I Want To Learn 2 Languages At Once - Any Secret Tips?
No! If you have been deeply engrossed in learning a language, but are now approaching the home run, it can be extremely tempting to start to look towards learning a second language.
If you have a particular interest in languages in general, you may find it hard to concentrate on one at a time. You must make a decision though, as to whether you will study and commit to one language and become fluent, or will you try to pick up bits of a number of different languages instead. Be aware though, that this can lead you to not being able to speak much of anything at all!
You need to make a decision at the beginning. Are you wanting and willing to put in the time and effort that it takes to become fluent in a particular language? If so, set some targets. Allocate a certain number of hours per week for studying this language ONLY.
You can decide for yourself whether you want to become functionally fluent or simply to be able to hold a basic conversation. But focus on one language, take it to where you are happy, only then move to the next one.
It needs a lot of time and hard work to learn a new language. Even if you are smarter than average, have the best teaching program in the world, and are aiming to learn a fairly easy language (something not too far away from your mother tongue) it can still take hundreds of hours of study. If you think that you can just include a little bit of study on a different language here and there so that eventually you will know them all, think again, because you won’t.
If, after this, you would still like to try your hand at a number of different languages, you still need to have some structure to your learning.
When you buy a grammar book for French or German, for example, make sure you tell yourself loud and clear that you will finish learning Spanish first - and that this is just to satisfy your curiosity for other languages. If you do a few lessons of German for fun, make sure you are clear about why you do this - you just want to see what German sounds like.
Whatever you do, do not get carried away because you’ll suddenly find that you have finished the German course work whilst still only halfway through the Spanish!
So no, generally speaking, learning two languages at the same time is usually not a good idea.