How many language families can you "master"?

[drp9341]

Since I started studying Polish, I realized that language families are super "important" (I can't think of the right word.)

¡THERE'S A LOT OF "RANTING" FEEL FREE TO SKIP TO THE BOLDED PART, AT THE BOTTOM, IF YOU WANT THE BRIEF SUMMARY OF MY QUESTION!

When I speak Polish and English exclusively, my Spanish and Italian get filled with "Slavicisms" / Anglicisms. Since I've come back to American, (only visiting for 6 weeks!) I've been speaking Italian / Spanish pretty much daily with a few exceptions. I try to speak to my girlfriend in Polish, but it's hard.

I remember after coming back from a 3 month stay in Buenos Aires, one of my best friends came over from Italy and stayed with me for 10 days. We speak 100% in Italian, and write 70% in English, (certain jokes don't work in Italian and vice-versa.) He was stunned with my Italian. He doesn't like languages, and he would constantly mention things about my Italian, which is very unlike him, as we very rarely talk anything language related, (with the exception of him asking me what this and that means in some rap songs; he loves American rap music, and me telling waiters he speaks Spanish - he doesn't - just to watch him struggle lol.) While in Argentina, I spoke a lot of Portuguese, but I didn't speak Italian more than maybe 3 nights when I went out with some Romans, and I was quite drunk those nights, and thus doubt that those nights really helped me maintain, let alone improve, my Italian.

When I went to Italy in April of this year, (2018,) my Italian was hilariously rusty. Maybe I wrote about it in my log here on the site, but I remember that we all had some great laughs at some of the weird things I said.
In Warsaw, 80% of the Uber drivers are Ukrainian, and often I must speak to them in a weird mix of Polish / Russian, (my Russian is horrendous,) but I had no problems, and even during an hour long Uber ride with a Ukrainian who knew almost no Polish, and was from eastern Ukraine, (he said that his Ukrainian wasn't that good,) we managed to chat, with the help of keeping google translate open, for the whole hour, both of us had a good time, and he even took my number so that me we could go out drinking (lol).
After 4 weeks in the US of A, even my Polish is rusty. When I get emails in Polish, I skip over them, and sometimes even google translate them because I just don't feel like wasting 10 minutes.
It's not like I ever abandoned Polish either, I am simply no longer immersed. I don't understand how someone could speak fluently in languages from more than 5 or 6 families.

The problems I see, (when speaking languages from different families) are:
1. Word order / logic
2. Intuiting words based on their roots / morphological patterns.
3. Forgetting where to hold your tongue, and pronouncing things with a pronounced foreign accent.
4. Forgetting words.


I know I am not the "smartest" guy on the block - I'm no dope - but I am by no means a genius or anything close. For those of you who manage to maintain ~C1+ levels of fluency in 4-5+ languages from different families, how do/did you do it? Are you, (honestly,) exceptionally intelligent?

The only new language family I can see myself branching out to would be semitic, (Arabic,) but I don't know if I am even capable of maintaining so many "systems" up and running in my brain. I see people talking about maintaining multiple languages, but if they're maintaining 4 romance languages, and maybe German, that's indeed difficult, but not something I think of as, personally, near-impossible.

Can someone please elaborate on this? How do you do it?

[Expugnator]

I have a lot to say in this topic but I'm going to try an initial post. I'm not at the desktop now, so that makes writing more cumbersome

Learning from different families is one of the banners I tend to wave for those who aim higher, on hyperpolyglottery. You know that quote about those who don't travel read only one page from the book of Life? Well, those who only learn Romance-Germanic languages miss out on several opportunities for enriching their linguistical and cultural knowledge, which is ok if they are looking forward to important, world-class literature and media but not so if their goal is diversify itself.

Your question leans more towards mastering the initial language in the group than on doing what I call language harvesting, that is, acquiring quick high passive and low active skills in your 2nd and further language within a group. At this respect, you're definitely on your way, having reached such a high level in Portuguese. As forum admin Serpent keeps saying, one language helps with the other, much further than any problem of interference. I've noticed it even in not so close languages as Estonian and Finnish and Hebrew and Syriac or Arabic. The mere fact that the 2nd language is no longer a mysterious puzzle is means a lot for the polyglot experience. If you are like me and love seeing and making connections, I'm sure you'd enjoy Arabic or even starting from Hebrew for example.

Ok, now on how I work on multiple opaque languages. A disclaimer is that I'm no case of success, as I have yet to reach B2 in an opaque language, but I can account for half a dozen B1 ones. What I've agreed upon myself was that I'd start one opaque and one transparent language, alternately. It's tempting to pick Catalan now and go straight to reading contemporary literature set in Barcelona, but I want to see the world, and I know nothing about Central Africa and Swahili, my next language. So, Swahili first and if I notice in progressing well, then maybe 10 min a day for 3 pages in Catalan.

Passive maintenance doesn't require that much effort. You can use a sentence-based app, like Clozemaster, Duolingo or another more SRS-oriented. Like Serpent says, family takes care of one another, and so if you can't do stuff in Italian every day then maybe some Italian then Portuguese next week. The higher you are the easier to maintain, but passively I don't think you"unlearn" a Romance language after having the main ones under your belt. According to my experience, text-input sentence-based methods also help with active skills. I feel my active French skills have either stagnated or improved the past couple of years, even with no conscious effort to speak French, all thanks to Clozemaster text-input.

As for getting vocabulary and grammar features apart across language families, I can all but say that it gets easier with time. Georgian was my first language with cases, the case system itself is easy and it helped with Russian and Estonian. The verbal system is pretty hard but it helped with Estonian and Hebrew (the latter also reputed as insanely difficult). The more varied linguistical features I'm exposed to, the less likely the new opaque language I start will have some features that are entirely new to me; they'll rather be known linguistical features presented in different doses and positions. Having more rows and columns on your shelf makes it easier to organize your belongings, if you get my metaphor: the shelf being your brain/your global linguistic knowledge and the new subdivisions being the new language features and families you add to your repertoire.

T/L, D/R: I always aim for diversity because that's what makes me feel culturally richer and that's what made me interested into languages at the first place. I don't fear becoming confused and I trust my brain's ability to accommodate novelty.

[Ani]

I really can't offer any help but what is your maintenance routine like? It's not clear whether you do anything in particular outside of using the different languages when you get the chance?

[tarvos]

Learning a new language system just takes time. If it's unrelated, that's pretty much the deal you set yourself up for. I don't buy this necessity to become a hyperpolyglot (I just learn what interests me, and if that happens to be languages from different families, so be it) but there's nothing intrinsic about them that could stop you. They're all languages, spoken by humans. I don't know how many you could master, because that'd go into a discussion about mastery which I am so tired of that I really do not want open that particular can of worms (or rather, live, floundering maggots).

My hunch is, given time and dedication, a fair few, and I am sure some of the more notorious polyglots have managed to do so (Tim Doner, Alexander Arguelles and so on). I wouldn't claim to be among their ranks, as I specialize in about three families which are all Indo-European, and the only languages outside those groups which I speak are either a conlang (Esperanto) which is so hugely Romance-based I'd count it as Romance, or Mandarin Chinese and Greek, neither of which I am stellar at. Given the talent of some of us, I'd say the sky is the limit

What you're basically encountering is the fact that you're encountering a different way of setting things up and thinking. Well, hon, listen up now, 'cause Auntie Tarvos is gonna give you a little hint: patience is the key to everything. Rome wasn't built in a day (and come to think of it, probably not in a year either). It took the best of us years to really get into a new language family, and we're experienced pros who have been at it for most of our lifetime. It's not about being dope, it's about realizing that learning things takes time, whatever people would pretend. Yes, I can hack conversations, but that isn't the same thing as mastery. I've spent six months in China doodling about with Mandarin and I still wouldn't say I master the nuances of their particular brand of the Black Speech. You're doing Polish? You're in it for the long haul if it's your first Slavic language. I didn't get anywhere with Russian (my first) for the first year or two either, and I was working on it intensively at the time.

[kulaputra]

My limited personal experience, and the advice I've recieved from more accomplished polyglots, is that frequency of exposure is more important then amount of exposure for the maintenance of languages already known to a high level. For example, listening to Spanish 5 minutes at a time, every hour on the hour, 8 hours a day, for a week, is better then listening to 280 (5x8x7) minutes of Spanish over just the weekend or on a single day.

[Decidida]

I've been under some stress this week. I have made enough progress in Spanish and Creole to see stress related language issues popping up with the Spanish and Creole that I experience in my native English.

There is no amount of study that will erase my stress related language issues. It is how MY brain works and adapts to MY environment.

Some brains are more fragmented, naturally or as a result of stress.

Awhile back, I posted the link to this BBC article about losing your native language.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2018060 ... e-language

It is not as simple as "study harder" for SOME people.

[drp9341]

Passive maintenance doesn't require that much effort. You can use a sentence-based app, like Clozemaster, Duolingo or another more SRS-oriented. Like Serpent says, family takes care of one another, and so if you can't do stuff in Italian every day then maybe some Italian then Portuguese next week. The higher you are the easier to maintain, but passively I don't think you"unlearn" a Romance language after having the main ones under your belt. According to my experience, text-input sentence-based methods also help with active skills. I feel my active French skills have either stagnated or improved the past couple of years, even with no conscious effort to speak French, all thanks to Clozemaster text-input.

Agreed. Thank you.

I really can't offer any help but what is your maintenance routine like? It's not clear whether you do anything in particular outside of using the different languages when you get the chance?

My routine, while in the US, is just to do whatever I want, and if it doesn't convenience anyone, do it in a language I need to practice. I try to read in Italian, make calls to friends / send IT memes in our whatsapp group etc. It's chaotic, but it's mainly because I'm 100% headfirst into Polish.

Learning a new language system just takes time. If it's unrelated, that's pretty much the deal you set yourself up for. I don't buy this necessity to become a hyperpolyglot (I just learn what interests me, and if that happens to be languages from different families, so be it) but there's nothing intrinsic about them that could stop you. They're all languages, spoken by humans.

I completely agree. If my interest is purely linguistic, it fades away after a maximum of three months.

Auntie Tarvos is gonna give you a little hint: patience is the key to everything. Rome wasn't built in a day (and come to think of it, probably not in a year either). It took the best of us years to really get into a new language family, and we're experienced pros who have been at it for most of our lifetime. You're doing Polish? You're in it for the long haul if it's your first Slavic language. I didn't get anywhere with Russian (my first) for the first year or two either, and I was working on it intensively at the time.

Completely agree Tarvos. I saved this quote for last. It took me a looooong time to really get the Romance families "logic" or whatever you call it, ingrained into my skull. Even after a year of Polish immersion, my Polish is still not that great. I always say, "In most situations I can perform like I'm fluent, but it's just a performance." I don't understand the mechanisms on a deeper level, I have to rely on mnemonics, etc.

Going back to your first post, I think if it I was someone interested by linguistic factors rather than personal ones, it would be a lot easier to "rack up numbers." Unfortunately, that's not the case.

I'm going to try to keep the Romance Family alive with consistent exposure this year, and continue to work on Polish, and flirt with Russian.

Thank you for your input everyone, please feel free to elaborate further, this forum is truly a goldmine.

[Iversen]

The only non-Indoeuropean language which I really have invested time in is Bahasa Indonesia, and the main problem there so far has been to learn the thousands of words that aren't loanwords from something I know, like English, Dutch or Portuguese. I do admit that it took some time to get used to its carelessness regarding time and number, but most of the Slavic languages live happily without articles (and so does/did Latin) and Danish has skipped the person/number distinctions in verbal declensions so I'm not worried about differences in grammatical mechanisms as long as I know what a given language has instead of something I know from other languages. And sometimes it helps to know a language from another group, like when you consider the constructions used in the Balkan "Sprachbund" because they all have dropped or restricted the use of their infinitives - and that includes languages from at least four branches within the Indoeuropean family. Well, that's not a problem - there are methods to get accostumed to such differences.

I have been involved with Irish for slightly more than a week now (a language which I also looked at 6 years ago, but then put on the shelf), and I would say that it is the 'most different one' between those I have studies so far. It is Indoeuropean, but I feel much more at home in Indonesian than in Irish - at least at this stage.

As I mentioned I have had more than a single peek at Indonesian, but otherwise my main intent is to learn the languages in Europe - at least as passive languages, but if time (and resources) permit also as active ones. But on top of that I have read grammars and language guides that represent at least half a dozen language families, i.e. books about languages from Quechua over Swahili and Georgian to Tagalog and Hindi. I'm not terribly interested in learning languages with writings based on ideogrammes or extinct languages like Sumerian and Old Egyptian, but it is nice to know something about the way they work. And then knowing about their affiliations is interesting, but not the most interesting thing - concrete details about morphology and syntactical patterns are more relevant.

[drp9341]

The only non-Indoeuropean language which I really have invested time in is Bahasa Indonesia, and the main problem there so far has been to learn the thousands of words that aren't loanwords from something I know, like English, Dutch or Portuguese. I do admit that it took some time to get used to its carelessness regarding time and number, but most of the Slavic languages live happily without articles (and so does/did Latin) and Danish has skipped the person/number distinctions in verbal declensions so I'm not worried about differences in grammatical mechanisms as long as I know what a given language has instead of something I know from other languages. And sometimes it helps to know a language from another group, like when you consider the constructions used in the Balkan "Sprachbund" because they all have dropped or restricted the use of their infinitives - and that includes languages from at least four branches within the Indoeuropean family. Well, that's not a problem - there are methods to get accostumed to such differences.

I have been involved with Irish for slightly more than a week now (a language which I also looked at 6 years ago, but then put on the shelf), and I would say that it is the 'most different one' between those I have studies so far. It is Indoeuropean, but I feel much more at home in Indonesian than in Irish - at least at this stage.

As I mentioned I have had more than a single peek at Indonesian, but otherwise my main intent is to learn the languages in Europe - at least as passive languages, but if time (and resources) permit also as active ones. But on top of that I have read grammars and language guides that represent at least half a dozen language families, i.e. books about languages from Quechua over Swahili and Georgian to Tagalog and Hindi. I'm not terribly interested in learning languages with writings based on ideogrammes or extinct languages like Sumerian and Old Egyptian, but it is nice to know something about the way they work. And then knowing about their affiliations is interesting, but not the most interesting thing - concrete details about morphology and syntactical patterns are more relevant.

Thank you Iversen!

The only non-indo european languages I've actually needed to use and have used successfully are Quechua and Arabic. With Arabic, I was a child and my "cousin's" grandma understood a lot of English.

Quechua was much different. I lived in a Quechua speaking village in Peru for 10 weeks in 2012, and during the day, the men and children old enough to speak Spanish were working in the mountains, so I would often need to speak Quechua. Sometimes I needed to convey very important information in Quechua. Thankfully, Quechua is quite simple despite it's strange morphology, and a lot of words are straight Spanish loan words. However, I have 99% forgotten Quechua. I spoke it rather "cave man-like," but I knew the structure of it well enough, since do to the agglutination, you can't really say much of anything if you try to string together sentences like you do in English.

How do you manage to maintain all of your languages?

[Iversen]

I suppose most of us can agree that the best way to keep several languages alive is to use them regularly - not necessarily for hours each time, but regularly. And if you want to keep them active then the keep-alive activities should include active activities. In my case that will mostly be thinking in the languages and maybe writing something. Others may prefer Skype conversations. If you only want to keep them alive as passive languages then reading a page or two may be enough - the bar is much lower in this case.

And of course the effect of a given amount of a given activity depends on your previous level. It is easier to keep a strong language alive, partly because there is more to 'forget from' before the language becomes inoperable, but also because it is easier to do an activity like thinking in a language if you actually can think coherently in it.

Now how does this work with different languages, cfr. the topic of this thread? It is of course to deal with a new language if you know a related language extremely well, but I'm not really sure that knowing a strong related language helps me to keep my active skills in a weak relative alive. On the contrary it becomes harder to avoid interference, so instead of producing patchy sentences you produce sentences with lots of foreign elements. OK, if you are traveling this may be a better situation than being unable to say anything at all, but for active skills training in a related language can't replace training in your weak target language.

As for the passive skills... well, we all know that it is easier to understand a text in a new language if you already know a related language well, and this may lead to the assumption that training a strong related language automatically spills over to its less fortunate cousins, but I doubt.. For instance I already know Italian so well that a couple of hours more don't make much of a difference when it comes to understanding Sardinian or one of the dialects. And while more training in a weak language like Polish may teach or reteach me some words that also occur in my even weaker Slovak, just an hour or two in Slovak would be a much more direct way to boost my level in that language.