subject: Learning Lots Of Dialects [print this page] Many people who learn a second language mistakenly think that they can not learn anymore languages beyond this. In fact the reverse is true, understanding languages becomes easier.
The first language you learn - your mother tongue, or indigenous language - is the hardest. You discover by error and trial for the first years of your life, and you learn out of necessity - a decent motivation. Many people are born into multiple language situations, but many discover extra languages by attending college or self-study later in life.
After talking a second language at home or studying abroad, the simplest way to take up a child learning another language is through an immersion system. In an immersion program all training is offered in a particular spanish. These applications come closest to what it'd be want to study abroad.
We think that due to the time and effort necessary to learn a second language, we will not necessarily have the opportunity to find out more languages later. We study languages differently later in life than we did as a son or daughter, but that is not really a bad thing. As we begin to study our second language, we begin to understand and sharpen a pair of skills that we do not use totally in the different facets of our life. As we get better at our second language, those learning skills increase. The phrase I like is - "we may learn to understand languages."
We are delivered by which to understanding numerous languages. There are a few techniques to understanding several languages, whether you're studying them at the same time, or one at a time in succession.
Cognates - There's frequently some vocabulary in a language you're learning that has words in common with English or another language that you know. This is because languages are associated with each other or at the least use from one another. Use that to your advantage. When you begin to study a language, choose a list or assortment of cognates. This will not only get you started on expanding your vocabulary, you will start to recognize patterns of spelling and pronunciation which can be peculiar to this language. A cool bonus is the undeniable fact that your list of possible cognates increases with each language. For
instance, when I discovered'ayer'in Spanish, I did not identify any cognate in English, nevertheless the French phrase for'yesterday'is'hier'. It's almost identical when you take into account the slight difference in pronunciation.
Language Families - Understand that many languages are linked to other languages and share several characteristics in common. If you already know just some Spanish, understanding Italian or French is much easier. You already worked hard learning lots of the syntax functions that don't occur in English when you learned Spanish, like gender, arrangement between nouns and adjectives, and more technical verb conjugations. Today when you commence to study French, let us say, these features are second nature and won't need almost as much research time and effort to understand. In addition, much of the terminology will undoubtedly be related like in the cognate example above. Understanding a related language really decreases understanding time.
Syntax - Even when you are studying a language unrelated to one you already know just, you might start to recognize how languages behave. This really is partly what I mean by "learning to discover languages." You start to know how languages'handle'different things. You may not know the grammatical terms for elements of speech (although I suggest you start to learn them, it'll assist you to but you will recognize designs both within one language, and from one language to another. Basically, all human languages operate on the same rules. With each language you learn, you will recognise
more and more of these principles.
Time - That is your biggest benefit when learning a language. Unless you need it right away, you could spend constantly you want onto it, for years and years. The biggest leaps in learning will occur initially. Next the curve may decelerate, but that primary information that you done at first becomes fully entrenched. The longer you have it and carry on to utilize it, the more it sinks in. Today, when you learn yet another language, you might find some interference involving the languages, particularly if they are linked, but as long as you sustain your other language, that primary knowledge can often be there and it will increase in time. You will not replace one language with yet another. When you need to go back to that other language, it's still there and it comes back quickly.
Understand that learning a language is a lifetime process - no-one ever actually finishes learning. So, if you start learning another language, you may not be actively researching your previous ones, if you reveal yourself to their use however, you continue to be learning them, or'maintain'them.
Goal-Setting - Set your goals thoroughly for every language. You might find that adding another language is much simpler if you know you that you don't should be proficient in it. Maybe you only want to read that language. Then, you don't need to concentrate on listening and speaking skills. Or maybe you simply need to know a few greetings and simple discussion. Forget about heavy grammar. Focus on a few conversation skills and review accordingly.
Preservation - To me, here is the real key to learning many languages. By key, after all it is important for your long-term achievement, and I also imply that it's hard to attain. Once you have discovered a language, at the least its essentials, you need to maintain it. Use or lose it, they say. It's true here, too. When you are studying a new language, you still have to show yourself to the different languages that you know. As a general principle, I prefer to say 15 minutes a day. Study anything, write a mail or two to pen pals, watch a movie or tv show once in a while, pay attention to some music and so on. Then, when you need that
language for anything considerable, the vocabulary and pronunciation and grammar is not up to now away from you. If it hadn't been used by you at all for 6 months or 6 years, I can promise you that it'd not come right back so easily.
Of course, the problem with this is, for each language you understand, that's quarter-hour less time for understanding your new one. I think eventually, this is what puts an upper limit on how many languages we are able to effectively learn. There is nothing stopping us from learning more, but without needing that knowledge on a regular basis, keeping it fresh, it has a tendency to get far from us. Then we are'changing'one language with a cleaner one, as seen here. I do not think that is what we have in mind when we understand a language.
For myself, I've a short list of Priority 1 languages that I focus on. I assume this to be a lifetime activity, and so I am not hurrying. I likewise have a considerably longer listing of languages, each with different goals. I doubt that I will ever strike my objectives in all of these languages, but I'm sure I will hit my goals in at the least some of them.
If you really appreciate studying a second language, then probably consider a third or fourth or more. You might already be thinking forward and wondering if you might do it. Come up with a list of points, set some goals and go to it.
