Wrong to study more than 1 language?

niallcon4re

Hi all

I am in my mid 30s and picked up Spanish two years ago and am enjoying it and have caught the "language bug". I have an intermediate level and while progressing I am obviously progressing at a slower rate than the first 6 months when everything was new. I am considering picking up a second language but am wondering whether you think this would be a mistake and I should concentrate on Spanish until I am fluent (films without subtitles are still a struggle).

I was thinking Italian is too similar and therefore I might confuse them , German is very different and like English so I won't confuse and isn't totally alien . I've no interest in French. Brazilian Portugeese would be of interest but I don't know how similar to Spanish (too similar would confuse me at this stage when my brain goes looking for "foreign word"!).

I don't any of these languages, although I'd love to travel to Brazil, Germany is closer (better for career too)

Any ideas?

HalloweenJack

I also speak Spanish and have attempted to pick up some Portuguese.

I can understand you thinking you might confuse but it doesn't happen much, only really when I don't know the word in Portuguese and I'll go for something similar in Spanish.

If anything, I'm more conscious of speaking correctly in Portuguese as I have a much deeper knowledge of Spanish and I'd be very conscious of using Spanish stuff when using Portuguese. For example, Portuguese uses personal pronouns before verbs, unlike Spanish, so "soy" becomes "eu sou" in Portuguese.

Although very similar, they are also different enough to remember the distinctions. Brazilian Portuguese is different again from Portuguese Portuguese, for example, the word for dog in BP is "cachorro" and in PP is "cao", so if you were focusing on BP, it would be more different from Spanish.

Aard

In my experience, learning two languages concurrently doesn't really lead to confusion. However I wouldn't recommend it, as I've always found I just dedicate less time to each language than I would have were I only learning one, so progress becomes slow.

I'd wait until you can watch a film in Spanish before moving on.

Coeurdepirate

I'm studying Irish and French in school and Swedish by myself. Next year I'm going to do French and German at uni, and I'll continue learning Irish and Swedish by myself. If you've got a love of languages then it shouldn't be too difficult for you!