<p>So I'm a native Spanish speaker, but after 10 years of English-based education, my Spanish has gotten kind of rusty--I'm still definitely comfortable reading a book/writing an essay/talking to my friends in it, but my grammar isn't always flawless and I don't have the precision or command of language I'd like to have. Ideally, I'd like my English and my Spanish (which was actually my first language; I didn't learn English till I started school) to be completely equal, so I really wanted to take some classes in college if I could. </p>
<p>I've also been taking Arabic for the past year, and I really love it (though I am pretty terrible at it ) . Up until today, I knew I'd have to choose between one or the other in college, because I've heard it's really not advisable to take two foreign languages at once. However, today I had the AP Spanish test and my Arabic final within six hours of each other, and surprisingly, I did way better on my Arabic final than I ever expected to and I honestly think it's because I was switching in between languages all day. So I was wondering--does anyone have any experience with taking two foreign languages at once? Does it make both languages harder to learn? Any other thoughts?</p>
<p>When I was in 7th grade, I was taking four foreign languages: Latin and Spanish at school, Biblical Hebrew three days a week at Hebrew School, and I was teaching myself Russian every morning from a Linguaphone set (like Rosetta Stone). It wasn’t really sustainable. We got a dog and I dropped the Russian in order to walk her in the morning. I got Bar Mitzvahed and said shalom to Hebrew for about 20 years. I stuck with Spanish and Latin, though, for a couple more years, and later took Spanish and Catalan and Spanish and French simultaneously. It helped that they were all the same family of languages – similar grammar and lots of cognates, although sometimes that would get in the way. too.</p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t think that experience is generalizable to taking multiple languages in college. A friend of my daughter’s did that, but I think it was an enormous time suck, and she certainly didn’t try it at Chicago.</p>
<p>Thanks for the response–yeah, I’ve heard that taking more than one language can get your brain kind of confused, which is why I hadn’t considered as much it before. What I’m hoping is that the two language families and my level of ability are different enough --with Spanish it would be more “getting it back”, while with Arabic it would most definitely be “Somehow retaining the notorious tangle that is Arabic grammar.”</p>
<p>Wow though, four languages! That’s intense.</p>
<p>Over this first year, I’ve taken:
SPAN 202
GREK 102
GRMN 131</p>
<p>GRMN 131 is Reading German; I’m being introduced to German for the first time. I’m also finishing up the Greek textbook on my own in lieu of taking GREK 103. Honestly, because Greek isn’t a formal class, I’ve been paying much less attention to it.</p>
<p>Here’s my opinion on YOUR situation. Taking two languages at once will help you focus on grammar, which should be especially interesting if you take a non I-E language like Arabic. In short, I think its a great idea. A language intensive year will force you to focus on how to differentiate the unique grammar and vocabulary of each language. </p>
<p>One draw back: this may be an unlikely situation, because (a) Arabic classes generally fill up with second years and (b) you need to take core courses, and, depending on your major, you may have no room for this.</p>
<p>lasermouse9 – my son is planning on taking 4 years of Arabic (major in NELC). Will he really have difficulty in getting into Arabic I as a freshman? Your statement really worries me, since 4 years of studying Arabic is central to why he choose UChicago.</p>
<p>That shouldn’t be a problem; if he’s not allocated Arabic I by the online(?) system I think he’ll be able to negotiate with the professors during Add/Drop period. </p>
<p>Back to OP’s question, I’m just an incoming student, but like JHS I’ve done multiple languages at the same time - at high school, French, German, Latin and Spanish for the first two years and then French and Spanish for the IB (+Mandarin spoken at home). Now I’m self-studying Jap for the heck of it. (lol the languages bit I really tried to emphasise in my college apps) </p>
<p>Spanish I found incredibly easy compared to German, mainly because of its similarities with French and Latin. Spanish will share few cognates/ grammatical constructions with Arabic, so might not be so easy taking both at once. But they’re different enough so you’re less likely to confuse them (not that languages are that easily confused - I think that’s rather unsubstantiated. just my 2c!) </p>
<p>OK I’m definitely no expert when it comes to languages in college, but I think if you want to delve into higher-level (esp. literature) classes, then that’s pretty different to only learning the language. If you love both languages that much, IMO give it a try for a quarter or two. I’m also thinking of taking quite a few languages :D</p>
<p>a question for anybody in the know: how much work does studying, say, a third-year language class entail? I know workload depends on lots of factors, but just generally…</p>
<p>Spanish has lots of cognates with Arabic. Arabic was a principal language on the Iberian Peninsula for almost 800 years, including the period during which Castillian (i.e., Spanish) emerged as a language separate from Catalan and Portuguese. Spain had colonies in North Africa. Southern Spain has long been a playground for wealthy Arabic-speakers and a magnet for impoverished people from the Maghreb seeking a better life in Europe. The bottom line is that there is a lot of Arabic in classical Spanish, and a lot of Arabic on the Spanish street today.</p>
<p>Can’t say anything specific about UChicago, but plenty of Europeans study multiple languages starting at a young age. The Dutch are famous for this; German speaking Swiss will take English and French, etc.</p>
(not that languages are that easily confused - I think that’s rather unsubstantiated. just my 2c!) </p>