Serial bilingualism and more

One of the questions that comes up for the polyglot is how many languages to tackle at once, and the answer is usually one. I'm coming to think that the answer to that is "yes" and "no". The problem is that when I look at the number of languages I've fussed with, I've plainly forgotten way more than I learned.

Kelly at Aspiring Polyglot has a post today where she's fussing with multiple languages. She notes that for a few of them, she's not really learning anything new. I think there is some wisdom in this.

There was a period where I was sort of serially trilingual - I spoke English, French and a not bad bit of whatever else I was studying at the moment. But the third language never went anywhere and when I started the next one it disappeared. By reading things in Spanish, German and French and listening to Italian music, though actively studying other languages, I've found that I'm maintaining my (barely) functional Spanish and my poor German and Italian, while enjoying the new serial language acquisition projects of choice - first Chinese, then Uzbek. So now I'm up to two languages I speak passing fair and two that I can at least stumble along in. I think it's progress.

In my business, I've run across some serious serial bilinguals. The list of languages they knew is impressive, but if they had to go to, say, Beijing, tomorrow, they'd be in deep water, because they just got back from Curaçao and their Chinese is gone. Others don't really get that good at any particular language, but wherever they go they can get by. I don't think one approach or the other is right or wrong, but it is a choice you have to make.

For the Aspiring Polyglot, in literal terms, it makes sense to maintain at least a baseline level of the languages you've got, choosing to focus on one or another but living a life where you get used to all those languages rattling around inside your skull. Otherwise, you wake up one morning and your Spanish is just bad Italian or vice-versa. Especially with similar languages, I'm starting to think it's useful to read or listen to some easy stuff in the old language while working on the new one, otherwise the language you're using as a crutch will cease to exist as its own language and become a tool for using the new one. I've only been playing with this for a month or two, and accidentally, not by design, but it's what I'm finding necessary if I want to be multilingual. If you're having your own troubles learning Dutch without losing your German or somesuch, it's worth looking for some intentional efforts to keep the one alive while you learn the other.

I hope.

It's fair to note, however, that this is written under the influence of cough syrup. Earlier today, Pimsleur Turkish arrived. I put on lesson one, started playing along and woke up halfway through lesson two. The funny part is when I woke up, I was mumbling a phrase in Turkish and a half second later, the voice on the recording confirmed that I was correct. I wonder if I learned anything!

I'm hoping to learn just enough Turkish to get a little better feel for how Turkic languages work in real life, since materials for Uzbek are poor. Though that means in just a minute I'm going to be listening to Uzbek music. Hopefully, this will help. It will be a good test of what I wrote about above.