Learning Related Languages - too soon for Russian?

[drp9341]

Hello everyone! (I used the search feature and tried to look for advice on this, but I didn't find anything. I assume that this has already been discussed here, so If this thread is a duplicate, please let me know!)

(You can skip to the bottom for the super-short version of my question!)

I've been studying Polish for around 13 months, 10 of those months I have been living in Poland. I studied like an animal for the first 3 or 4 months, and then slowed it down to about 2-3 hours a day. You can check out my log, where I've been tracking my progress for about a year.

The reason I want to start with Russian now, is because if I go back to the US in exactly 2 years as planned, I won't have the same amount of time and access to native speakers.

External "Assessments" of my Level:
1. The full time Polish teachers at Polish school I took some courses and private lessons at, all told me I was "definitely" B2, and that I shouldn't take the B1 exam offered in June, but the B2 instead.

2. I took a B2 practice exam about ~10 weeks ago, and I passed. Then I had one of the teachers test me on the speaking and writing part. (She specializes in preparing foreigners for the CEFR exams, there's actually a market for this, since passing them is very important for Polish citizenship.) She said I passed the speaking(passed by a good margin) and writing (I forget the numbers, but I remember thinking that if I got "unlucky" I could fail the writing.)



My Assessment of my Level
1. I don't "own" Polish yet. My French is probably the same as my Polish in regards to my knowledge of the language, but normally I feel more comfortable speaking French despite the fact that I don't know a lot of words. For example, I don't become unable to speak French if I'm having a bad day. Polish though, I need to think hard about in order to speak it well. If I'm tired, or having a bad day, I can speak pretty badly. On the other hand, if I'm having a good day, I can speak very well. An example of this would be reading. Last week I got an email from my gym about my credit card payment having failed. It was one of those long emails. I tried to read it on Wednesday evening when I got it, but I was feeling sick, mentally foggy, and tired, and I couldn't do it. The next day at around 10 am when I had an hour break between teaching, I read it with no problems.

2. Despite the relatively short period of time I've studied Polish for, I have very good pronunciation. I made a real effort in the beginning to "this time get it right from the start."


My experience regarding minimizing interference between related Languages:
From learning Spanish/Portuguese/Italian I realized that the best way avoid interference was to have good pronunciation. If I know how a word sounds in Italian vs. Spanish, I won't ever say "mano" the Spanish way even though it's the same word in Italian. I think I hold my mouth differently when I speak each language, so there's the physical aspect as well. Also, reading in the languages, (that are interfering with one another) with a focus on "remembering how things are spelled," helped me a lot with Portuguese/Spanish. For a long time I didn't know how to spell in Portuguese. The amount of interference between PT/ESP dropped significantly during the period of time I was speaking Spanish daily, and reading and writing in Portuguese for work daily. I think being able to fall back on the visual differences between the words if you have a fuzzy auditory memory of the words, adds a second "layer" to the figurative "mental wall between two languages."

Someone suggested that I take a night class and learn Russian through Polish. I like this idea a lot, however I want to start taking Polish classes again next September, in addition to starting to do martial arts again, so I'll have to pick 2 out of the 3.

SUMMARY:
I started studying Polish, (my first Slavic language,) 13 months ago, 11 of which were spent living in Poland. My level according to teachers specialized in Polish CEFR preparation is B2, although I feel it's a strong B1. I want to start learning Russian soon, because I will be in Belarus this summer and I have lots of opportunities locally, and through travel, to practice Russian.

What would you do in my situation? If I start soon, what should I do to prevent learning Russian interfering with my Polish?

THANK YOU!

[iguanamon]

You already have experience with this. You probably have as much as anyone else here.

My experience with Spanish/Portuguese/Djudeo-espanyol and Haitian Creole/Lesser Antilles Kreyòl, is that from time to time I still get interference with the similar ones depending on which language I have been speaking for the longest. When I was in Spain, I was speaking Spanish with the natives and Portuguese with my Brazilian partner. It was a real linguistic workout. The longer I speak one language the more likely I will mix in some words if I have to switch suddenly. She, also, speaks Spanish and sometimes mixes the two, which is funny when she does it in Portuguese and I catch her.

Between the two Creoles, I don't speak either as often as I would like, but my Haitian is dominant and I have to make more of an effort in Lesser Antilles French Creole. With Ladino, I write more than I ever speak, no one to speak with, I've only ever had a brief conversation on VOIP. So no problems.

Since you're living in Poland and having daily contact with native-speakers plus a high level in Polish and experience with similar languages and your own gimmicks, you'll be fine. Your visual associations will work well with Cyrillic visuals for Russian and Latin script for Polish.

[Systematiker]

I agree with iguanamon, you’re almost certainly fine. If you have much trouble with interference, you’re more likely to get Polish in your Russian than Russian messing with your Polish anyway. I tend to see interference from stronger languages into weaker ones - and then language family doesn’t play as much a role as other factors. Like you I’ve seen mixing in eg Spanish and Portuguese, in only one direction because of strength, and Russian into my Ukrainian, but interestingly never Russian into Czech, there if I have out of place stuff it’s from a stronger language of a different family (German, usually). So while Polish and Russian are both Slavic, you may not see the degree of interference you’ve had among the very close Romance languages.

[IronMike]

Yes. Start studying Russian.

[Ogrim]

Yes, go for it. At one point (in university) I studied six Romance languages at the same time. I was more or less at B2 level in French and Spanish when I started with Italian, then I took up Catalan and Romansh almost simultaneously, and shortly thereafter I started on Romanian.

I don't think Russian will interfere a lot with your Polish, it is more probable that the opposite could happen, that when advancing in Russian you will get interference from Polish as it is the "stronger" language. From my experience interference is not a big issue though, with your level in Polish you should be able to treat Russian as a totally separate language.

[neofight78]

Yes. Start studying Russian.

Seconded!

[drp9341]

... it is more probable that the opposite could happen, that when advancing in Russian you will get interference from Polish as it is the "stronger" language ...

I've heard that's the case normally! However, I have almost always noticed the opposite, until I get to like B1 in the new one, and then return to the older one. The effects aren't permanent, and every time I've learned a related language it's actually improved the prior language in that family I've learned. . This could be a result of spending more time daily on the newer language than the older language.

... You already have experience with this. You probably have as much as anyone else here. ...

It's true, but I consider myself to only have "useful / successful" experience in terms of maintaining two fluent languages that are very similar. When I started Portuguese I messed up my Spanish so much that after my first month in Brazil, I was no longer able to speak Spanish. Which took some Spanish speakers who I kept in regular contact with, by surprise.

Also, my Italian was for a few years "hispanicized" in terms of vocabulary. It took me a while to "organize" the two languages and mentally clean them up so that all the information was in the right spot

Yes. Start studying Russian.

Seconded!

Haha, I am going to start studying Russian then. This time I will try to make a plan so that I don't get carried away and end up spending more time on Russian than Polish

[reineke]

It's OK to ask. You've also brought up some interesting issues. Languagers will have all kinds of opinions on this matter. I agree that "pronunciation is important". However, the auditory memory is slow and your trip is around the corner.

I would wait until the Polish exam is over. Belarus is not far from Poland. If this exam is something you can easily take and retake you can do whatever you like.

Re: "the mental wall"
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 259#p53259

[drp9341]

It's OK to ask. You've also brought up some interesting issues. Languagers will have all kinds of opinions on this matter. I agree that "pronunciation is important". However, the auditory memory is slow and your trip is around the corner.

I would wait until the Polish exam is over. Belarus is not far from Poland. If this exam is something you can easily take and retake you can do whatever you like.

Re: "the mental wall"
https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 259#p53259

Thanks for the response!

Just to clarify for everyone: I'm not planning on taking any CEFR exams as of right now. Next June I would like to try to take the C1 exam, or maybe wait and take the C2 exam in 2 years from now.

I read some of the study you linked to. It's interesting. I wonder if something similar woud occur if I would start to progress in Russian even though I am using Polish frequently.

[Axon]

You're going to be fine. It's likely that you will have some interference, and that might be demoralizing at first, but as you've said you've dealt with this problem at least twice already.

I've never learned a language as fast and as well as you have, but one thing is that I do believe in the importance of time. Even though your level in Polish is already quite high, I'm betting that there will be interference just because it's only been about a year since you started learning it.

I started learning Russian about 18 months after starting Polish and I absolutely had Polish interference despite the fact I made a strong effort to separate the two languages phonologically. Because I wasn't actively studying Polish then, the interference went away after a couple of months. Ten months later, when I traveled to Poland again, it took four or five days of tourist interactions before I stopped using Russian words. Almost two years of virtually no Polish study later, I had an unexpected Polish conversation and it was painfully contaminated by Russian vocabulary and grammar.

In contrast, I started Mandarin after five or six months of casual Cantonese dabbling. I really wanted to continue Cantonese but was very worried about mixing the languages. I kept Cantonese at a very basic phrasebook level for more than three years before just now starting active study at the beginning of May. The difference between this and my Slavic experience is night and day. There's still a tiny bit of occasional mixing, especially when you would express a sentence in the same way in both, but the languages feel very separate in my mind. I have a feeling that if I were to ramp up Hokkien study, I'd also be able to keep it separate because I've had Cantonese simmering on the back burner all this time. That's just a guess though.

No matter how it works out, I'm very interested in reading about whatever you end up doing!