Going from TL1 to TL2

[Nacobe]

Greetings all,

I've been reading these forums forever, even posted a few times a long time ago with a different name (which now has, along with its password, completely disappeared from my brain). Anyway, I find myself in a situation with language learning where I could really use some help / opinions of other people who have probably been in the same, or very similar, situation. I'll try to keep this as short as possible (and probably won't succeed):

I've been (lazily) learning Italian for quite a number of years, and currently I'm at a point where I can read some books and watch TV/Netflix and pretty much understand most of what's being said (as long as the topics are normal). Few weeks ago I read in some thread here how somebody chose their next TL. What they did is instead of thinking "hmm should I learn x, y or z", they thought "if I wasn't allowed to learn x, y or z, which one would I be the most sad about". So I did the same thing, and what happened in the next few days was basically that I realized how much I want to learn Japanese. So much, in fact, that I've gotten really bored of Italian, and, as much as I enjoy watching TV and reading books in Italian, I find myself quite often wondering why it is exactly that I'm learning it. Not because I dislike Italian, but more like because my reasons for wanting to learn Japanese are, perhaps, more profound than the reasons I had/have learning Italian.

So the problem is as follows: I'm quite happy with the level of my Italian when it comes to reading/writing/listening, but my speaking skills are abysmal. So as much as I want to jump into doing my own version of AJATT, I can't bring myself to doing it because of my lack of speaking skills. I don't have any need to be able to talk about politics, heart surgeries or the extinction of dinosaurs in Italian, but I would at least like to be able to know myself that if I happen to run into an Italian on the streets I can have a chat with them without sounding like an Italian Tarzan.

My original plan was to learn Hiragana and Katakana by the end of the year whilst still learning Italian (and maybe using iTalki to learn to speak), then ditch Italian and start going through Genki + learning Kanji. But then, who knows how many hours I'd need to spend speaking with somebody before I'd be happy about my speaking ability...

TL;DR What would you do if you weren't quite happy with the level of your TL1, but wanted to start learning TL2 because you felt like that's the language you should've been learning the first place? Either spend some time learning to speak TL1 and then make the change once you felt better about it, or just jump into TL2 whilst casually still learning TL1 on the side (which I think I could do).

Thank you for any help and thank you for reading.

[rdearman]

If you're happy with all the aspects of your Italian except speaking, then I would do language exchanges in Italian 2-3 times a week while focusing the rest of the time on Japanese. You didn't list English on your profile, although given your question it would appear your English is pretty good.

I don't think there is anything to keep you from continuing with both languages, just shift your focus a little more to Japanese but set aside some time for Italian.

[Xenops]

Here's this thread: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3672&p=47297&

And I gotta say, Japanese is awesome.

[dampingwire]

TL;DR What would you do if you weren't quite happy with the level of your TL1, but wanted to start learning TL2 because you felt like that's the language you should've been learning the first place? Either spend some time learning to speak TL1 and then make the change once you felt better about it, or just jump into TL2 whilst casually still learning TL1 on the side (which I think I could do).

http://www.nihonjapangiappone.com/pages ... orseon.php

https://www.mosalingua.com/it/selezione ... iapponese/

[Nacobe]

http://www.nihonjapangiappone.com/pages ... orseon.php

https://www.mosalingua.com/it/selezione ... iapponese/

Brilliant! Thanks.

Here's this thread: https://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3672&p=47297&

And I gotta say, Japanese is awesome.

Interesting thread. Seems like I'm far from being the only one with this issue. And yes, Japanese is awesome.

If you're happy with all the aspects of your Italian except speaking, then I would do language exchanges in Italian 2-3 times a week while focusing the rest of the time on Japanese. You didn't list English on your profile, although given your question it would appear your English is pretty good.

I don't think there is anything to keep you from continuing with both languages, just shift your focus a little more to Japanese but set aside some time for Italian.

Thanks for the suggestion, and it looks like I'll do exactly what you said. I swapped my morning language routine to Japanese today, and then did a bunch of fun stuff like reading and Netflix in Italian. Worked great!

Thanks again all.

[SGP]

TL;DR What would you do if you weren't quite happy with the level of your TL1, but wanted to start learning TL2 because you felt like that's the language you should've been learning the first place? Either spend some time learning to speak TL1 and then make the change once you felt better about it, or just jump into TL2 whilst casually still learning TL1 on the side (which I think I could do).

As for what anyone could do in that case: it depends.
As for what I, personally, would do: it depends, too.

Couldn't answer this question by simply saying "TL1" or "TL2", even if it was about my (theoretical) situation of learning exactly two languages. Because there are too many different factors involved.

But these are some keywords:
- Prioritizing
- Time management
- The possibility of not deciding for any of "TL1" or "TL2" only, but doing some TwoLangJuggling a.k.a. Rotation Based Learning.