"Cost" of switching languages for a month

[samfrances]

I'm planning a short trip to Sweden, and I was thinking about taking a month off from Spanish to learn some basic Swedish before the trip - just enough to be polite and perhaps be able to say a bit more than the average British tourist. I'm definitely not done learning Spanish yet, and would plan to return to learning Spanish after the trip, abandoning Swedish for the time being.

I wondered if anyone had any insight into how much I could expect my Spanish to regress if I take a month off to learn another language. (I'm somewhere between B1 and B2 in Spanish at the moment). Have any of you tried this sort of thing before?

[Brun Ugle]

It depends. I've actually found that sometimes a short break actually seems to improve my language ability. It's like it gives it time to sink in or something. In any case, I doubt you'll forget much in such a short time. So the real cost would be in the amount of studying and progress you would have made in that month had you stuck to studying Spanish.

[iguanamon]

Sam, I am an experienced learner, so for me, it would be no big deal. You have yet to learn your first second language yet so your mileage may vary. Only you can know how much it will affect you. I do know that momentum, once maintained is a good thing in language learning. Once lost it can be difficult to get back. The good thing about this is you have the right attitude. You don't have to start learning Swedish in the same way you did Spanish. For a "one-off" trip I'd get a really good phrasebook like the Lonely Planet series and maybe, maybe, a very short and slim, general introductory course. Concentrate on your needs as a traveler- ordering in a restaurant or bar; numbers; "I need';"I'd like", "Where is"; "What is that"; "What does this mean"; bus and train travel vocabulary; asking directions; greetings; please; thank you; you're welcome;

To sum up, I wouldn't "take a break" from Spanish, unless you feel you need one. I'd keep moving forward with it. I would learn some basic Swedish to ease my travel and be polite, but I wouldn't try to learn it all. If you are a good enough language-learner, you should be able to learn a lot in a half an hour a day, but somehow, I doubt you'll get to use much of it in conversation as the Scandinavians have the highest penetration and level of English in Europe, along with the Dutch.

[Serpent]

Be sure to use the "hidden moments" while queueing and similar. And yeah don't think about it as switching. Continue using Spanish native materials or incorporate them if you haven't yet. (This article can help)

In Swedish, make sure to work on the pronunciation. Prior to my trip to Poland I did LR, tongue twisters and a bit of shadowing. Courses are generally atrocious for understanding what people say.

[pir]

I've done this before, and coincidentally, with Swedish as the "interloper" when I unexpectedly traveled to Sweden and ended up staying there for nearly a year.

From my experience with learning more than one language at a time I can highly recommend not switching completely, but just shifting to do a lot more in Swedish, while relegating Spanish to the back burner. But I would definitely keep it going, at a low rate -- 15 min a day in your case is probably enough. It'll keep the language in your ears and on your tongue so you don't completely detach from it. Even if you don't do that, at B1-B2 I wouldn't expect to lose a lot in 4-6 weeks. But I definitely think it's more efficient if I slow down with a language instead of stopping completely. If I stop completely the whole connection I have developed with the language, the "feel" for how it works, that fades away (especially if I am learning a new language during that time), and it takes a while to return again.

If your trip to Sweden is a one-off, and you just don't want to miss the chance at getting a head start with Swedish, I'd "hack" it -- learn pronunciation, learn just enough grammar to form basic statements, negations, questions in simple past, present, and simple future tenses, learn greetings and other common phrases (get a phrasebook), learn basic interrogatives, learn connectors. Listen to a lot of native material so you'll get used to the sound, shadow something easy, speak to yourself, maybe grab a tutor on iTalki so you get a bit of practice speaking. A month is enough time for doing all that. Memrise has a 3 hour Swedish course that does some of that (only present tense). If you really WANT to speak it, be prepared that you will have to force it because so many people in Sweden speaks excellent English, and will whip that out at the slightest chance that you seem like an English speaker. But they'll be happy and patient if you insist and try to speak Swedish. However, if you're just thinking of learning Swedish because you expect you'll need it -- you won't.

Good luck! I think it can be great fun to hack a language like that.

[samfrances]

Thanks for the advice all.

I think I'm going to go with what iguanamon, Serpent and pir are saying and not take a break from Spanish but just learn two languages for a month.

I would learn some basic Swedish to ease my travel and be polite, but I wouldn't try to learn it all. If you are a good enough language-learner, you should be able to learn a lot in a half an hour a day, but somehow, I doubt you'll get to use much of it in conversation as the Scandinavians have the highest penetration and level of English in Europe, along with the Dutch.

Yeah, I probably wasn't expecting to have any real conversations for precisely this reason. Really I'm just looking for basic survival phrases / structures, and maybe better than average pronunciation for a tourist.

In Swedish, make sure to work on the pronunciation. Prior to my trip to Poland I did LR, tongue twisters and a bit of shadowing. Courses are generally atrocious for understanding what people say.

This is going to be the really difficult bit for me. The only other language I've been learning is Spanish, which, once you get over the English-speaker's tendency to turn all vowels into dipthongs, is relatively easy to pronounce, because almost all of its phonemes are part of English. (Not that my pronunciation is perfect - Spanish speakers can still tell I'm English). I've got no idea of how to approach a language like Swedish with many unfamiliar vowels!

[Serpent]

Well, the biggest giveaway are the same things as in Spanish - the diphthongized vowels and the r. You don't need to be perfect to get to speak a little Swedish.

[tarvos]

Furthermore if you are between B1 and B2 then a month's absence shouldn't affect your level too much. B1-B2 students tend to be very well-rounded already.

[geoffw]

Good luck, and I echo the excellent advice already given. I thought I would add a small detail from my experience.

I picked up Irish as a project maybe 5 months ago, and quickly decided to make mastering (well, getting decent at least) Irish my #1 priority. I worked on Irish first thing EVERY single morning when I got out of bed (with Duolingo, though I used other resources, too). Eventually, as is inevitable, my enthusiasm started to wane. I no longer felt motivated to spend 6 hours a day working on Irish. But I kept doing something first thing in the morning, even if just for 5 minutes to do a single Duolingo review lesson. After months and months of such a streak (Duolingo prominently displays how many consecutive days you've done your lessons without skipping), even when I started to wonder why I was doing this, force of habit meant that it seemed like a huge decision if I were to NOT do Irish first thing in the morning, akin to a major life decision.

Then earlier this week I discovered that someone I know in the area speaks some Irish, and I was very glad I had stuck with it.

I know that not everyone loves Duolingo as much as I do (especially for Spanish, where there are so many good resources), and I'm the first to admit that it has flaws. But maybe it's something to consider? They have a Swedish course, too, btw.

[samfrances]

Thanks, I'll definitely check out duolingo too.