[D] The Ten Language Challenge - Page 4

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On June 27 2012 02:30 sCCrooked wrote:
Its an interesting challenge I'd heard about from a professor 8 or so years ago. However the version I heard of was 10 languages before you were 30 years old.

Personally, I've already tasked myself with 8 before I'm 30 and that's proving difficult enough. I do believe its perfectly possible. My family has many workers within the government and 6 of them are translators for diplomats. You need 26 languages fluent before you can get that kind of work.

My progress is as follows:

1)English (learned)
2)Spanish (retaining more complex vocabulary needs work)
3)Korean (Can read/write but I still make frequent grammatical errors)
4)Japanese (Can read/write but I still need to expand my vocab and I only know 6,000 Joyo-Kanji characters)
5)Russian (Basic learning stages)
6)Portuguese (Basic learning stages possibly slightly more advanced due to extensive Spanish knowledge)
7)Gaelic (Basic learning stages)
8)German (Basic learning stages)
9)Mandarin (Basic learning stages except in reading since I know some kanji characters)
10)MSA Arabic (Basic learning stages)

Knowing languages has made visiting the world much easier. I may replace one of my options with a more useful or easier language later. Any visits to other countries that speak the languages you know become instantly more appealing to you just because you do not have to worry about that barrier existing.

Learning the second and third languages for me were the most difficult. The reason for this is I chose 2 languages on purpose who had completely different rules from my first language. I know English and Spanish have Latin roots in their origin and all follow a similar structure. The arrangement of Spanish sentences is very different from English and got me used to different arrangements not becoming a problem when understanding the sentence as a whole. The Asian languages on the other hand are off a completely different tree and don't follow the same rules of European langauges at all.

My reasoning for making it harder on myself at the beginning is that it makes other languages easier to learn. Really any from any tree can be used as your first step. I chose Spanish because in America, Spanish-speakers are very common nowadays so I was able to find practice. That knowledge will greatly influence and ease my learning of other European languages. Korean was my original language as an infant/toddler so learning that was a bit more personal in my choice in reasoning. Learning in that tree also helped Japanese progress and eventually will have a large impact on my Madarin Chinese studies as well.

A few pointers is to never stop practicing them. Even if its just watching some videos to hear it or reading a page or two just to look at the language every day. If you stop practicing, you slip back VERY quickly and its much harder to re-learn than to forget. Use them, or lose them basically.

Software can be helpful, but I found Rosetta Stone was actually not amongst my favorites. Its a good way to be immersed, sure, but it involves a lot of guess-work on the learner's part and I found it rather unfavorable. I used a mix of software for visual stimuli when I was at home, combined with books for vocabulary and verbal practice by literally traveling to the environment itself. When I learned Spanish, I frequented Mexico and Peru. When I learned Korean, I simply visited where my ancestral roots in Korea were. Japan was learned by living in Yokohama City before the natural disasters. I know some can't afford to "just go there", but it really is THE quickest way because its all around you. Its in your face which forces you to practice and learn constantly. There's really no substitute for that sort of instant creation of need for the knowledge and understanding.

I've been on this 10-language mission since I was 15 and I don't plan on giving it up. I might not make it by the time I'm 30, but I'll be close enough for my tastes. Maybe giving myself until the end of my life is a much more relaxing deadline, but I work better under pressure. Good luck on your quest, it has shaped my life greatly since I began this journey almost 10 years ago.

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