3 ms·

Out of curiosity, how do you find learning two languages at once?

ggambetta 7y ago
They don't really interfere much. Good question, though; I thought they would. My girlfriend (Latvian, and the reason I'm learning the language) says there's a lot of Latvian words adapted from German (due to long occupations over time), but I haven't really found them yet. Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? My native language is Spanish, and I can get a decent sense of meaning from texts in Portuguese and Italian. We went to the Louvre last year, and I could also understand some French. My girlfriend, however, couldn't understand a word, despite being fluent (but not native) in Spanish.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
  >Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? Often two languages share a word, but it's much less common (or even obscure) in one of them and it's unlikely that non-natives know it. For example, "die Kartoffel" means "potato" in german, while in in polish it's "ziemniak", so they aren't similar at all. However, polish also has "kartofel" which is a word that every native speaker knows, but you won't find it in e.g. newspapers.
  - ggambetta 7y ago
    That makes a lot of sense. I can think of examples in which I can associate a new German word to a perfectly valid, though less common, English word. And I'm not even a native English speaker.
- ascar 7y ago
  >Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? I think this is similar to understanding dialects. My native language is German and I can make sense of most German dialects (some are really hard tho' like Platt or Niederbayerisch). On the other hand, my English is proficient (CEFR C1/C2), but I regularly trip over dialects and even strong accents (Irish is especially hard). My personal guess is that you have memorized a much larger "network" of similar words (in meaning or sound) in your native language than in any language you learned in a structured/artificial way based on top of your native language. Fun fact: At least here in Bavaria, we often say German is our first foreign language and our dialect is our actual native language. So we already organically learned two similar languages as child.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Both Low German (Platt) and Bavarian are classified as separate languages from Standard German in ISO 639-3, with language codes nds and bar, respectively (as opposed to deu). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3
    - ascar 7y ago
      That did sound interesting at first, but my native dialect Franconian [1] also has an ISO 639-3 language code (vmf) and while the pronounciation from high german differs, the words and grammar are basically identical (with very few exceptions). E.g. we pronounce "t" as "d" and "k" as "g" and some "g" as "ch", but the words remain the same. (This means I learned to pronouncations for every word as a child.) The ISO 639-3 seems to actively categorize dialects and not just "languages". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Franconian_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Franconian_German
      - yorwba 7y ago
        There has been an attempt to remove vmf from the standard (reason: such a language does not exist) in 2010, but it was rejected for formal reasons https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2010-012 https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2010-012 ISO 639-3 does aim to classify languages and not dialects, but that means the classification needs to change as the linguistic evidence is reinterpreted. For the time being, there's a test Wikipedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf I tried reading some articles, and while it mostly feels like Standard German with fantasy spelling, there were some words I didn't understand, e.g. in the article about cows: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf/Kou https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf/Kou
        ascar 7y ago
        Ah, interesting that they tried to remove it. Edit: i just read the proposal to remove it and it was mainly, because vmf was classified as "mainfranconian" and "upperfranconian" spoken west of the city of Mainz. I agree with the proposal, it's nonsense. Mainz isn't part of the Franconian dialect region. It's basically Nürnberg and Würzburg areas and Mainz is west of Frankfurt (which speaks "hessisch" and is west of Würzburg). It's weird that the article about Franconian in Wikipedia links to the vmf language code. Looks like an error. I guess the words you didn't understand are mostly due to absurd spelling to capture the pronouncuation and the use of colloquial words in Franconian dialect (high german jetzt -> colloquial etz -> Franconian etzadla). I had trouble reading it. > A Kou (Anschbachisch: Kua, Hoaloisch: Kuâ) is a weiblichs Rind un a Väich as der Familie vo däi Honndräächer. Sie is a Nudzdier un a Milch- un Fleischlieferand. Der wilde Schdammvadder is der Aueroggs. Vor ungfähr 8000 Joahr hams a boarr vo denne eigfangd und an Menschn gweend. Däi Nachgummma davo sin edzadla unsre Käi. High german (verbatim): Eine Kuh ist ein weibliches Rind und ein Vieh aus der Familie der Hornträger. Sie ist ein Nutztier und ein Milch- und Fleischlieferant. Der wilde Stammmvater ist der Auerochse. Vor ungefähr 8000 Jahren haben sie ein paar von denen eingefangen und an Menschen gewöhnt. Die Nachkommen davon sind jetzt unsere Kühe.
ploika 7y ago
For a while in secondary school I was learning three languages at once - French, German and Irish (Gaelic). I'm Irish, native English speaker, in case it wasn't obvious. In general I think it helped to learn them in parallel rather than in sequence. It made it easier to pick up the more fundamental grammatical/linguistic things. I wouldn't do it outside of full time education though. It was a lot of work.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  Learning languages in parallel is usually the right strategy. The problem is that it not only takes hands-on time to build the mental infrastructure, but also calendar-time. In general, if you learnt a certain Word X time ago, you have a good chance of forgetting it after X further time. There clearly is a distribution, but this general rule of thumb does generally hold. I know I could learn a few hundred words in a day to remember them the next day, if I really wanted to (using mnemonics). But they would fade within days, or weeks at the most.
bayesian_horse 7y ago
At the moment I am working on 5 languages, though with varying effort.

They don't really interfere much. Good question, though; I thought they would. My girlfriend (Latvian, and the reason I'm learning the language) says there's a lot of Latvian words adapted from German (due to long occupations over time), but I haven't really found them yet. Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? My native language is Spanish, and I can get a decent sense of meaning from texts in Portuguese and Italian. We went to the Louvre last year, and I could also understand some French. My girlfriend, however, couldn't understand a word, despite being fluent (but not native) in Spanish.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 7y ago
>Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? Often two languages share a word, but it's much less common (or even obscure) in one of them and it's unlikely that non-natives know it. For example, "die Kartoffel" means "potato" in german, while in in polish it's "ziemniak", so they aren't similar at all. However, polish also has "kartofel" which is a word that every native speaker knows, but you won't find it in e.g. newspapers.
- ggambetta 7y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. I can think of examples in which I can associate a new German word to a perfectly valid, though less common, English word. And I'm not even a native English speaker.
ascar 7y ago
>Maybe being native in the language makes a difference? I think this is similar to understanding dialects. My native language is German and I can make sense of most German dialects (some are really hard tho' like Platt or Niederbayerisch). On the other hand, my English is proficient (CEFR C1/C2), but I regularly trip over dialects and even strong accents (Irish is especially hard). My personal guess is that you have memorized a much larger "network" of similar words (in meaning or sound) in your native language than in any language you learned in a structured/artificial way based on top of your native language. Fun fact: At least here in Bavaria, we often say German is our first foreign language and our dialect is our actual native language. So we already organically learned two similar languages as child.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Both Low German (Platt) and Bavarian are classified as separate languages from Standard German in ISO 639-3, with language codes nds and bar, respectively (as opposed to deu). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_639-3
  - ascar 7y ago
    That did sound interesting at first, but my native dialect Franconian [1] also has an ISO 639-3 language code (vmf) and while the pronounciation from high german differs, the words and grammar are basically identical (with very few exceptions). E.g. we pronounce "t" as "d" and "k" as "g" and some "g" as "ch", but the words remain the same. (This means I learned to pronouncations for every word as a child.) The ISO 639-3 seems to actively categorize dialects and not just "languages". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Franconian_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Franconian_German
    - yorwba 7y ago
      There has been an attempt to remove vmf from the standard (reason: such a language does not exist) in 2010, but it was rejected for formal reasons https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2010-012 https://iso639-3.sil.org/request/2010-012 ISO 639-3 does aim to classify languages and not dialects, but that means the classification needs to change as the linguistic evidence is reinterpreted. For the time being, there's a test Wikipedia: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf I tried reading some articles, and while it mostly feels like Standard German with fantasy spelling, there were some words I didn't understand, e.g. in the article about cows: https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf/Kou https://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wp/vmf/Kou
      - ascar 7y ago
        Ah, interesting that they tried to remove it. Edit: i just read the proposal to remove it and it was mainly, because vmf was classified as "mainfranconian" and "upperfranconian" spoken west of the city of Mainz. I agree with the proposal, it's nonsense. Mainz isn't part of the Franconian dialect region. It's basically Nürnberg and Würzburg areas and Mainz is west of Frankfurt (which speaks "hessisch" and is west of Würzburg). It's weird that the article about Franconian in Wikipedia links to the vmf language code. Looks like an error. I guess the words you didn't understand are mostly due to absurd spelling to capture the pronouncuation and the use of colloquial words in Franconian dialect (high german jetzt -> colloquial etz -> Franconian etzadla). I had trouble reading it. > A Kou (Anschbachisch: Kua, Hoaloisch: Kuâ) is a weiblichs Rind un a Väich as der Familie vo däi Honndräächer. Sie is a Nudzdier un a Milch- un Fleischlieferand. Der wilde Schdammvadder is der Aueroggs. Vor ungfähr 8000 Joahr hams a boarr vo denne eigfangd und an Menschn gweend. Däi Nachgummma davo sin edzadla unsre Käi. High german (verbatim): Eine Kuh ist ein weibliches Rind und ein Vieh aus der Familie der Hornträger. Sie ist ein Nutztier und ein Milch- und Fleischlieferant. Der wilde Stammmvater ist der Auerochse. Vor ungefähr 8000 Jahren haben sie ein paar von denen eingefangen und an Menschen gewöhnt. Die Nachkommen davon sind jetzt unsere Kühe.

ploika 7y ago

For a while in secondary school I was learning three languages at once - French, German and Irish (Gaelic). I'm Irish, native English speaker, in case it wasn't obvious. In general I think it helped to learn them in parallel rather than in sequence. It made it easier to pick up the more fundamental grammatical/linguistic things. I wouldn't do it outside of full time education though. It was a lot of work.

bayesian_horse 7y ago
Learning languages in parallel is usually the right strategy. The problem is that it not only takes hands-on time to build the mental infrastructure, but also calendar-time. In general, if you learnt a certain Word X time ago, you have a good chance of forgetting it after X further time. There clearly is a distribution, but this general rule of thumb does generally hold. I know I could learn a few hundred words in a day to remember them the next day, if I really wanted to (using mnemonics). But they would fade within days, or weeks at the most.

bayesian_horse 7y ago

At the moment I am working on 5 languages, though with varying effort.