I’ve been working on my French & German Comparative Tutorial this week, and also searching the internet to find other sites that help people learn more than one language at a time. I am so disappointed.
I’ve found a few vocabulary lists, but they’re mostly just showing the similarities among Romance languages. I can’t find any sites that include lessons for learning two languages, closely related or not. I’ve never been able to find books like this either, which is somewhat surprising considering that almost all graduate students must learn two foreign languages and I know I am not the only person in the world who studies French, German and Italian at the same time. Where’s the multilingual love?
Instead, all I’m finding is some misguided “advice” that learning two languages at once is a bad idea. Says who? Every single person learns in a different way. Maybe it’s a good idea and maybe it’s not, but you should at least try. Maybe you can learn as a beginner in two languages without confusing them, or maybe you need to be advanced in one but beginning in the other. It all depends on your learning style.
I took Intermediate French, Beginning German and Beginning Spanish when I was an undergrad and I never had a problem keeping the languages straight in my head. Apparently this is discouraged (!) at some American universities, like Georgetown: “Freshmen interested in pre-registering for multiple language courses must receive permission from the dean’s office. One of the deans will discuss your specific situation with you and help you determine whether or not studying a second foreign language is feasible.” You have to get permission to study languages?? How can studying a second foreign language ever be NOT feasible?? I. just. don’t. get. it. Quite a difference from French high schools, where students must learn two languages!
Of course, if you’re advanced enough in one language, you can always use it to learn another, i.e. learn German in French or learn Italian in Spanish. That’s precisely what I do when I buy language books here in France. I feel like I get two languages for the price of one. Even the cheap cahiers (usually no more than 5 € each) designed for collège-level students are useful for getting the grammar basics of German, Italian, Spanish and sometimes even Latin. LaRousse, Hachette, Magnard, and Hatier Chouette are all good ones.
Anyway, since I want to spread the multiple language love, here are some new resources that I’ve come across this week:
- Pukka German is a podcast of informal German (slang, idioms, colloquialisms) from an adorable South African-German couple who live in Freiburg. It’s extremely useful since it’s the German that is not included in textbooks, i.e. the way people actually speak!
- I love U of Texas-Austin’s Français Interactif multimedia program for beginning French students, so I was really happy to see that they’re working on a German program too. So far, only the Grimm Grammar guide is up, but the rest of the program should be up this fall, called Deutsch im Blick. They also have an Italian program, but it’s for intermediate to advanced students: Radio Arlecchino. AND they have other projects in Spanish Proficiency Exercises and Brazilian Portuguese Pronunciation for Speakers of Spanish. I wish more universities would produce language materials like these!
- Deutschlern.net is a free Deutsch als Fremdsprache site with online interactive exercises. It’s all in German, which can be a bit intimidating if you’re a beginner.
- Since there’s no amazon.it, I searched around for online Italian bookstores where I can buy Italian as a Second Language books. I managed to find two, Internet Bookstore Italia and Libreria Universitaria, but shipping outside of Italy is not cheap.
- Rai International’s Dentro l’Italiano is an elementary Italian course for foreigners. It has audiovisual components similar to the BBC’s language resources.
Pour les francophones qui veulent apprendre l’allemand :
Pour les francophones qui veulent apprendre l’italien :
There are other facile.com sites for learning Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Latin and even Provençal! (The English version of the site only includes lessons for French, Spanish and German.)
So if anyone else can find free online tutorials in learning two languages together (not necessarily just French & German or French & Italian), please let me know!
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View Comments so far ↓
1 Justin // Jul 27, 2008 at 12:31 am
Thanks Jennie! I was looking to try and start learning some German now that I am far enough with my French to not get too confused. I will have to try some of the French books for German, that would really be a great way for me to work on both!
Justins last blog post..In the search for a good Pale Ale…
2 J // Jul 27, 2008 at 4:05 am
That’s a great tip about finding resources in your second language to learn your third (or your third to learn your fourth, or your fourth… etc.). Don’t let naysayers get you down about attempting to learn more than one language at a time — they’re just jealous and boring. Hey, I’m trying Portuguese and Arabic at the same time. In fact, they’re sufficiently different from each other that there is no danger of mistaking one for the other as I would if it were Portuguese and Spanish.
3 Myles Freborg // Jul 28, 2008 at 3:47 am
I sought such a product… but the only tutorials I could find (worth using) are from your website. ¡Enhorabuena! Thanks for such hard work.
This is off topic, but I’m looking for a more extensive bilingual French dictionary. Which publisher do you recommend? (Oxford, LaRousse, Collins, etc…)
Thanks…
4 bluefish // Jul 28, 2008 at 7:50 am
I studied Italian and Spanish at the same time in university and it was a disater for me. My brain couldn’t make a different and I was always confusing myself with both languages.
bluefishs last blog post..Beautiful wall
5 Mom // Jul 29, 2008 at 3:15 pm
I am having difficulty learning one language as you know. I will attempt two, French and Spanish, and hope for a little success.
6 skylar // Jul 29, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I love your blogs, I studied French and German at the same time after being fluent in Spanish, and it was awesome! I got soo good at both for a while! it’s all about focusing on not mixing the two languages. It’s interesting though, When I am speaking Spanish or German and I have to say either a phrase or a name of a person in the other language, I will then continue in the language I am not supposed to be continuing in. I was giving a presentation in Spanish to a class…I said something about Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and then I continued in German for a couple seconds…Class must have thought I was loco en la cabeza! P.S. I am moving to Germany this September! woohoo for two years to study in Mainz
7 Noelia // Aug 1, 2008 at 4:45 am
Awesome! Thanks for all those interesting links… I need to refresh my languages. Besides French and English which I practice everyday, I have so little opportunities to speak Spanish, German, Italian or (Brazilian) Portuguese!
Noelias last blog post..Expat-blog en español
8 Ram kishore // Jan 16, 2009 at 12:33 pm
I have a question.Which is the best combination of languages to begin with?
1.french and German
2.French and Italy
3.French and spanish
which combination?
9 Ron // Oct 27, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Hi Jenny, just came across your website by looking on Google for ‘learning multiple languages simultaneously’, a topic I’m very interested in as well. Many would advice against it – mainly monolinguals I suspect, but it is not uncommon on a global scale, with multilingualism being the norm rather than the exception. I was going to suggest browsing through the Polyglot or Polyglottery forums on: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/, but the link is already listed in your language learning links section, so I assume your familiar with it.
Kind regards, Ron
10 Ron // Oct 27, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Edit: ‘you’re familiar with it’! Apologies about the ‘tiredness typo’!
.-= Ron´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at =-.
11 Ron // Oct 27, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Edit 2: Oeps! And it should be ‘Jennie’…
12 Anna // Nov 4, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Hi, Jenny. I’m really lucky to come accross such a useful site. I think you are really a very nice person – reading your biography I realized we have something in common:) I am completing my Masters degree in ELT department in Turkey , METU. Now i am at my thesis stage, I am working on the assessment of speaking. What you are writng about learning 2 or more languages simultaneously is so close to me – I am thinking to get PhD degree and then I am planning to work on learning 2 foreign languages at a time. It is quite a risky topic i must admit, as it is commonly believed that it is wrong. But the result is worth the risk:)
I am a native speaker of Russian and Ukrainian and currently I learn Turkish. I also studied French and German at the University. So, if you need help (especially with Russian) you are welcome to address. Thank you one more time.
13 Morgan // Dec 9, 2009 at 2:03 pm
I study multiple languages simultaneously, but almost exclusively for literary / scholastic purposes (I’m currently in my third year of Biblical Greek, my second year of Biblical Hebrew, and my first semester of Modern Standard Arabic). I must eventually learn to read French, German and modern Hebrew. The only foreign language I can “get along in” conversation-wise is Spanish, and only in the present tense, though I hope to be conversational in Arabic eventually.
Honestly, after learning a couple of grammars, it gets easier to pick up new languages – one figures out the basic parts of speech, what questions to ask of a new language, and so forth.
I do think it’s a good idea to only begin one new language at a time.
14 Ray // Apr 7, 2010 at 12:32 am
I find Rosetta stone language packs quite useful here, thy contain the same pictures and phrases in the same learning order for all languages. This is especially helpful when I was trying to learn an easier language like Spanish after having first made my way through mandarin. After a while I started remembering sentences & phrases from my Spanish that would jog my memory of what they were in Mandarin and vice versa, I really like that.
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