I like to use my languages to watch things on youtube and Netflix, speak with foreigners, read books, write stories, … I love to try and help other people learn languages, which is why I am a language teacher
I’ve also been working on a website where I teach Dutch, put some of the stories I have written (in French, English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and hopefully more in the future!) as well as a database of language learning resources found throughout the internet. So far, I have gathered resources for a total of 14 languages! Here is the link to my (French) website : www.cameleondeslangues.be.
My goal/dream is to add Mandarin Chinese and Russian to my list of active languages and speak a total of 10 languages at a minimum of B1, B2 level in order to use them at any given time! Quite a challenge ^^
Hi Guillaume It’s so cool that you write stories in different languages. I will definitely check our your website. It would be cool to get in touch about books in French and Dutch as I am struggling to find good ones
For me it is already a challenge to find 10 languages I wanna learn, at the moment there are only 6 apart from my native tongue (German)
What an incredible list of languages! How do you manage to maintain them all? I find it hard enough with 5 B1+ languages! My goal is 11+ languages, but I’m concerned that maintenance will be a problem.
Hi Heather!
Thanks for the compliment Actually it’s fairly easy to maintain advanced languages. I can’t change my language list, but my Spanish it at a low C1, my Portuguese between B2 and C1 and my Italian is around (low) B2, they are not B1 So these languages are easier to maintain.
I’ve been working a lot on my languages during the lockdown and the summer holiday (as a language teacher, I get the summer holiday free), and this helped me develop and maintain all that. As I’m working now, it’s much more difficult, but I try to have language tandem every week/2 weeks. I’d say that I use around 4 languages on a daily bases, but I no longer use my 8 for now. They might decrease a bit, but I’ll get back to them for my next holiday
Normally I maintain them by using all of them for various activities : watching videos on youtube, talking to tandems, listening to musics, reading books, … For weeks, during the holiday, I made sure I did self talks in every language on a daily basis, and did a bit of reading/listening/talking here and there for all of them I might be able to still do it now, but I don’t often feel like it with the job I have. I prefer to use my free time watching series in English or playing video games ^^’
I guess 11 languages is possible, many polyglots (like Luca Lampariello) do it. For that, you need to imcorporate these languages in your life. Not easy, but bit by bit, you find a way I’m sure you’ll get there if you’re motivated enough! My personal goal is to add Mandarin Chinese and Russian to my list, that will be another challenge! ^^
Good luck! Languages are a part of my daily life in many ways: my playlist is multilingual, I rotate my reading between languages, I force myself to use different languages on social media, and I practice speaking on italki. I also try to watch TV/movies in other languages sometimes, but I have to admit that I’m not great at making time for TV/movies. I actually think it’s hard for me, in part, because I teach languages, so I spend a lot of my time speaking them with people who are not as fluent as me, and then my level drops (even if just a little). I need to travel to get my level back up, but that becomes harder to find the time and money for if you speak more languages (and is impossible at the moment due to COVID). If I were to read a book a week (which I don’t), it’d take me 5 weeks to get through all 5 languages, so with twice as many languages, it’d take twice as long (and sometimes it takes me a month to get through just one book)! I just don’t feel like there are enough hours in the day to work fulltime and properly maintain lots of languages. Cool that you’re able to make it work, though!
I share your experience heatherjosephine. With 5 language to maintain on a high level I reach the limits of my available time (working in a non-foreign language related job). Instead of reading books I listen to audio-books. It is easier to integrate and combine with other activities - guess how I like cooking and doing the dishes now.
You have underlined a frequent problem : reading one book at a time in one language and then switching, which isn’t possible when you have many languages to maintain.
What I do is read bits and pieces of several books at once. I usually don’t read novels but rather self-improvement books or books to learn topics. I read a few pages and make a summary (that I get corrected by my tandems), that way it can take as little as 15-20’, and up to one hour, depending on the book and the amount of pages I want to read. If I’ve already read an article or a conversation on facebook in the language, I don’t necessarily read a book in that language in the same day. This way, I can read in all my languages without spending my entire day on it
I prefer print to audio books, but always listen to a multilingual playlist while cooking or doing the dishes. Maybe I should try a podcast sometime and see how that goes.
You read in every language every day? Impressive! I wouldn’t have time for that, if nothing else.
I usually read 3 books at a time: one non-fiction (often in English due to availability of research, but not always), one in my current target language, and one on a rotation. I like to read fiction, so am not sure having 11 books on the go at once would be a good idea! I’ve tried reading a newspaper article in different language each day of the week and that worked, but finding the time for each language every day would be a challenge on top of a full-time job. I’m impressed you can manage it!
I also read in almost every language every day. And I speak 12 languages. It’s something you have to train every day, to maintain your languages as fresh as possible.
I’m sure it helps a lot, but I definitely wouldn’t have time to read in 12 languages a day – or even close to. What do you do for work that allows you the time for that? I’m envious.
I’m going to try a new system where I have 5 novels on the go. When I read from one, it goes to the bottom of the pile and the next time I read, I take the book from the top of the pile. We’ll see how that goes! I won’t have time to read in all 5 languages every day, but at least I’ll be rotating through them more quickly this way. Thanks for the suggestion!
I’m not doing it at the moment, because I have a new job and it takes time to get accustomed to it. But I guess getting to use them all (which is how I manage to maintain them), is doable. I already use 4 languages on a daily basis without any language-learning-related work. Among the 4 remaining languages, there is one which is at B2-C1 (Spanish) and doesn’t need maintainance. So I basically just still have Italian, German and Esperanto. Using each of these for 1 to 10 minutes a day is not that hard, so I could easily do that (first thing in the morning, for example).
If I wanted to read in each languages every day, I would rather read about 10 minutes in each language (books made out of short chapters, or articles, facebook posts, …). During the summer holiday, I did get to spend more time reading, and could read 30’ per language. I even had morning reading, where I read several books, 30’ each, for a total of 4 to 6 hours of reading in one go. But it was very tiring.
So I guess maintenance is doable when you already practice some of your languages naturally (French as a native language, English and Dutch which I teach for my job, and Portuguese when I listen to music. Most of my playlist is in Portuguese). So all in all, maintaining 8 languages is doable. If, on the contrary, I had to free time to maintain 8 foreign languages, then it would be harder, of course ^^
1-10 minutes a day is easy and I already do that, more or less. I read posts in all my languages on FB as I scroll through it in the morning, I often read newspaper articles that pop up on my newsfeed (but not in every language every day), and I listen to music in all my languages on a daily basis, so 1-10 minutes a day, in some way, shape or form, is already happening. I guess I misinterpreted what you were saying!
Unfortunately, a lot of the books I like to read have longer chapters. I’m going to try the new system I mentioned above and see how it goes. Reading a chapter from 5 books a day isn’t realistic on top of my job and I don’t want to constantly be putting books down midway through a chapter or choosing books based on the chapter length.
Also, I feel that B2/C1 level languages still require maintenance. Your level may not go down much, but it will go down over time if you’re not using the language. When you say you read in each language everyday, is that only your B1 level languages? Because that’s much more manageable if so.
I am a language teacher and language enthusiast from Belgium!
