Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

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bolaobo
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Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:02 pm

Hello, this is just my log where I talk about my obsessive quixotic quest of learning many languages. My family and friends all think I'm crazy, but I need somewhere to vent my thoughts!

To start off with an introduction, I've always been "intrigued" by the idea of knowing languages but going into college, I was a typical monolingual American. I somehow managed to skirt by middle school Spanish without learning anything, and in high school I went through a weeaboo phase and took Japanese but still somehow managed to learn nothing, because of a poor instructor and poor study habits that led me to becoming demotivated about language learning entirely.

Despite this, I always did well in English classes and felt above average in terms of verbal ability. But I've always been an introvert who prefers reading and writing to speaking and listening.

During university, through a strange sequence of events, I originally wanted to take Japanese to fulfill a language credit but I ended up in Chinese class. At first I planned on just getting by and passing to fulfill the credit, but I eventually became obsessed with it. I got a strange sense of satisfaction out of learning new characters and vocabulary and spent many hours outside the class studying it and minoring in it. My major and career is in IT, where I unfortunately have little opportunity to use my foreign languages.

10 years later...I'm now married to a Chinese woman and I speak Mandarin exclusively at home. I actually speak it more than English.

Once I was able to read Chinese novels written for adults and wuxia, I began to branch out. I tackled German next, and spent a few years studying it using...average techniques. Learning Chinese gave me confidence but honestly my study skills still weren't that good. Eventually through trial and error I made it to a good receptive/reading level, about the higher side of B2. My production skills are significantly worse, and this is because of my introverted nature. Chinese is the only language I focus on producing besides English, my native language.

Then I tackled Hindi. My study skills got a little better but not much. I started learning Hindi on a whim due to interest in Indian food, and a new under-explored world. The hardcore motivation didn't last, but I'm slowly chipping away.

Last year, I realized I got the language learning bug, or as Arguelles calls it, "polyitis". I spent a ton of time reading about how to learn languages, the habits of successful polyglots and polyliterates (my main goal) and the most important languages to know, ancient and modern. This time I don't consider wasted, but I definitely need to spend less time researching and more time studying this year.

My ultimate takeaway is that one can learn quite a few languages at the same time, they often reinforce each other, and the brain does best in spurts of 15-30 minutes focused. This is all espoused in many of Arguelles' videos. So I'm putting all my confidence in that school of thought. I work on many languages a day, in short spurts, with some having more time spent than others based on motivation and interest. I've chosen to go this route instead of focusing on one language at a time. Ultimately, I think learning a language takes many years, and I'm thinking in terms of 5-10 years when I pick up a language. I have no immediate goals to say....go to Germany. If my plans suddenly changed, I would switch to focusing on one language and maintaining others.

Unlike Arguelles, I'm a strong proponent of SRS. It is always worked for me and it taught me Chinese. I use SRS to fully internalize Assimil dialogues by putting them into Anki. I go at a slower pace but don't have to worry about going back and reviewing or forgetting something if I get distracted. Anki is also great for splitting up workload into chunks since each of my languages is a different deck. If I put something into Anki and do reviews everyday, I'll maintain the vast majority of what I study, and that's important to me since I often have impulses to dabble in something new and juggling multiple books to maintain knowledge is a lot harder than opening an application and doing reps.

To summarize my current languages, I only call myself fluent in English and Chinese, but pretty decent at German. My French is worse than my German but good enough to use Assimil, which was my main reason for learning the language. My Hindi and Japanese are both beyond the beginner level but not quite solid intermediate. I'm dabbling in Latin and tackling Persian pretty hard lately. My main resource is Assimil and I track progress in my signature.

For 2022, my goals change on a whim, but it's currently:

Focus: Japanese, Persian (Japanese is naturally time-consuming, and Persian is in beginner stage and needs constant reinforcement)
Slowly Improving and Maintaining: German, French (I can read in these languages, but I lack advanced vocab), Hindi (needs a lot of work, but don't have huge interest at moment besides going through Assimil)
Maintain: Chinese (I use Pleco to make sure my ability to read literary Chinese doesn't deteriorate too much but I've recently had no interest in it due to disillusionment with culture)
Dabbling: Latin (meh, I want to learn it, but I don't have a huge motivation to tackle it hard. I plan on going through Assimil course in 1-2 years), MSA (literally just opened up textbook, might abandon but I feel like my repertoire needs a Semitic language)
Future Goals: Spanish (I already have enough on my plate so this list is short)

As you can see, my interests are all over the place. I enjoy the philological aspect of language learning, reading old/classic texts, and the cultural aspect. Japanese, for example, is structurally and culturally different than my existing languages, while Persian has lots of texts to read and a strong written tradition. I previously studied Classical Chinese but abandoned when I realized I'd have to dedicate my life to it and I'm not interested in becoming a full-time Sinologist.

Let's see how this year goes, and if this strategy of slow, steady progress in many languages works. I'm mainly using Assimil at the moment, but I have plans to go more advanced into all these languages which will obviously require much more than Assimil.
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:18 pm

This morning, I did about 1 hour of SRS, finished up the dialogue in L82 of Japanese Assimil, and started L16 of Persian Assimil.

Japanese was rather easy. I sped up this dialogue and the previous dialog 1.5x, but there are still Kanji readings I had to memorize. I've recently been listening to a lot of Japanese podcasts and I feel my listening is decent for someone who's only been studying for 6 months. I still spend over 20 minutes daily just reviewing previous Japanese in Anki, so I'm trying to get these reviews down before finishing Assimil. I would love to finish but reviews would kill me. Assimil seems to be introducing N3 grammar points now.

Persian has been easy in terms of grammar and vocab (I recognize a lot of words from Hindi) but I still make silly mistakes while reading the script. It's just a matter of time until I become more comfortable with the Perso-Arabic script. Memorizing what the vowels are can't be as bad as Japanese Kanji readings!

Yesterday, I peaked at the next Latin Assimil lesson and it wasn't easy. I know Assimil doesn't want to overwhelm me with going over the declension system but I have a low tolerance for ambiguity and I feel like I have to sit down and review some grammar. Usually I have no problem deciphering but it's getting harder with the very limited grammar instruction Assimil has given me.

I'm considering starting Arabic on the side (obviously it's a multi-year project, one of the hardest languages ever). It's an important language, modern and historically, would help reinforce my Persian, and there are a lot of classical texts to read. It's also considered extremely hard and I like challenges. Most importantly, it would introduce me to the Semitic family and give me access to Arabic news. There's also an Assimil Perfectionnement course for it!

But I hesitate because to be honest, I don't like how its harsh sound, and I'm unsure about how much literature there is outside of religion/Islam. I know there is lot of literature, but Arabic is a huge time investment. So I'm in the exploration stage. Learning a little bit of Arabic can't hurt my Persian.
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

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Le Baron
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jan 24, 2022 2:31 pm

An impressive array of languages being tackled there. Different things work for different people and that's fair enough. I'm less good with juggling; the more balls you juggle the less contact you get with each ball. So it generally falls to focusing more narrowly. I like to get things 'out of the way' in terms of getting some way along the learning path.

What you mention about having tackled and largely conquered one language (and Chinese is no pushover so thumbs up to that) then initially hitting a sort of wall when taking on a third language, is a strangely common phenomenon. Learning or already knowing one extra language gives great confidence, but as you note it's about knowing 'how' to study. And in any case each new language has particularities that require tailoring the basic methods. The process is so long that once you get to focusing on another language more intensely it's like learning a new (but the same old) skill all over again!

Perhaps concurrent language learning has some benefits in getting them all going at once, though I can't make this fit with the singular concentration required to really conquer a language and make it properly functional. The way you got to functionality with Chinese (not even including the practise you'll get from your wife) surely came from singular, rather obsessive focus?
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bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Mon Jan 24, 2022 7:55 pm

Le Baron wrote:An impressive array of languages being tackled there. Different things work for different people and that's fair enough. I'm less good with juggling; the more balls you juggle the less contact you get with each ball. So it generally falls to focusing more narrowly. I like to get things 'out of the way' in terms of getting some way along the learning path.

What you mention about having tackled and largely conquered one language (and Chinese is no pushover so thumbs up to that) then initially hitting a sort of wall when taking on a third language, is a strangely common phenomenon. Learning or already knowing one extra language gives great confidence, but as you note it's about knowing 'how' to study. And in any case each new language has particularities that require tailoring the basic methods. The process is so long that once you get to focusing on another language more intensely it's like learning a new (but the same old) skill all over again!

Perhaps concurrent language learning has some benefits in getting them all going at once, though I can't make this fit with the singular concentration required to really conquer a language and make it properly functional. The way you got to functionality with Chinese (not even including the practise you'll get from your wife) surely came from singular, rather obsessive focus?


Thank you for the response. Yes, there was a period where I studied Chinese rather obsessively (about 3 years), but it was a lot of inefficient study since it was my first real foreign language, and a lot of time spent learning how to handwrite thousands of characters which doesn't have to be done for languages that use a normal script. At least all of that character study paid off for Japanese.

I think the most important thing is motivation. If you're motivated for just one language, you should do that. But these days, I get bored more easily, and need to switch around. I don't have a singular, set goal like I did in college and I'm fine with exploring different paths and getting tastes of different culture.

But I definitely have bouts of dedication to one or two languages while the rest of mine are in maintenance mode. Right now, it seems like I'm in an "exotic" stage and French/German are on the backburner (except textbooks).

Do you listen to any French podcasts? I really should start listening to more than just innerFrench...
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby Le Baron » Mon Jan 24, 2022 8:42 pm

bolaobo wrote:I think the most important thing is motivation. If you're motivated for just one language, you should do that. But these days, I get bored more easily, and need to switch around. I don't have a singular, set goal like I did in college and I'm fine with exploring different paths and getting tastes of different culture.

Je ne crois pas que quiconque ici puisse être fidèle à une seule langue ! I've just learned to control any urges in order for me to make some progress amongst the piles of other things I have to do. I can certainly relate to being drawn-in by sampling a bit of culture. All I have to do is see one thing - e.g. Japanese koto playing... - and I'm thinking, 'right, if I'm to understand this fully I'm going to have to learn Japanese thoroughly!' The next day I come to my senses. :lol:

bolaobo wrote:Do you listen to any French podcasts? I really should start listening to more than just innerFrench...

I didn't even know what Inner French was until I came to this forum. I mostly listen to just the live radio for French. I do listen to podcasts though, from various places. Mostly downloaded from RTS (Swiss) or RBTF. The last I listened to was a 9 part series La folies des années 80. You can get it here from Rfi: https://www.rfi.fr/fr/podcasts/la-folie ... 3%A9es-80/

I've gone off FranceCulture, they're a bit pretentious.
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby zenmonkey » Mon Jan 24, 2022 8:59 pm

Great language goals!

In the past, I've enjoyed learning multiple languages at the same time.
Currently, I'm trying to focus on only one. But others keep fighting for attention!
Tomorrow, well, tomorrow I may change my mind.

French podcasts? (but you'll need to hunt and pick - some are a bit snooty)
My go-to list is https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions

Was listening to this earlier today - https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/ ... k-computer
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby lichtrausch » Mon Jan 24, 2022 9:27 pm

We have similar goals so I'll be following this log with great interest.

bolaobo wrote:Maintain: Chinese (I use Pleco to make sure my ability to read literary Chinese doesn't deteriorate too much but I've recently had no interest in it due to disillusionment with culture)

What do you mean by using Pleco to read literary Chinese?
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bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Tue Jan 25, 2022 2:28 am

lichtrausch wrote:We have similar goals so I'll be following this log with great interest.

bolaobo wrote:Maintain: Chinese (I use Pleco to make sure my ability to read literary Chinese doesn't deteriorate too much but I've recently had no interest in it due to disillusionment with culture)

What do you mean by using Pleco to read literary Chinese?


That was poorly worded!

Flashcards of less common characters, some sentence flashcards, and chengyu. Of course, I read real Chinese too (mainly news and social media), but there are some rarer characters I prefer giving some extra reinforcement while I try to get other languages to my Chinese reading level. Last year, I also switched Pleco to show traditional to improve my recognition since I started off with simplified.
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Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

bolaobo
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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby bolaobo » Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:39 am

Today I did the exercises in Assimil Japanese L82, finished off Persian L16 exercises, and dialogue of Assimil Arabic L2. I also took another peak at the next Latin lesson but haven't put it into Anki yet.

The Assimil Arabic recordings are....something. The beginning recordings are slow, as always, but the pronunciation seems weird even in the later recordings. It doesn't sound very pleasing but MSA is mainly a written language anyway. Even for languages I plan on only reading I listen to recordings to get an "inner voice".

These past few days I've been more interested in Persian and Arabic than Japanese. I'll probably be working heavily with Arabic script these next few weeks to get more comfortable with it. My Japanese is at the level where I'm not entirely reliant on textbook study but I enjoy the structured learning.

Besides studying, I did random surfing on Wikipedia in French, Japanese, and German. Imagine if I spent that time reading a real book instead of doing reading random articles! That's my biggest weakness. I don't spend my time wisely in terms of work outside textbook study.
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Perfectionnement Arabe: 11 / 70 New Arabic Grammar: 30 / 51
Le Grec Ancien: 15 / 101
Hindi ohne Mühe: 44 / 54
Le Persan: 85 / 86
Le Turc: 19 / 71
Tobira: 3 / 15

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Re: Bolaobo Overextends With Too Many Languages in 2022

Postby Xenops » Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:49 am

bolaobo wrote:
Besides studying, I did random surfing on Wikipedia in French, Japanese, and German. Imagine if I spent that time reading a real book instead of doing reading random articles! That's my biggest weakness. I don't spend my time wisely in terms of work outside textbook study.


Uh...What difference does it make? Reading in TL is reading in TL. Congratulate yourself. :D
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