I want to say that the point about a tortoise-like attitude is extremely accurate. There is no binge studying for me anymore – if I do a large amount of studying in a day it’s always broken up into small bits via timeboxing. It is always slow and steady, and when you have “twice as much to learn”, you’ll probably get tired really quickly if you try to do huge unbroken study sessions (in my experience I end up getting nothing done if I try to binge study).

It’s not something I’m sure I’d recommend to someone with not very much time – if you’re working a full-time job and find yourself with a minimal amount of time for studying, you’re probably better off studying one language at a time, as you’ll get quicker results and probably be happier and more motivated. My circumstances are unique in that I’m a homeschooled, unemployed teenager. I’m well aware of the fact that studying two languages means it’ll take more time for me to learn each of them than if I studied one at a time, but I have a deep love for both languages, and each one has its own unique facets that draw me in.

One thing to worry about is balancing your languages. Sometimes I find myself paying too much attention to Norwegian due to it being a Germanic language and therefore having many words that are very similar to English ones (grønn being the word for green, for example), and sometimes I find myself paying too much attention to Japanese due to my love of kanji and also because of the wealth of materials in comparison to more obscure languages (say Norwegian with its 4.5 million native speakers). You have to be very fond of all the languages you’re learning, and willing to devote equal time and love to them. There’s also the issue of a difficulty with creating the ‘total immersion’ environment when you have two (or more) different languages to immerse yourself in!

If you have substantial time for two or more languages, love your chosen languages deeply enough to keep going with them even if you may see slower improvements than if you studied one at a time, and don’t mind said slower improvements and the fact that it will take you probably twice as long to become fluent in each, then go for it, I say. Just don’t be lazy! If you’re going to learn them, LEARN them. You don’t want the annoying gaps in your knowledge Khatzumoto mentioned, do you? 🙂

The Animaniacs “Countries of the World Song” in J 🙂

But in fact you never need to be ‘working at’ (hard to phrase this, I hope the meaning is fairly clear) something to become better at it – you just do it, it becomes part of your daily routine, your life and your self. Sure, if you’re a musician and want to learn notation maybe you force yourself to start reading about it, you need to “get” the system before you can be in it. But it seems to me that you have much better chances at mastering the system if you just see it as something you read because you want to, and then go on to whatever music you like but in note format. You’ve entered the world of notation and you explore it, you’re “in” as soon as you know the basics and as long as you make your way through music with its help you’ll make progress.

Just that initial response to how you view ‘learning’ makes a world of difference – it can mean despair or happiness, abandoning your project or eventually making a living out of it. Our ability to keep the positive view could on a larger scale actually have a big impact on humanity’s survival. It’s uh, worth thinking about I’d say.

(I recently read through Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow and these thoughts were heavily influenced by it so anyone interested should check it out)

I’d say that most young Americans aren’t that familiar with it, either–they’re probably less familiar than some older Americans. They see the metric system as something *hard* that they have to learn in school, and learn all sorts of conversion factors to convert from their familiar units, and they don’t see the point. They just wanna go back to using their measures. Though metric usage has permeated some areas in America, for the most Americans aren’t familiar with it.

This was my AJATT analogy, and it does seem analogous to the best way to metricate a country: the big bang method. This website here advocates dropping customary units and going the route of all metric all the time:

metricationmatters.com/

My experience is that, with the exception of people that had a work-related cause to learn it, most Americans over 30 or so never really learned the metric system. Like you, I did in school, but I get the impression I was (having been born in 1980) in the early years of the switch.

The only thing I wasn’t really comfortable with before moving abroad was temperature. It was a long time before my “hmm, this feels like about 70F” sense could accurately say “hmm, this feels like about 21C.”

Americans are already bilingual at systems of measurement. 🙂

I’ve always been a little jealous of my friends who grew up in bilingual countries (like Canadians who speak English and French), but I never really realized that I’m already bilingual at measurement. There might not be many other countries in the world where somebody could watch a weather forecast, or read a speed limit sign, or take somebody’s temperature in two different systems of measurement, without even thinking about it.

*If you spend all your time converting, you will still think in customary units and it will also make the metric system SEEM HARD, because of the complex conversion factors. The metric system, which is very easy to become familiar with, is much much easier than the customary system, but relying on converting between the metric system and the customary system will just make the metric system SEEM HARD and foreign and unfamiliar. Better to just become familiar with the metric units themselves, in becoming able to estimate how much a unit is.

But, there’s a bit of critical dissonance. Speak…Fluent…Ownin’…whateva; are all precepts made by individuals. You know you can’t know what it fully means when someone says something. Like “oh ya I save lives”, “cause I don’t go around shooting people”. It ain’t math, it’s verbage, it’s arbitrary. Don’t get bent out of your fine shapes trying to fit your mind in another’s.

This site (ajatt) is about a more successful approach to learning. Loving, Joyful Contact. In contrast to non-contact; “turn to page 42 and read two paragraphs please. Pop quiz on Fri” (how many of you feel inclined to violence just getting a whiff of that) *Raises hand*

If you make it apart of you, then it is. Don’t make it ‘something you do’; just include what you want in your life or let it be there if it already is. Put the things you want to touch the most; closest. Sort through the environment find what you want and touch it. Ding!

It seems like the tension in the article is in ‘knowing’ that one can do multilanguages to fluency. It can be done, but only if you copy how a child works. There’s no way to accomplish it while you have an ‘idea’ a mind, a monitor, a critic. The real language acquisition comes by weaving threads of memory through your heart while your mind is questing to become more like the people / presences around you. (right brain posture/input instead of left) Probably just sounds like poetry, bummer, but point blank, you learn by heart first. Not brain. Everything else is an illusion. Memory is laid down best by flow, not start and stop; the staccato of ‘thought processes’

How did () improve my ability so supremely? It’s not about the answer it’s about the question, it puts the thinker in the position of already being there. As you dwell in the place you desire…..well there you are, it’s already done.

Maybe we’ll discover there wasn’t anything to do to begin with…

Two, it’s obviously possible, but you have to really effing like it/want it and most likely quit all your jobs/hobbies/school/activities to do so (no problem for kids).

Oh, and Three (both can be three, right?) no matter what you do, it’s going to cost you a crapload of time and a crapload of money if you’re really dedicated.

I know Alexander Arguelles has been mentioned a while back (favourably and not so favouably), but in keeping with the idea that you will “plod along” gradually making small, incremental progress, he really has the technique down pat. He is able to maintain and build on numerous languages in any one day, recognising that in five to ten years time, he will have achieved great things in them (bit.ly/3KfH6). I guess it really requires long-term planning. Three or four languages for me is the maximum, and all of them with the exception of Chinese are related to other languages I already know, so I’m not overburdening myself but still able to indulge my appetite as it were. Chinese of course takes longer.

Try pronouncing this!!!!!(This one is tricky for me I’m sure everyone else will find it the same lol)

My Japanese which has been going for about 2 years now and Mandarin. However, my approach to learning Mandarin is somewhat different from Japanese.

Whilst I spend most of my time watching Japanese TV, reading manga, SRSing, etc., for Mandarin I spend a lot less time on that. I basically just learn a few sentences now and again during a week and use them when talking to my woman/indentured servant. I find that this doesn’t really interfere with my Japanese because I am only using it to communicate with her, whereas my Japanese is almost an entirely entertainment based affair. Of course there is an overlap with Kanji which helps things, but I tried initially doing the same method (AJATT) when I started learning Mandarin. I found this way I just got confused.

In my opinion, it is possible to learn two languages at the same time. The part that makes it hard is using the same learning method for both languages. Doing this just gets your brain confused because it’s used to SRSing L2 and when you suddenly switch to L3 and do the same stuff some wires get crossed and melt and burn your house down.

Anyway, that’s my ￥1.8088089.