<p>im a psychology major transfer student and am currently learning spanish (college class), french, and arabic (both self-study). Since I transferred I have to take a lot of extra credits, so I was thinking of taking all 3 classes in one semester in addition to classes for my major for a total of 18 credits/semester. Has anyone ever taken this many languages at once?</p>
<p>At first I was considering only doing spanish and french classes, since I know I will be fluent in these 2 by the time I graduate, but have decided to add arabic too since I want to apply for the critical languages scholarship.</p>
<p>Wow, I have enough trouble with Latin alone. I think if you take multiple Western languages you might cause yourself a little confusion, at least I would. If I were you, I would take either French or Spanish and Arabic. It all depends on how advanced your proficiency is in a certain language and your lingual ability.</p>
<p>I almost did Spanish+Arabic but my college’s modern languages department was like ahahaNO when they saw what I’d registered for. If the market value of Arabic is important to you, I’d second tomjennings in suggesting you only take one of Spanish and French: they are similar languages, which can be confusing, and it seems unlikely that there would be much academic benefit to taking both. Continue to self-study it by all means though.</p>
<p>In high school, I took Spanish classes while self-studying Japanese. Now I’m taking Spanish and Chinese classes while self-studying German. It’s just a matter of how much time you’re willing to invest, to be honest. Two hours a day per language is a pretty good benchmark if you want to make good progress. Three languages adds up to about six hours a day.</p>
<p>I study exactly the same three languages. I’m still deciding for myself but I suspect I’m going to need to prioritize if I don’t take a foreign language major. If you’re good at self-study that might work out well for you.</p>
<p>Is any of you truly proficient in any language other than English? If yes, I admire your courage to take three new languages at the same time.</p>
<p>If not, listen up. </p>
<p>A language is not an art. You cannot wing it. If you are at all critical to yourself, you will hate (or just be insanely displeased) with EVERY mistake you make. You will once and again try reading a text and once and again find a new word. You will trip over so many words, you will wish you studied so much more prior to taking that goddamn piece of text in your hands. I <em>guarantee</em> you a LOT of self-deprecating over ONE language. That is, if you desire perfection, not <em>just</em> college credit. If you truly wish to speak all those languages, take one at a time. </p>
<p>It is crazy to try to learn three languages simultaneously. You brain will struggle with shifting itself into a single new thought paradigm. Thee would be a sheer torture.
You need time AND space to process a new language. Everything pertaining to way of thought takes time to ‘settle’ into your brain comfortably. It takes time for information to become ‘native’, active.</p>
<p>This comes from a person who attempted to study Japanese and ended up hating herself for being imperfect. Also please take into consideration that I currently speak four languages (native level) and understand five more (meaning that languages are NOT active, but rather dormant.)</p>
<p>Whatever your life plans are, proceed moderately. French and Spanish are in one language group. In my experience that means learning one language first, and then applying comparative linguistics methods to get the second into read-listen stage. Then, with one foreign language ALREADY active to a C-2 level, start getting the second one (within the same romance language framework) active. </p>
<p>I have absolutely no knowledge of traits of Arabic. But somehow I have a feeling that in terms of learning it (with an ‘european’ language at native level and no same class language active), is a challenge in itself. Coming from my Japanese experience, you will have to learn a conceptually new structure. I’m speaking about grammatical features rather than alphabet (for Arabic, that is.)</p>
<p>Languages are complicated as they are. Take one at a time to avoid masochism.</p>
<p>Adversa makes a very good point that it will be much easier to pick up the second of french and spanish once you are fluent in the first, so I might make more sense to do them sequentially rather than simultaneously.</p>
<p>As for the rest of Adversa’s post, well, Arabic is different enough from the romance languages that you won’t mix grammar that much, and actually shares enough vocabulary with Spanish that knowing one is sometimes helpful in the other. I wouldn’t take Adversa’s experience as necessarily typical: Japanese is a legendarily difficult language.</p>
<p>So basically, join us in Spanish/Arabic awesomeness!</p>
<p>Very true, Adversa. As someone who has devoted massive amounts of time to teaching himself Portuguese to fluency, I know what you mean. But there is nothing I like more than learning languages. </p>
<p>I also already have foundations with German, French, and Arabic. </p>
<p>I am already proficient in German, as I was born in Germany, lived there, and have been taking classes since 8th grade. </p>
<p>I took 5 years of French from 3rd-7th grade, and while I have forgotten most of it, in a situation where I was surrounded by French speakers, I was amazed at how much I was able to remember. </p>
<p>As for Arabic, I have less of a base. My only advantage here is that I can already read/write in Arabic script, as I speak Farsi fluently. </p>
<p>So don’t worry too much about me. But I 100% agree with your advice. Learning languages is frustrating, but it’s also one of the most rewarding feelings to sit back, look at yourself after years of agony, and realize that you’re finally fluent.</p>
<p>I know some people at my high school took Latin, French, and Spanish simultaneously. If you have an ear for languages, it’s really not that bad and can help you make connections in your brain that make the language easier to pick up.</p>
<p>At the same time, there’s a girl in my French class who has taken several languages including Spanish and she always messes up and starts randomly putting in Spanish into her French whenever she’s speaking and our teacher is always correcting her.</p>
<p>The most I’ve taken is two at a time, but I already had experience with one of them before starting the other. So for me it looked something like this:
Spanish k-5
French 6
Spanish, Latin 7
French, Latin 8-10
French 11-12</p>
<p>I’m studying my fifth language in the fall, which will be German and so far I haven’t been all that confused, but I’m pretty good with languages.</p>