Balancing depth and breadth

[tastyonions]

How do you weight your time between learning new languages and deepening your knowledge of ones in which you are already highly competent? Do you go for "deep" in every language you study, or are you content to let some of them sit at a middling level until something inspires you to study them more intensely?

English, my native language, has an enormous selection of literary, philosophical, scientific, and historical works that interest me. I could spend my whole life just reading fascinating works that were originally written in my native tongue and still cover only a small fraction of those from which I could derive deep enjoyment, had I the time for them. And of course not only English but any language with significant written production presents one with the same scenario.

To clarify, I am not saying that there is necessarily a tradeoff in "skill attainment" (C1 or C2 or whatever other goal we have in mind) when you study multiple languages. I don't think that's really true, since once you get to a certain level, the return (in terms of skill development) on each additional hour spent falls quite a bit. But I do think that there is a tradeoff in the depth to which one can learn about the culture, the history, the philosophy, the civilization that has grown up in the context of each language we study. One can only read books and watch movies and listen to music so quickly.

How do you find a balance?

[tarvos]

Instead of consciously deciding which languages are priority ages in advance I go with the flow. I will learn what I need as I need it, and if I find something interesting I'll study it. I don't really consciously go "I need to speak C2 Mandarin" other than realising that "I am in China, better improve my Mandarin!"

The consequences of this is a very broad spread of languages dispersed all across borders and language families. Those that I know well are the ones I have most occasion to use, but even today I spoke French on the DMZ tour with a fellow from France. And I heard Mandarin and Swedish as well as Dutch.

The depth I eventually get or breadth is a result of the circumstances I am in and the career and friend choices I make, not vice versa. If I feel inspired to study Bulgarian, I will. I don't really let anything else stop that.

What that means is that I am reading in Romanian now, but I might as well have read something else (German because I have it with me. But considering I can't read pdfs on the plane I am saving Kafka for my flight home).

[Expugnator]

I try not to have any favoritos but just to situate each at diferent stages. True, I am going slowly with Estonian as I could already be benefitting from native material, but at least I am working more consistently on it and not repeating the same mistakes of Georgian. And in the case of Papiamento which I was supposedly just maintaining I went from B2 to nearly C2 Passive skills plus B2 active skills from a los B1 in 5 minutes a day during a year and a half.

[galaxyrocker]

I try not to have any favoritos but just to situate each at diferent stages. True, I am going slowly with Estonian as I could already be benefitting from native material, but at least I am working more consistently on it and not repeating the same mistakes of Georgian. And in the case of Papiamento which I was supposedly just maintaining I went from B2 to nearly C2 Passive skills plus B2 active skills from a los B1 in 5 minutes a day during a year and a half.

What did you do to maintain it that helped boost your skills?

[garyb]

I go for depth, perhaps to my detriment, it's my inner perfectionist that says if I want to speak a language I want to speak it well. Maybe "depth" isn't the best word, as my goal isn't to have a gigantic vocabulary and specialised knowledge; it's more to have a very solid grasp of everyday usage and conversation, but that's still something that takes a lot of time and effort to acquire that could be put into having a slightly less solid grasp in other languages. Plus I like to learn about the culture, which I agree takes a lot of time.

It's the old question of whether to learn one or few languages to a high level or fewer to a lower level, and of course the answer completely depends on your situation and goals. These days I try to be a bit more pragmatic about it and consider how much I'd actually benefit from a deep knowledge. I socialise a lot in Italian and still often feel significantly held back by my language ability, so a deeper knowledge would clearly help. My French, on the other hand, is far from perfect but it's good enough for the things I actually use it for. A deeper knowledge would be nice to have, but it would give me little practical benefit and I'd get a lot more out of spending that time on more useful things, either perfecting my Italian or learning other languages to a lower level. However this does partly amount to trying to predict the future, like with investments: Italian might have a high "value" now and French a lower one, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll stay that way. So I keep my longer-term plans flexible and go with the flow.

[Expugnator]

What did you do to maintain it that helped boost your skills?

I would watch a 1-3 minute news story or interview clip on YouTube and read 1-2 pages each day. I set this as a means for maintaining the level I had achieved, but it turned out that my skills improved sensibly, the listening mainly but also reading and active skills.