Multilingual Weekend

I've spent most of the last few days convalescing from a nasty cold, but have found the time to do some reading and listening, if not too much speaking. As I was too worn out for serious study anyway, I've focused on maintaining multiple languages. On the language learning front, I've done the first four lessons of the new Pimsleur Turkish. That means that we've learned about forming the present continuous tense for affirmative, negative and questions (for 1st and 2nd person), had hints about vowel harmony and run across the 1st person past tense. As well as learning 1st person possessive. Not that they've said as much, but there have been a decent number of structures introduced, laying a lot of groundwork in a relatively short time. I'll be curious to see if anything is made explicit before the 16th lesson (my interest was sufficient for me to purchase the Conversational course for $33 on Amazon, but not the full first level).

On the maintenance/multilingualism front, I've been listening to Lola in Uzbek, the Spice-Girlish Hepsi for Turkish, Georges Brassens, Mylène Farmer and Jean-Louis Murat for French and Laura Pausini for Italian and Spanish. I should find the time to download some podcasts in each language to get used to the spoken word, but it feels less like work if I'm just sitting and listening to music.

Studying one language alone can get tedious. Keeping up motivation can be tricky if you allow it to feel too much like work. Studying multiple languages, on the hand, can leave you a bit scattered. But supplementing your study of one language with fun background activities in your other languages - be it reading, music, youtube videos or whatever - is a great way to avoid serial bilingualism or trilingualism - and get greater rewards and enjoyment out of your efforts.