only teensy bits of investigation into other languages so I can more quickly get to the x hours and tick the check box.
This. Your first paragraph said it more succinctly than I did.
It seems to me that it is better to separate the study of two languages, it is better to do one thing well than several but badly, my friend once started learning English and German at the same time, but when he started, he realized that nothing would have happened and he decided to start learning English and now he knows it quite well, communicates well and writes good essays in English, and although I know English, I never learned how to write essays and usually order them from Essays on nature of business of restaurant. Free essay topics and examples about nature of business of restaurant . By the way, now my friend has already started learning German
I think Steve mentioned in a recent video that he considered studying both Arabic and Persian at the same time as a mistake? As in, if he were to go back, he wouldnât do that again. Iâve heard a few other people, who have tried learning multiple languages at once, also say they wouldnât do that again. For this reason, this is why Iâm only touching Italian at the moment. It was a tough decision, but priorities needed to be made.
There is no one true way to do things other than putting in the time every single day. It comes out in the end down to how many hours of effort you have put in.
You will notice, for example that in the statistics it has âhours of listeningâ and âhours of speakingâ.
That is the secret sauce right there.
Many of us (multi-linguals like me) and those with a couple more languages (polyglots) start out with the assumption that you can beat the FSIâs estimates.
The FSI says it takes 500 hours to get competency in a close-to-English language (like French, Italian or Danish) and up to 2,200 hours to get competency in a far-from-English language like Mandarin or Arabic.
In the end the FSI turns out to be right more or less.
What thatâs got to do with learning more than one language at the same time is this:
You try to do two easy languages at once it will take 1,000 hours, not 500.
And since you donât hit the intermediate threshold till about 3/4 of the way in, that means it will take you 750 hours to get to intermediate if youâre doing two languages.
Thatâs near enough two hours a day for a year before you start to feel youâre understanding.
How many folks have got that kind of resilience and determination?
The issue here is that if you are a noob you donât really know if you can do it, so you really donât want to go down the rabbit hole of âcan I really do thisâ because youâre not getting the results you expect and end up quitting. Youâre setting yourself up for psychological failure.
Long story short: focus on one at a time.
This is spot on.
Key being âand you can stick to themâ.
But yeah, donât try to learn multiples in a short time frame unless you have 10 hours a day available.