Learn all 24 EU languages

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EU23
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Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby EU23 » Sun May 29, 2016 5:39 pm

Hi,

I've set myself the task of learning all 24 official EU languages in 12 years https://learn23eublog.wordpress.com/ .

Has anyone ever learnt or attempted to learn all 24 official EU languages?

Is it impossible?
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby allhandsondex » Sun May 29, 2016 6:00 pm

EU23 wrote:Hi,

I've set myself the task of learning all 24 official EU languages in 12 years https://learn23eublog.wordpress.com/ .

Has anyone ever learnt or attempted to learn all 24 official EU languages?

Is it impossible?


Depends what you mean by "learning" the languages. I read on your blog you aim to learn them and be certified "to an intermediate level" - is that B1? B2? Do you plan to maintain all your languages or, for instance, if you learn Portuguese to B2 in 2018 but then don't use it again until 2028 and as a consequence forget most of it or lose your ability to speak it to any decent extent but can still understand it, does that count as a success?

There's a lot of variables at play; I've followed you on twitter to keep up to date with how you progress because I'm curious, I hope you'll check in with us all and let us know how you're doing! :D In bocca al lupo!
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby EU23 » Sun May 29, 2016 6:16 pm

My main problem, won't be learning the languages, but it will be maintaining them and ensuring that they all don't get mixed up in my head (I sometimes have this problem with Russian and Polish).
If anyone else is interested in my mighty quest, they can follow me on Twitter.
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby tiia » Sun May 29, 2016 7:24 pm

23 is quite a number, although you do have some language learning background.
How do you define the intermediate level you want to reach?
Learning two languages in one year to some conversational level should work out, depending on how much time you can spend on them. Maintaining them will be more difficult and can be quite time consuming, especially when you learned already several languages. (Imagine maintaining 20 languages at the same time!)

Personally I wouldn't have the patience to learn two new languages every year for twelve years, nor would I be able to maintain them. I might get bored to learn the same stuff all over again and again and again... But that's just me.

12 years is a long time and you know, there is life and life just doesn't always go the way you want it to.


However, I would like to give you at least one advice regarding the order of the languages:

You want to learn Estonian two years before learning Finnish. In between Hungarian. All three will have probably more less the same difficulty for you. So my advice is to do the one year of Finnish before Estonian. It's easier to learn Estonian, after knowing some Finnish as far as I know. And especially you have understood more or less how to use the cases etc, when learning the next one of it's kind. The languages are very similar after all. So the more intense learning should go first.

Good luck!
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby rad » Sun May 29, 2016 7:25 pm

One year for Finnish? Okay, but you probably need one year for Hungarian too. Estonian is in the same language family.
I like your plan though and I wish you luck. How can I find you on twitter?
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby sillygoose1 » Sun May 29, 2016 7:50 pm

While that is quite the ambitious goal, I'm sure it's not impossible if you have a lot of time to dedicate. Luckily the three main families should theoretically be quite easy to master if you learn 2-3 from each family. The Uralic languages may pose the biggest problems I'd think due to lack of resources and the fact that they aren't even Indo European.

I have a similar goal which is to learn the 6 languages of the UN so I hope to hear more from your journey to give me some motivation!
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby Serpent » Sun May 29, 2016 7:53 pm

That's a cool project, I'm fascinated by the EU too :)
Your plan is extremely long-term, however. I have to admit I don't remember anyone who set such a schedule and followed even the first 3-5 years. Life always gets in the way, even for polyglots. Prof. Argüelles was planning to spend two decades focusing on his Arabic and Mandarin. However, he had to leave Lebanon after 2 years, and later when he found a position in Singapore, he basically lost the interest in modern Chinese/Mandarin.

Nearly 10 years ago, I asked him for advice concerning the order in which I should start my planned languages. Now I'm learning almost all of them, though I've realized that my interest in Hindi or Sanskrit just isn't strong enough, I simply like the writing system. Anyway, I've started various languages but the order was nothing I could've planned/predicted. (I also haven't done any Turkish, and now I'm actually more interested in giving Yiddish another try, something I wasn't planning at the time of writing that post)

The good news is that with related languages the task turned out to be far less intimidating than it seems when you have 1-2 languages under your belt. At some point, starting a new language is simply less of a big deal, if we're speaking of staying within the related languages area. So, I ended up starting most of my planned languages before 20 and nearly all by 23-24.

Now for some practical thoughts/ideas/suggestions... First, have you seen this article? I hope you find it helpful. Note especially that interference is less of a risk in passive study. It's clear from your list that you're concerned about mixing up languages.

Other than this, how did you come up with the list? First, it's totally fine if you're actually more interested in Portuguese and Bulgarian than German and French - are you? If not, German and French should be higher on the list, simply due to the resources they provide. (Russian also has some good resources - would you be able to use them?)

Unfortunately I agree that if you just do Portuguese in 2017-18 and put it aside, you'll forget a lot. In terms of families, at only 5 years per family and a new language every year, you'll likely have some languages replacing others, especially when it comes to active skills.

I do think that you absolutely can have some amazing experiences with all EU languages over 10-15 years, but for that you need to be flexible. For example, what is your plan B for when (not if, sorry) things don't go as expected? Generally, the more reasonable solution is to continue learning a language for more than a year instead of dropping it because the time has come to focus on a new language.

Intermediate is a meh goal really. It's very much a "use it or lose it" moment. IMO, a more sensible goal would be for example to read a book in each language, which is totally doable. This can totally be accompanied by some touristy basics for travelling. On a side note, as much as I love and value language learning, I think you can get a much better understanding of the various European countries through reading, travelling, communicating with the locals in person or online, even if you do all that through English. Of course the goals are not mutually exclusive.

Purely in terms of understanding how people think, while there are certainly differences within each family (heck, even from dialect to dialect :)), you'll get a very, very good idea just by learning, say, Portuguese, German, Greek and Latvian, and then continuing towards Swedish, Romanian, Polish. Finnish and Irish can be inserted at any point. Obviously these are just examples, and you can substitute any language for something related to it.

With your current plan, you'd be just doing variations on a theme until 2022 or so. Honestly, I think you underestimate how boring the basics can get. It's one thing to learn to say "my name is...", "I'm a student" etc in your first foreign language, and completely different in your 5th or 10th, unless you have an enormous love for it.
See Josquin's log too. (how are you going to learn all these languages? I sure hope you don't plan to take classes in them one by one - this would be boring when you speak a related language, and also frustrating for your groupmates)

In terms of cultural importance, I guess it would be best to get to German, French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian and Greek early on. Out of these, Greek will definitely take more than one year (unless you just want the touristy basics). Similarly, I'd not leave Irish and Finnish/Estonian/Hungarian until so late in the project. However, your personal preferences are more important. This also goes for choosing out of French/Spanish/Portuguese/Italian, Swedish/Danish etc.

A quick note about Finnish - it's not significantly harder than Estonian or Hungarian, and it's arguably easier to understand Estonian after Finnish than vice versa. You can totally start with Estonian (or Hungarian) if you like it more, though. Russian, German, Swedish will also help both with resources and similarities/borrowings.

Basically, my advice is to be flexible and not to impose such strict deadlines on yourself. You'll reach a higher level in some languages than others, it would be ridiculous to limit that artificially. You'll need to stay in touch with each language if you want to remember it - and even artificial maintenance will take loads of effort. Look at it as a life-long project.
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby tiia » Sun May 29, 2016 8:12 pm

@Serpent I could not have said it any better.

btw. Maltese is the only semitic language in this list and therefore quite different from the rest. I don't know anything about it, but one probably shouldn't underestimate it, too.

I have seen one or two people learning Finnish in an incredible short time. One of them was absolutely fluent after one year (basically already after 6 months), so it's doable, but takes a lot of effort.
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby Serpent » Sun May 29, 2016 8:19 pm

Yeah, I forgot to mention Maltese. It's a similar case to Irish/Lithuanian/Latvian.

I reached basic fluency in Finnish in a bit under 2 years, but it did require an obsession.
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Re: Learn all 24 EU languages

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Sun May 29, 2016 9:16 pm

I've met a few polyglots whose name tags showed a decent "EU coverage" - it's not unusual to know a good portion of the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, but (all of) the Finno-Ugric, (any of) the Baltic, and Irish and Maltese less so. This being said, I wouldn't be surprised if say, Iversen or Richard Simcott got closer to the magic EU number in time for next year's gathering.
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