3 ms·

Some totally anecdotal points. It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, w

Some totally anecdotal points. It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early. Thanks to that, it's completely natural to me that ideas are expressed differently in different languages. When I encounter people who speak/write a foreign language poorly, it usually looks like they think of a sentence in their own language, and then replace the words individually with words in their target language. It's not so much a difference of skill level as it is a difference in the basic way of thinking. I've also watched some videos along the lines of "see me speak 10 languages", and those are almost always less impressive than the title. They usually show a person fluent in 3-5 languages, and then saying introductory basic things in the others. That's very respectable and I don't want to play that down, but it's also not "wow, s/he's fluent in 10 languages!" like people might think from the title. One more thing that keeps me wondering is the practical limit of how many languages you can maintain. Personally, with six languages, I already feel I'm pushing it. I use four languages in day-to-day life. If I don't read/speak either of my other two for a while, I feel my skills deteriorating. Personally it seems like maintaining seven languages would take a deliberate, considerable time investment, and more than that wouldn't work.

Izkata 8y ago
> It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early. I think it's more along the lines of: Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult, and with each beyond that it becomes easier to change how you think to fit the next language. It's just, being exposed young breaks that second-language hurdle early enough you don't really remember it being extra difficult. I'm not fluent in anything besides English (though know a small bit of Spanish and Japanese), so take that above with a grain of salt. But the difficulty curve seems similar to programing languages, where the more you learn, the more you recognize underlying concepts across languages, making further ones easier to understand.
- ACS_Solver 8y ago
  > Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult I don't think so - I rather think this is exactly what early exposure gets around. Growing up with two languages, you understand and speak two even before understanding concepts like language learning, or there being more than those two languages. The second language isn't difficult at all, it's just the same as your native language. Or it's like having two native languages. But there's no second-language hurdle in that case (though it moves to the third one).

Izkata 8y ago

> It seems like it's far easier with early exposure to languages. I speak six languages, and don't find languages too difficult, which I attribute largely to having grown up speaking two languages from two different language families, and being exposed to a third one fairly early. I think it's more along the lines of: Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult, and with each beyond that it becomes easier to change how you think to fit the next language. It's just, being exposed young breaks that second-language hurdle early enough you don't really remember it being extra difficult. I'm not fluent in anything besides English (though know a small bit of Spanish and Japanese), so take that above with a grain of salt. But the difficulty curve seems similar to programing languages, where the more you learn, the more you recognize underlying concepts across languages, making further ones easier to understand.

ACS_Solver 8y ago
> Your first/native language isn't a problem, your second language is difficult I don't think so - I rather think this is exactly what early exposure gets around. Growing up with two languages, you understand and speak two even before understanding concepts like language learning, or there being more than those two languages. The second language isn't difficult at all, it's just the same as your native language. Or it's like having two native languages. But there's no second-language hurdle in that case (though it moves to the third one).