Should You Really Learn Two Languages At Once?

Blog

April 27, 2021

By David Montiel

A lot of people are intrigued by the idea of learning two languages at once because who doesn’t love killing two birds with one stone?!

Still, a lot of sites actually recommend not studying more than one language at a time unless you’re prepared to learn at a much slower pace.

There’s definitely merit in sticking with only one language unless you’re sure about the work and journey that lay ahead, especially if you don’t speak a second language yet.

But that’s not what I want to talk about here. Instead, a road less traveled is whether it’s a good idea for learning languages better, (and more of them), in the long run.

This one is mostly for anyone with polyglot dreams or anyone who’s uncertain about which language(s) they want to become fluent in.

Allow me to start down this different path.

Content

Fixing Your Mind For Multiple Samples

Learning How To Transfer The Struggle

The Kind and The Wicked

How Do We Learn Languages In Broad and “Wicked” Ways?

Add Some Range To Your Language Development

Fixing Your Mind For Multiple Samples

I picked up this notion from the incredible book; “Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a specialized world” by David Epstein.

He basically breaks down how most people that are successful in any field start out ‘broad’ with several things on their hands, a “sampling period”, – and that specialized, (narrow focus), learning often isn’t the best way to start learning something new.

Broad and diverse experience is the way to go in the beginning. Try on multiple languages might actually be hugely beneficial to your language development overall.

This brings us on to “match-quality”

This brings us on to match-quality

The importance made by David Epstein on “match-quality” is the fit between interest and ability in any field.

Spreading across several fields, (or languages), will help you find what matches best for you. It’s the development through short-term planning and that’s exactly the point for sampling wide and not specializing in one language.

Learning How To Transfer The Right Stuff

Learning How To Transfer The Right Stuff

Slow and agonizing learning eventually beats quick and exciting learning methods. In “Range” it’s claimed that more often than not if we learn too fast it’s because we’re learning in the wrong way.

Instead, we should seek “Breadth of transfer” – the ability to transfer what you learned in one field over to another. Famous polyglot, Benny Lewis, even talks about how the most difficult and frustrating way to learn a language eventually got him the best results.

The Kind and The Wicked

The Kind and The Wicked

It’s the concept that skills and abilities can be placed in “kind” or “wicked” learning environments.

Golf is a “kind” environment: repetitive patterns, instant feedback. Tennis is “wicked”: unpredictable and hard to interpret. Language learning has both. Grammar is kind; culture and real-world conversation are wicked.

How do we learn languages in broad and “wicked” ways?

Use “Spacing” (taking time out between sessions to make your brain work harder to recall) and “Interleaving” (shuffling diverse topics to build abstract frameworks).