Can You Learn Two Languages At the Same Time?

Brainscape ^ | Oct 2018 | Kaitlin Goodrich

[P.O.E.]

At 4 years old, my cousin in Canada could speak English to us, Polish to her grandmother, and French to shopkeepers.

[dfwgator]

At 4 years old, my cousin in Canada could speak English to us, Polish to her grandmother, and French to shopkeepers.

I'm jealous. I remember when I went to Poland how happy they were because I simply said, "Dziękuję bardzo!"

[BraveMan]

Ladder (LD), Function Block (FBD), Sequential Function Chart (SFC)

[Slyfox]

Children can learn two languages at once. Don't know about adults.

A friend of mine was taking German. He was married to a German wife. They decided that he would speak only English to his son and she would speak only German. Their kid learned both languages very well.

They did a study one time with kids and adults learning three languages and they tested the language centers of their brains before and after. The adults had three different spots in their language centers, one for each language. The kids had only one spot which housed all three languages.

[Albion Wilde]

Yes, I’ve read about Verlan. And in my experience, native French speakers take delight in frustrating native English speakers who dare to try to converse in French! LOL!

[dfwgator]

“It’s like those French have a different word for everything!”

[BeauBo]

I have heard several good reviews of using Anki for vocabulary flashcards.

It is free online or on a PC ($20 to download an app for the iphone).

I downloaded a (free) deck of the most common Spanish words with pictures and sound clips, and Anki prompts a daily selection that I can burn through in about 10 minutes. It uses a spaced repetition algorithm, that estimates when you are likely to forget a new word, and puts it up for review that day, so your effort is more efficiently used.

It seems to be pretty helpful/effective for the minimal effort I put in.

I tried it for Chinese characters, but I think that you really need to deliberately learn them offline, before trying to review them on a flashcard system.

[aspasia]

Practice fluency: parole d'araignée

[Caipirabob]

In my experience with learning three romance languages, they need to be dissimilar. Otherwise, the stronger of the most similar ones will tend to “erase” the weaker one.

Hence the evolution of my "Spanjuguese" and "Portañol"..

[Does so]

I have known adults that can’t even order the basics in Spanish

I know a word in Spanish: Chulapa. :)

[GingisK]

Yeah, I've made those from scratch before they existed in the commercial marketplace. It even included what they used to call a drum.

Those controllers are pretty cool.

[BeauBo]

I know Karate, Judo, and a few other Japanese words.

[GingisK]

That reminds me of a woman who called into a radio station in Florida, back when they were discussing mandating English-only government offices. She said, “If English was good enough for Jesus it should be good enough for everyone”.

[Mears]

Banzai!!!!!!

.

.

[GingisK]

How was Polish? Poland is starting to work up my list in my escape plan.

[dfwgator]

The good news about Polish is that once you learn how to pronounce the letters, it’s consistent.

The hard part is remembering all the cases that a noun can take.

And verbs can be imperfective or perfective and sometimes the imperfective form looks nothing like the perfective.

[GingisK]

After all of these years, I had to look those terms up in the dictionary. We take the mechanics of those elements of speech for granted. People who are new to English do suffer in order play by those rules. Interesting! It explains why Russians do odd things with English from time to time.

Maybe it is time to squeeze my brain with some Polish.

[mad_as_he$$]

Not cerveza?

[MayflowerMadam]

My nephew is married to a Puerto Rican girl. Their three daughters learned, and are learning, two languages from birth and do fine.

[Does so]

"Not cerveza?"

OK—2 words. ;)