Re: Best order to learn languages in?

From: Alexander Magidow (amagidow_at_DELETEPERIOD2.wisc.edu)
Date: 07/08/04 

Date: Thu, 08 Jul 2004 16:44:47 -0500

Bill wrote:

> I've always wanted to learn a new language and finally decided to start with
> Spanish. I'm using the Rosetta Stone Software and plan on getting Pimsleur
> cds to listen to in the car while driving. I'ts fun so far and as I look
> further ahead I can see me wanting to try my hand, mouth really, at a few of
> the other major languages in the world, Japanese, German, French, Arabic and
> so on. Possibly a pipe dream but I do like to dream big. :) My question
> is if I do keep this up and learn Spanish what is the best order, if there
> is one, in which to learn the other languages? I mean would learning German
> help with learning another language? I'm kinda new to this so any help
> would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>
> Bill
>
>
I think you might want to make sure you know what you're really
interested in. Gaining a level of fluency in any of those languages is a
matter of years of study or living abroad - I had a similar plan at one
point, and here I am with 4 years of Arabic and an imminent trip to
Jordan, but hardly anything I would call "fluency". But I do think that
once I gain fluency in Arabic, Hebrew will probably be much easier just
from having cognates and a similar structure. Similarly, if you already
are very familiar with Spanish, French will be much easier, while it
won't help quite as much with German(or so I've heard). As for Japanese
and Arabic, the order of those isn't going to matter, since you're not
planning on studying any related langauges(granted, french can be vaugly
useful for the small number of loanwords in Arabic)

However, my strongest advice(if you're interested in fluency) is to just
study one language that really fascinates you- learning a language is a
long, hard process, so you might as well do the most interesting one you
can, because you're gonna be stuck with it for a while. If you want to
learn a lot of different languages, choose ones with large language
groups(like the Romance languages) that are still pretty close, or that
have similar "features"(Like if you want to learn a bunch of tone
languages, learning any tone language will make it easier to learn
others. Presumably similar advice would follow for click languages, but
I don't think Pimsleur's Xhosa tutor is out yet)

Alex

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