Newbie here. Learning French and Portuguese soon

[Chalkos]

Hello everyone,

I just joined the forum in order to look for some useful advice on language learning techniques.

Bit about me: I'm a native Spanish speaker and started learning English since I was 12. I grew a little bit of passion for Portuguese around the age of 19 when I started listening to Bossa Nova. I tried to start learning Portuguese but since I moved to another country the following year, I just didn't find the time. Three years later I took an Italian class and the following year 2 more classes (didn't finish the last one though). It wasn't that hard thanks to my fluency in Spanish. Around February 2015 I began learning German with the Duolingo app. So far I can understand a lot of text but I might struggle formulating sentences in my mind or coming across with a word that I don't understand while reading, which gets me all confused. As a new year's resolution goal I have finally decided to give French a chance. Personally, it's quite intimidating because of the spelling-pronunciation differences, the mute letters, phonology, etc. I also want to learn Portuguese because it's something I feel I owe to myself. It's just silly that there's a 89% percent of lexical similarity and despite knowing a lot of words, I can't get past "bom día" and "obrigado".

For the tools, I'm still doing Duolingo daily (to keep my streak) and Rosetta's Stone. I've gotten some help from natives speakers but only through chat. So far so good. But I just don't have any opportunity where I can be immersed in any of these languages.

By the way, I'm practicing German since the start until the end of this month and polishing my Italian in December.

I have created a monthly schedule for my project which would include reviewing the other languages I already know.
Jan-Feb-Mar: French
April-Jun: Portuguese
Jul-Aug: German
Sep-Oct: Italian
Nov: French
Dec: Portuguese

Let me know if you see any flaws. I'm open to all of you guys' feedback so please feel free to leave your comments and suggestions. I'll be adding more details later.

Thanks in advance.

[Elenia]

I don't think it's wise to plan such large gaps between studying each language. You'll forget a lot of what you've learnt in a seven month gap and trying to maintain a language at the beginner stage is no easy thing. You'd be better off studying all of these languages weekly, if not even daily. If you're not sure about how to juggle actively studying so many languages at once you should check out forum member Expugnator's log. He does something with each of his languages every day.

If you can't fit in that many languages in a day, just start with the ones you want to learn most. You should find it easier to maintain these languages once you find you can use them for enjoyment, and then you'd be safe to put them on the back burner and focus on other languages instead.

[iguanamon]

Bem-vindo/a ao forum, Chaltos! Welcome to the forum, Chaltos! It's always good to have another person interested in Portuguese here. I, too was inspired by Bossa Nova to learn Portuguese. Eu não falo português is a humorous article by a Colombian journalist about his attempt to learn the language of Camões, written in Spanish.

I, along with many other self-learners here, find that I can't handle more than one language at a low beginner level. It's a lot of work and difficult to retain beginner level in multiple languages, especially with a long break in between. Still, I've discovered over the years here, and on HTLAL, that people will do what they want to do. Então, boa sorte e, certamente, confere o blog do Expugnator. Ele é o rei da gestão do tempo com varios idiomas. So, good luck and, certainly, check out Expugnator's log. He is the master of time management with several languages... but I don't think that even Expug would try to have so many languages going at a low level.

Also check out my log for my experience with Portuguese. Again, welcome to the forum.

[Ari]

Welcome to the forum. I agree with the other posters. I'd recommend you concentrate on one language at a time until you get it to a level where you can understand native materials like books, movies and TV series. The other languages will still be there, but in the beginning, trying to learn so many languages at the same time is not likely to be a good idea. You need to put down quite a bit of time to progress and spreading it too thin will mean your progress will be slow, which is demotivating.

[DaveBee]

For the tools, I'm still doing Duolingo daily (to keep my streak) and Rosetta's Stone. I've gotten some help from natives speakers but only through chat. So far so good. But I just don't have any opportunity where I can be immersed in any of these languages.

I've found the Readlang bookmarklet very useful for reading text in the target language.