Should you learn two languages at the same time?

Should you learn 2 languages at the same time? Is it a good idea? Or maybe it's not something that will work for you. In the video, I discuss the pros and cons of learning 2 languages at the same time - hopefully they will help you decide.

💌 CONNECT WITH ME:

[WolfgangHn]

I am learning Portuguese and Spanish at the same time for many, many years and have no problems to distinguish the languages. I am a native speaker of German and learned English at school. At the beginning of my more intensive studies I mixed up the two languages and so I decided to learn one day Portuguese and the other day Spanish. But at the moment I find it easier to practice the two languages at the same day. I have no problems to distinguish because the pronunciation is very different.

[anadeszo]

I'm really passionate about languages and I'm currently learning French, but would like to start Korean as well.

[sayantikasarkar]

Thank you for making this video. I've always wanted to learn Spanish and German but was afraid that learning 2 languages at once might create confusion. But now I've decided to utilize my time during this lockdown by learning them. Please keep uploading. Loads of love from India 🇮🇳❤️

[kayleemousseau]

I've been learning French for a few years, Korean for almost a year, and just started learning Japanese as well

[iarumas]

Thanks for this video! For years I've wanted to learn Japanese but it was just an idea, about a year ago I made the decision to finally start learning it only to get shut down by what someone said to me. I grew up receptive bilingual and I never really spoke my heritage language (Spanish) but my parents would only speak to me in it. I understand the everyday conversation and most TV media as if it was English, perfectly and clearly. In other words, my comprehension was around a C1 but My speaking was an A1.

It's been a year now learning Spanish passively and I can say my speaking is around a high B1. I never really studied hard but I'm not satisfied with my progress. Especially having such an advantage like that. Once again I would love to learn Japanese and continue my passive learning of Spanish. This video gave me everything I needed to get me back on the study grind!

[simoneciao]

Thanks for your sincere sharing. Everything you said, I totally agreed with. Spanish and French I chose to learn 5 yrs ago(in 2015) via self-study at the same time. Two and half yrs ago

[simonachaudhary]

I'm learning Korean and Spanish.
I'm fluent in Hindi and English. I do learn very quickly!

[TheDamlaYagmur]

Great video. My son has learned two languages (mother and father's tongue) and we've thrown in English (home language) when he turned 3 😝 I'm so fascinated about the way we learn languages. He chooses to speak English more now so it's a game of keeping it up now so he doesn't forget.

[leahmehri]

I’m learning German because I just moved here from America to be with my husband. I’m also learning Dari(Farsi/Persian) because my mother in law can’t speak English and I have to talk to her everyday. My dari speaking is getting better daily because I’m mostly talking to her all day but my German is bad. I’m going 2 days class a week but harder for me. I have to learn 2 languages at one time and it’s so stressful because I’m already mixing the languages together specially in German class.

[ezaurus]

I’m learning Spanish in school but because of Covid we have to learn online and it’s not sticking with me. So now I have to teach myself so I don’t end up failing.
All of the languages I want to learn are Japanese, Spanish, Korean, and English sign language. Although I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach this goal, it’s a nice one to have. So I’ll probably start with Spanish and Japanese.
70%-80% Spanish 20%-30% Japanese

[bbeigi]

Thanks for such a great motivation dear sis, I had been learning English For about 8 years and I decided to study Arabic at the same time which is totally different from English in terms of vocabulary, grammar, conjunctions etc. But a really horrible thing that happened to me is that I fell in love with Arabic 😍😉😁and I couldn't continue my focused English studying schedule🤦, then I was thinking that I should have never started learning Arabic in this stage of my life, I'm forgetting English and blaming myself more and more....
Your words gave me such a relief cause I am not feeling guilty anymore, just gonna grab a paper and pen to plan for my both languages like I used to do😍❣️

[QuizmasterLaw]

Briefly: No. You will not gain much or even any added insight to grammar of either of the new languages from the other or acquire some new lemma or heuristic to help you better acquire vocabulary or apply it. Even if one of the languages is totally different, even if both of the languages are quite similar. I'm a polyglot and have learned this questions the hard way. My first languages were Latin and Spanish, which I studied in school, but ineffectively due to bad teaching. Since they are similar maybe it helped with vocabulary, maybe not, but the grammar was soooo different that any gain in vocabulary was definitely offset by the grammar. I tried Russian and Spanish at university, quickly figuring out I was not into Spanish and it wasn't good for my career but sticking to Russian. French I acquired passively life long thanks to Canada then actively in grad school reaching C2. It too is very similar to English in writing but has really different phonology and grammar. So far it seems only the vocabulary is Maybe helped; then I officially learned German which was the easiest of any of them but again I was exposed to that my entire life thanks to my family. I got to C2 in German rapidly. I then learned Estonian which has a lot of vocabulary which is similar to German and Russian and returned to Russian reaching C1 in Russian. Now I am on Chinese and probably around HSK5 (old system)
All those languages I acquired wound up being useful because I did go back and learn more. However I would NEVER do it like that again. Instead I would have done:
1) German to C2. 2) French to C2 3) Russian to B1. 4) Estonian to A2 5) Russian to C1. I think i would never have bothered to learn Latin. Latin is often pushed as some key to the wisdom of the ancients and/or a master key to the Romance languages. It's really neither. Most of the great ancient literature in the West is in Greek and Latin grammar is really very different from ALL modern Latin languages. I'm really glad i never learned Sanskrit or Hebrew and only tried Latin in school because I was young and inexperienced.
Please learn from my experiences: do ONE language at a time to real fluency and THEN do the next you will not only acquire a very usfeul skill you will also access literature culture movies music and romance. In contrast if you have just a few words of a lot of languages you get none of the benefits and will likely conclude, wrongly, that you're stupid and wasting your time and just don't get languages, which is never the case or you would not be able to read this. One language at a time, to at least B2 and then the next one, you can then use the grammar insights and cognates to boost and top up. Each language you learn is easier than the last one. I chose Chinese for my "last" language because it has a totally different grammar, vocabulary, and phonology. From there I can always go after Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean. My choices are no longer "can I" or "how" they are "which" and "when".
LIkely my next language will be Mohawk.

[Bernard-Shakey]

5:35 this was definitely my experience trying to learn Spanish and French at the same time. A word like "function" in English is "fonction" in French and "función" in Spanish. Great, they are similar...but I found myself pronouncing the wrong one in the Spanish way or French way and really struggling to adjust between each. I will wait until I am more advanced in Spanish and the language is more automatic for me before learning French again.

[matthewjohnskrzyniecki]

Hi I'm learning American English and just starting with Swedish. nice video waiting for next one

[ziaudtohan]

I grew up learning English and Filipino at the same time. Now, I'm learning Korean but would like to study Mandarin as well.

I'll come back here after a few months and tell you how it goes.

[Gabriela-yfse]

I am currently learning Portuguese, but I also want to learn mandarin:(

[cesarinacassio]

I speak English, Mandarin Chinese, a language that’s similar to Thai, and one of dielect that’s spoken in southern China. I’m learning Italian right now. I’m at A2level. Thinking about start practicing Japanese at the same time. Since I’m not gonna get confused by Japanese and Italian.

[astikbhan]

German and Spanish....
If it goes well then..
French and Russian
Then..
Portugese and Italian.
I know it's a very ambitious plan but I will give it a try.
In savage words..
I want to conquer Baltic countries as well as Europe. It will eventually lead to conquering of latin America.

[ronaldonmg]

When I went to VWO (Dutch grammar-school), we all had English, French and German, and nobody saw anything wrong in that. However, some aspects of those languages suddenly became clear to me years later, when I started learning Esperanto. I think everybody should learn Esperanto before learning another foreign language. Learning Esperanto for one year followed by three years of another language leads to pretty much the same proficiency in that other language as just four years in that other language.

[leccionesdevida.podcast]

I’m currently learning french, I’m in intermediate level and I want to start learning german but I don’t want that to slow me down in french and then never fully learn it