Hi guys, this is Julian from doingenglish.com. Great question. Can you learn more than one
language at the same time? It's a good question and the answer is quite simply,
yes, of course. In this video, though, I'm going to give you a couple of tips,
three tips, in fact, to help you do that more efficiently.
Now, I do have to say at this point that these tips are not actually things that
I do. I am not the kind of person who wants to learn lots and lots and lots and lots and lots
of languages. I'm not particularly impressed with these famous internet polygon types. Yes,
it's very, very cool that they speak 10 languages and they can record a video where
each sentence is done in a different language. But I personally am all about going into a lot
of depth with just one single language. I'm going for quality here, not quantity.
I am learning another language, actually a third language. I'm learning Chinese. There's a very
specific reason for that. Although that said, I haven't actually done much for my Chinese
because I only need a tiny, tiny bit. So what I'm talking about here, really these tips are what I
objectively know via my studies from my reading or from whatever, not really things that I actually
do. So they might be a little theoretical, but I think they will be very, very useful to you.
The first tip is quite simply, if you can, if you have a choice about the languages you're learning,
try to learn languages which are very, very different. So obviously this is completely
the opposite advice to what I would say if you were learning languages sequentially,
if you were learning a language and then when it's finished,
you were learning another language, I'd say learn languages that are very, very similar.
So for me, I speak Japanese at a very high level. A logical next language would be
Korean because Korean is very, very similar to Japanese. They share much of the same grammar
constructions and in general they're just very, very similar. So I would get a lot
of positive transfer from Japanese to Korean. Now, if you're learning the languages at the same time,
the danger would be that I would then start to confuse Japanese and Korean because they
are so similar. So if you can, learn languages which are very different.
The chances of confusing say German with Chinese, I would say is pretty small.
This also allows you to do what I'm recommending in tip number two, create as much contrast as
possible. This is something I'll talk about in another video, in the future in detail,
but the human brain loves contrast. And the more contrast you can get into your learning,
the better. So going back to the example of say German and, okay, not Chinese,
let's say Japanese because I know about that more. Although I don't know that much about German,
actually, these languages are quite different. Japanese has no plural. As far as I know, again,
I don't actually speak German. As far as I know, German does have plural. And also as far as I
know, German uses agenda system, correct me if I'm wrong, Japanese doesn't use agenda system.
So there's a nice contrast between the languages there and you can contrast the two and then again
with your native language, and that'll really help to add depth to your learning. Plus if you can,
and obviously this is something that I would do if I were learn learning sequentially,
try and learn one language in the other. So, if say, your German is better than your Japanese,
try and learn Japanese in German so that you're getting German at the same time as
getting Japanese, and that naturally is going to lead to more contrast and to deeper learning.
And the third and final tip that I'm going to give to you is for people who maybe have
to learn two languages which are very, very similar. And if that is the case, and you are
finding that you confuse the two, try and pick a different location that is a physical context,
a physical location to learn each language. So I might learn Japanese at home in my office,
but Korean using my iPod whilst I'm out running, or if I wanted to
learn both languages whilst I'm out running because that's when I like to learn things,
I might take one route for Japanese and a different route for Korean.
The reason for this is the brain is very sensitive to context and is always looking to
add more and more and more information to what you're learning. And you've probably had the
experience before where you are outside walking, going somewhere, could be in the car. It could be
anywhere. And you hear, for example, a word that you don't know in English and you remember it,
but whenever you hear that word now, you remember almost like a photograph of the
place where you were at that time. I remember the phrase, [foreign language 00:06:02],
which means an important thing and I don't know why, it's completely irrelevant, but I was
listening to a radio program whilst I was walking through Toshimaen Station, one of the stations in
Tokyo and that stuck in my mind. And along with that, literally a snapshot image of the barrier
looking out from inside the station is just embedded in my mind along with them. Again, it's
to do with the way that the brain tries to attach information to information that we are learning.
So if you're confusing the two languages by learning in very different locations,
very different contexts with different visual stimuli, with different sounds around you,
with different smells, with different, I don't know, air temperatures,
just physically different locations, you're going to be attaching different kinds of information to
each language. And I think that will help to keep them separated to an extent. Again, that is quite
theoretical. And I would love to hear the opinion of people who have learned more than one language,
especially if they're similar. Have you had this kind of experience? Do you have any tips
of your own for learning multiple languages? If you do, leave them down in the comments.
If you want to know more about my language learning, particular in Japanese,
I suggest you head over to doingenglish.com and check out the Doing English film. In that film,
I share with you the struggle that I went through to master the Japanese language and
how I overcame my problems and how you can do the same with your English. So that's it for today.
If you liked today's video, give it a thumbs up and I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.