Separation: Tips For Studying Multiple Languages at Once

My tips to avoid language confusion when studying multiple new languages.

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1. Stagger languages - practice one language for a few months then add another one in.

For me I confused Hindi with Spanish because neither language was at a good enough level to add more. I also confused Spanish and Portuguese at first. Once my Portuguese became stronger it began to hold its own.

2. Separate place, time, people, activity, etc so your brain will associate these things with that language.

For example practice Hindi in the evenings through texting and Portuguese in the mornings. Watch movies in Hindi and use Duolingo for Portuguese. I've also told friends that I can only practice one language with them at a time.

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3. Don't practice mixing both new languages.

Ex don't try to speak in a mix of Hindi and Spanish at first. It will hurt you in the long run. Form a sentence in one and force yourself to  use only that language. Resist the urge to have conversations in a mix of two incomplete languages even when you find others who mix the same to unrelated languages.

4. Learn Languages that are different from one another.

This will help keep language confusion to a minimum. Some people will argue that working on similar languages is helpful because the work off one another. Though helpful, I found that my precious knowledge of Spanish was more of a hindrance than it was helpful. However learning only Urdu or Hindi would be a challenge.

5. Learn one difficult and one easy language.

I realize this is subjective. One strategy is to pick a language similar to one you already know and one that is very different. One strategy would be to focus maybe 60% or 70% of your time on the more difficult language and the rest on the easy language. I typically prefer to practice the language that I am excited about at a given time.

These are just the things that helped and are helping me the most. I am aware that there are more ideas and would love to hear some of yours. What tips have helped you? Did mine work for you? Do you struggle with mixing languages?

Let me know below...

How did I study Hindi? Months 8ish - 12

After my frustrating spell of not being able to understand anything that was going on around me to the extent that I wanted, which actually didn't bother me for a long time. You can read more about that initial phase in my post, Do You Mind Not Knowing What is Going On?

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I began to focus on general ideas and let go a bit. I used Hindi a bit more and often times could follow conversations depending on topic. 

My comprehension varied (and still does) based on many things including but not limited to time of day (the loopy exhausted phase right before I should go to bed actually is by far the best), a glass of wine often helps as well, and topic (I understand making food plans, playing cricket, and surprisingly I catch more in political conversations than expected but not pro cricket conversations) etc....

There are several types of people currently in my Hindi learning journey...

People I speak nearly entirely in Urdu with

People I randomly speak Hindi phrases with and they randomly throw in easy to understand phrases. This is where a couple of my closer girl friends are.

People who think I know nothing and over explain everything.

People who are always curious if I know what's going on. I especially have fun when I get to say yes to these people.

People who encourage others to speak in Hindi to me

People who are critical and correct me a lot or tell me just to speak English because it is easier

People who make me speak Hindi

People who simplify their words and speak slowly and make me speak only in Hindi

And people who forget I don't really speak Hindi and just speak it anyways (which are my favorite) and then are shocked when I understand or reply...

I think that having all of these people groups is an excellent way to learn and I would like to thank you all!

Bahut dhanyavaad dosten!!! 

How did I study Hindi? Months 4 - 6

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For the 4th - 6th month I kept to my daily schedule with more focus on the script...since by the end of 6 months I wanted to be reading.

I used TenguGo a lot for 2 weeks then continued to review and work on conjuncts, which I still need to keep working on.

This time period was less rigid and I spent time making basic sentences in my head.

I also used the audio bible to attempt to follow along. Which I learned was really difficult. It is much harder to follow along than actually read. I have since learned that this is because you actually learn a picture of a word and see the picture rather than the letters. Now there are a few words I can do this with in Hindi but not many. This is why we can R3AD TH1S. We have a general picture of the words "READ" and "THIS" and our brain doesn't really check each letter. Anyways...you can read more about my journey learning to read in "I Can Read Hindi!"

How did I study Hindi? Months 1-4

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How did I study?

For the first 3 - 4 months I had a strict schedule where I checked off my daily assignments. My goal was to become familiar with 30 words a day and learn 10 vocab vocab words and 5 phrases.

I had a flashcard each day.

When I had a rigid language learning schedule I had a you tube culture day or a movie day worked into every week ;) just to switch things up and keep it fun.

You can see my Never Ending Hindi Resource List to see more of the details.