My father speaks 7ish languages, and if you talk to him about it he says there are some problems. It definitely takes some time for him to get into the "mindset

My father speaks 7ish languages, and if you talk to him about it he says there are some problems. It definitely takes some time for him to get into the "mindset" of a language. He also says that vocabulary is the hardest part: he says that if he forgets the word for a thing in the language he's trying to speak, he'll find the word in one of his languages, so sometimes he embarrasses himself that way. That said, it's certainly amazing what he can do. He taught himself Italian over the course of about a month, simply to read a single dissertation written in Italian. He spoke French already, and he asked me a few questions because I'm fluent in Spanish, because when he didn't find a word in his Italian/English dictionary he wanted to make a guess based on other romance languages. I think ultimately he wouldn't even consider himself at all competent in Italian, even though he was able to read doctorate-level writing for a few weeks.