If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

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PeterMollenburg
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If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue Apr 16, 2019 2:22 pm

I’ll base this on me. Native language = EN. Strongest foreign language = FR (level between B2-C1). I’ve recently restarted Dutch (previously reached B1).

Objectives:
• I’d like to advance my French to C2 and beyond
• Dutch to C1
• Spanish to B2 or beyond
• German: B2 or beyond
• Norwegian: B2 or beyond
• Russian: B2 or beyond
• Arabic: B2

Is this theoretically achievable, in your opinion, based on 3 hours total study time per day (for very many years if required, let’s say 10 years for arguments sake)?

Could you achieve it - 7 languages beyond B2, one of which beyond C2 (but starting at B2/C1), another of the 7 to C1 level (the rest B2+)?

Would you do 30 min a day of six languages for ten years+ with the alternating 7th language being rotated out each month, or would you master one language first right up to targeted level and continue sequentially somehow with the rest? Or a mixture? Can one advance well on only 30 min a day? (I know, that part’s been asked before.)
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby Ezra » Tue Apr 16, 2019 3:04 pm

3 hours a day for ten years gives ~1565 hours for each language. So... theoretically, it's possible, though I would expect Arabic to be a major block.
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby Axon » Tue Apr 16, 2019 3:12 pm

leosmith is one of the polyglots on here who has been most careful about analyzing his study time and progress, so I'll take his Korean log as a rough baseline.

He estimates he took ~2400 hours to achieve a B2 from scratch in Korean, a language considered very difficult for English speakers. Let's take a wild guess and say he learned 20% faster than average given his familiarity with Mandarin and Japanese. This conveniently gives us a figure of 1000 days at 3 hours a day.

Unfortunately I don't know anything firsthand about the experience of learning Arabic or Korean, but I'd tentatively put them in the same ballpark as Russian - and so B2 in Arabic and Russian sounds like it would take some 6000 hours! Now, I personally know someone who learned Russian to fluency astonishingly quickly, and she was a busy university student so I'd be surprised if she averaged more than 4 hours a day. So maybe that figure is way too high, but the point is it sounds like 10 years isn't very far off for this thought experiment. I figure it took me some 1800-2000 hours to B2 in German and around 1000 to B1 in Indonesian.

A few days a week (like today) I have the opportunity to spend upwards of 3 hours actively studying, and although I see improvement (in Mandarin) the road is very very long and I think it will take several hundred more such days before I reach a B2+ in all areas, even though I can already function well. So although I've advocated for "many languages for a few minutes each day" in the past, I'm slowly changing to "longer stretches each day with the same language."

If those languages and those levels were my fixed goal over the next ten years, I'd achieve C2+ in French first (maybe in another year? 18 months?) and then put it on a once-every-couple-of-days back burner where I could slowly accumulate more natural grammar and usage over the next several years to push toward the native-like level. Then I'd devote two hours a day to Russian, using the other hour to maintain French or Dutch. After reaching B2 in Russian after three years or so, I'd put Arabic in the two-hour slot and Russian in the "maintenance" slot.

Hopefully after six years of this, I'd achieve B2 in Russian and Arabic and have pretty good Dutch after ~20-40 minutes a day for several years. Then I'd start with German, and after a year or so add Spanish too. That extra time locks German into the memory more so it doesn't get confused with Norwegian, which I start after achieving my Spanish goals. Norwegian, with such a strong background in English, Dutch, and German, is now so accessible that I can spend most of my time honing my pitch accent and still reach a high level fast.

It's very fun to fantasize like this. In short, I advocate for two main things: being realistic about how it takes a long time to get to a high-intermediate level in so many languages, and breaking up those three hours into a long "active study" stretch plus a "maintenance" stretch. I'd say you'll see the best results from putting new languages in the "active study" stretch and reaching a satisfactory level before slowing things down and putting them into "maintenance."
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby Baeticus » Tue Apr 16, 2019 3:18 pm

My humble advice is to concentrate your effort.
At first, you can try to achieve a proficient level in French and Dutch (though I have no clue how difficult the latter may be).
After that, if you are starting from scratch in the other languages, dedicate one full-time year to each one, so that you can reach a basic level in all of them and then decide on which you want to focus the most.

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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Apr 16, 2019 4:11 pm

If I wanted an effective strategy for learning 6-7 languages, I'd probably concentrate in periods of 9-12 weeks with only one or two languages. Minimize the loss curve.

Of course, I'd never survive a plan of 3 hours a day, every day for 10 years. I'd burn out 6 months in. I need breaks, ebbs and flows.
But it would be a strategy of intense study of one language. Then placing it in environmental mode where I would use it (news, interactions) without active study, while I focused on the next one. Then cycle in periods of improvements. So, in the end you are doing more than 3 per day but a lot of that isn't study just normal living with new habits. For example, I get some of my news in French - I try to speak in anything but English with my daughters, etc... That isn't study time.
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby Speakeasy » Tue Apr 16, 2019 4:35 pm

Since my retirement some 10 years ago, I have managed to enter the B1 zone, or better, with a small selection of related languages. Despite the time available to me, aside from some brief periods of very intense activity, I did not study 3 hour per day. I had the luxury of studying whenever I felt like it, an advantage which allowed me to do so when my level of mental energy was at its peak. My approach was to study one language up to the B1 level and then move on to another one. You can see by consulting my profile that I benefited from an accumulative cognate bonus. However, as Axon pointed out, maintenance of all this linguistic baggage requires time and effort and, despite the sound advice that many have offered on the forum, this aspect has escaped me. Clearly, people with exceptional abilities and an unusual degree of perseverance could pull off PeterMollenburg’s plan -- and I believe that he meets these criteria – but I suspect that the average person would be “confounded” (a word recently discussed on the forum) by such a project.

EDITED:
Typos, tinkering.
Last edited by Speakeasy on Tue Apr 16, 2019 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby rdearman » Tue Apr 16, 2019 5:54 pm

Don't listen to me, I'm the shining example of how not to do things. But I think you might find Expugnators methods useful for this. He wrote more about it on Polydog than here. {Oi! Expug, share with us here too!} He is doing 13 languages (I think I counted correctly) and started 4 at once back about 10 years ago?

http://polydog.org/index.php?threads/ex ... uages.251/

From what I gather from various bits and pieces he is doing ~9 hours per day for 13 languages which would be about an hour and half per language. So given you've already reached a very high level in French you could probably scale back to 1/2 hour and use the remaining time for 1/2 each of the others. Six languages.

With Expug's advice I was doing 40 minutes per language for 4 languages, and until I (typically) got lazy I was progressing with some statisfaction.
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PeterMollenburg
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Tue Apr 16, 2019 10:10 pm

As per usual, very decent quality replies here. I want to throw a few things into the mix...

1. I am definitely not planning to carry out this objective... yet. I’m in the hypothetical phase, that is, the ‘what if’ and if so, then ‘how?’ phase.

2. Despite the above statement, like a kid (and a good deal of adults, too :? ) imagining him/herself in the story "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", the idea is super exciting.

3. Despite the above statement, I am very seriously prepared to build that factory and proceed with the experience(s) entertaining my imagination. However, I’d have to be 100% certain I’m ready to proceed and with a definitive method.

4. The way I feel now, French will realistically remain my strongest foreign language.

Since I’m toying with doing a Masters of Translation and Interpreting, and thus, my (side?/bonus?/entire?/possibly in the end none of?) income would depend on my French language ability, decent blocks of time (deliberately vague, as I’m uncertain what that means exactly) for focused (not just maintenance) French study will continue to remain part of my active study time, perhaps for as long as I have the mental capacity and motivation to always want/feel the need to improve.

Still, I am also aiming for “decent blocks of time” working/studying/living in francophone countries as a part of my plan. In short, the 10,000 hours or more to become an expert at something (i.e. French), would seem to fit the expectation of further French learning ahead. I’m currently at 6000 hours, yet I do envisage that, the faibled 4000 remaining hours won’t necessarily occupy massive chunks of my 3 hour daily study time, as working in French and communicating with my children in French (includes daily reading of stories, semi-frequent TV, some home-schooling) will certainly help.

5. While French remains most important, for the coming few years, Dutch is close behind. Were my family and I actually ever to make it to Belgium for gainful employment, this language could prove vital, indeed essential. I’m also in the very slow process of introducing it as the family’s third working language. So it goes then, that my order if languages to be learned, must begin with French and Dutch.

German could prove useful for employment to a certain extent yet if I could ever squeeze in family time for another language, German would be a low priority. Norwegian and Spanish would be more likely candidates.

6. I don’t plan to be such a perfectionist about other languages as I have been and continue to be with French, except when it comes to pronunciation. It’s natural to me to strive for a native-like accent.

7. The languages lower on the list are subject to change, but I can probably predict that the Arabic is as far from Europe as I’d venture, but who knows what the future holds.

8. Considering furthering my nursing qualifications as well as a Master’s of Translating and Interpreting could interrupt or put this ‘10 year plan’ on hold but both would theoretically help my French interpreting and/or translation prospects as well as open doors in future that effectively buy back some language time.

9. I have other interests and areas of importance in my life. Work, family, exercise, time to breathe. This would need to be realistic and achievable... and smart. Language time with the kids, reading stories, for example can definitely help language maintenance and progression at times. But turning 3 hours a day into 6 to the detriment of other areas of importance in life, or churning out a family of polyglots to stroke my ego, are exercises in vane stupidity. This ‘project’ would need to be realistic, long-term, enjoyable, and holistic for those involved actively or passively. 3 hours is likely a safe-ish figure, for now :? .

10. I remind myself in writing that I may not do any of this at all.

This is hypothetical and I’ll be very careful before proceding with any such ambitious projects. In fact, due to my careful nature (after too many failed multi-language endeavours earlier in life) and likely 100% committment once certain I want to proceed, the all languages simultaneously approach is less likely to see the light of day, as one could more easily back out of/change one’s plan(s) in a multi-language project of this nature, were the languages tackled in order of importance one after the other, or perhaps, as suggested via active and maintenance phases. After all this is my life and I must be certain of how I want to spend my time.
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby PeterMollenburg » Wed Apr 17, 2019 9:52 am

Ezra wrote:3 hours a day for ten years gives ~1565 hours for each language. So... theoretically, it's possible, though I would expect Arabic to be a major block.


Indeed it is around 1565 hours and the ten year idea was really just throwing a logical number out there, so yeah I could take 20, but do I want to? Not really. I could take 5 years, but is that realistic? Nope. Still, in theory, it is possible, I agree, but in reality I'm not so convinced. I mean this is me talking here = perfectionist. Still learning one's first foreign language to B2+ takes a lot if trial and error. Trial and error I'd hope I wouldn't repeat with subsequent languages.
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Re: If you had 3 hours a day, could you advance ‘well’ in 6 or 7 languages?

Postby Arnaud » Wed Apr 17, 2019 11:18 am

Given that you already know French and Dutch, it shouldn't take long to reach B1 in Spanish, Norwegian and German as a first stepping stone, then to do the hard work of reaching B2.
For Russian and Arabic, count at least 2500 hours to reach a low B2, if you start from scratch.
For Russian, counting 1 year per level of the CECR scale if you have no previous knowledge of a fusional or slavic language is reasonable (Neofight passed the B2 level after 4 years, I think I've reached that level in 5/6 years)
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