Can you learn TWO languages at the SAME TIME?

Can you? Should you? What's the best way to go about it? When shouldn't you?

[brianuke]

The two languages I’m currently learning are Spanish and how to understand my kids

[mklinger]

I'm doing two languages right now. I find that doing the same language for a long time can cause fatigue. So I do one until I burn out, then I switch to the other. It's taking a while, but it's definitely helping me keep motivation.

[ChrisBadges]

The idea of supression in studying multiple languages was one I had never thought about. I will take that into consideration, thank you.

[dflosounds]

Italian and French learner here. Encouraging suppression is a game changer. I often get distracted while listening to audio lessons in one language, because I try to remember a word or phrase in the other language. If I can't remember on the spot, I get frustrated and feel like I can't move on until I figure it out. You've given me the permission to stop doing that. Thank you!

[frankhooper]

My senior year in highschool, I was studying [5th year] Spanish, [2nd year] German and [1st year] French at school; I was also studying Russian with a private tutor, and Japanese in a night-class. I never had any issues keeping them separate in my mind. More than 50 years later, and I can still get by in the first 3 reasonably well.

[papacharlie-niner]

2:36 -- My parents just got called out, I bet their ears are burning. They spoke their native language as a secret language and never taught us kids, who consequently grew up as American English monoglots, more's the pity. We couldn't help but pick up some swear words, though.

[davidmachemer]

Small children are language geniuses. My son spoke flawless Mandarin with his Chinese grandparents, flawless English with my parents and a jumbled mashup of the two with my wife and me! That almost counts as three languages at once!

[lajoyalobos]

Being at different stages in separate languages definitely helps. Learning the same thing, at the same time in both languages is where people get all sorts of confused. I can speak German better than I can understand it, and I can understand Spanish better than I can speak it, but ultimately I am making progress on all fronts.
Another thing, don't undergo the "embryonic" stage of a new language at the same time as another. Getting the hang of one (definitely doesn't need to be perfect) before jumping into the other helps create an offset and therefore separation. Also helps with mental energy too as the early stages can potentially burn you out.

[shannonlong]

This video came at the perfect time for me! I've been learning Korean for two years.... It's the language I study because it makes my heart happy. By a weird twist of fate I now find myself going to Japan next year, so I am trying to cram Japanese into my brain (really cram.... Like 5 hours a day cram). In some ways, having a good grasp of Korean grammar is making Japanese a million times easier, but I was a little worried about trying to study the two languages at once because I'm simply not willing to stop studying Korean 😂. But this video addressed my concerns and gave me some great tips, so thank you thank you thank

[kinnonchurch]

Oddly enough, my brain went to "der Steg" before "die Brücke" when you mentioned the bridge example. I guess as a musician by trade, I spend more time thinking about the bridge of my bass than bridges that a car might drive over! Thanks for the video!

[AmyThePuddytat]

I'm an interpreter, which necessarily involves using two languages at once. When studying, I've often deliberately mixed languages. I'm a native English speaker, but I studied Chinese at a French university. My Portuguese textbook is in Spanish. When creating my own exercises, I often use the grammar-translation method by translating a Norwegian text into Spanish, for example.

[GrahamCLester]

I am 63 and learning French and Spanish. I just alternate them day by day. I am making progress and enjoying it. Not mixing them up too often.

[jtfritchie]

Random thought: I wonder if anyone has researched the phenomenon where the most recent “second language” inserts itself in the brain while speaking a third. For example, I remember responding to a Chinese cab driver saying, “Esta bien” without thinking. It feels as though there’s some work involved in “replacing” the language in the additional language slot in the brain.

[sjm]

This was SUPER helpful, thank you! I'm currently trying to revive my Hindi while planning to start learning Māori, and the advice in this video is just what I needed, just when I needed it.

[cito]

I’m learning too many. In order of importance Russian > Persian > Uzbek (unironically) > Latin > Modern Greek. Definitely making the most progress in the first two and I do them every day; others it’s every other or every few days. Luckily I can maintain my French by studying them since I use the French ASSIMIL manuals to study.

[godemperormeow]

As an adult, probably a massive waste of time. You become bad at both languages instead of poor with just one.

[YeshuaIsTheTruth]

It helps to gain enough proficiency in one language to "get around" before trying to learn another. Having multiples helps when I get bored with one. But I only like to have one at the "I can't put basic sentences together" level.

[SimonRGates]

Two at once? I can barely cope with one. I haven't studied French in decades, but I still find French sentences popping into my head when I'm stuck on something I want to say in Japanese, it's like my head separates languages in to 'English' and 'Other'. I would honestly like to learn Korean as well, but I think I'd need to be retired to have the time (hides Hangul sheets under bed).

[JorgeGarcia-lwvc]

Our daughter has grown up with four languages English, another Germanic, a Slavic and a Romance language, and almost six years old, is fluent in all of them. Her pronunciation is amazing in all of them. My wife and I speak all of those, so we can correct her constantly. She is able to switch really well between them, since we actively speak three of them at home. Cartoons have been a great teacher for two languages.

[yannsalmon]

I’m French and just yesterday I was getting an haircut and it happens that my hairdresser, his staff and other clients are naturalized French citizens from Algeria. They were talking between each other and I understood that one client was describing his holidays in the Algerian coast because he kept on switching between Arabic and French. Sometimes it was just a word, sometimes a whole sentence, sometimes whole parts of the discussion. At a moment, my hairdresser said he was sorry that they were discussing in a language I couldn’t understand. But I responded that on the contrary I was fascinated by the way they kept switching languages and that I was trying to understand the logic that made them speak French at certain times, then all of a sudden back to Arabic. He explained me that all Algerians are bilingual from childhood and even if Arabic is the official language, speaking both is part of the daily life. So there’s no logic, it’s just that for whatever reason, sometimes it’s the Arabic word that comes to their mind, sometimes it’s the French word that comes out first. And then that suffices to change the direction of the bilingual switch in their brain.
I had with him the most interesting discussion I ever had while getting my hair cut.

On another point, I don’t know how it is in every other countries, but In France I started to learn languages in middle school and we have to study different languages at the same time. For me it was English, Spanish (the other choice was German) and Latin. So the exercise of learning multiple languages at once is not unfamiliar. I’d say that in the short term it was not very beneficial for each language separately, because English was the only one that caught on for me. On the long term, studying Latin and Spanish was very beneficial when years later I started to learn Italian. Also I can mainly read Portuguese and understand spoken Spanish because of those basics I studied long ago. I also find that knowing English makes me able to understand roughly the context of articles written in Dutch or German.