Fluent in one language or good in many?

Should we focus on one language and try to become as good as

we can be in that language?

Or should we explore lots of languages?

A question that comes up all the time, in a way, I think it's not an appropriate

question because so much in language learning is a matter of our motivation, of

what we want to do, our freedom of choice.

But there are considerations, and I'm going to talk about that with a lot

of reference to my own experience.

First of all, it should be stated that there is no limit to how good we

can be in a given language, whether our own or a language we're learning.

We can always learn more words.

We can always become better at expressing ourselves, whether orally or in writing.

So there is no limit there.

By the same token, I don't think there's a tremendous limit on the

number of languages we can explore.

If we only, only know a little bit of the language, that's still enjoyable.

Lom Kato, the famous Hungarian polyglot said, language is one of those things

that's well worthwhile knowing.

So, there's no limit at either end, in terms of improving in one language

or exploring a lot of languages.

The decisions, to me, and I'm going to refer to my own experience,

are based on our needs and our motivation at a given point in time.

Obviously, if you are an immigrant, for example, to a country or if you are

living for a long period of time in a country and have to work there, it's

probably desirable to focus on the local language and to become as good as you

can be because actually the requirements of working in a language are quite high.

You need a large vocabulary, you need a high degree of comprehension, so

in that situation it's probably a good thing to focus on one language.

You may have other reasons for wanting to focus on one language.

It might be family, maybe your in laws.

You marry someone who speaks another language, when you're together with

the in laws, you can't participate in the conversation, so you

want to focus on that language.

It may be that you have a particular interest in a certain area of the

world, in their history or their culture, and so then you're going to

focus on that particular language.

So there are any number of valid reasons for wanting to focus on

one language, And to be as good as you can be in that language.

On the other hand, there are reasons why you would want to explore.

And I'm going to go through these, uh, in my own experience.

And they include such things as an interest, again, in the culture

or the idea that there is some low hanging fruit, uh, going from Spanish

to Portuguese, which to some extent is the case, but there are other

examples of that and I will touch on.

In my experience, the first language that I went at, you know, with a

great deal of intensity was French.

And I was only thinking about French, essentially.

With the result that I went to France, I studied in France.

I became quite fluent in French.

However, while in France, I went traveling, hitchhiking,

and that took me to Spain.

It took me to Italy.

It took me to Germany.

And so therefore I was started already my sort of exploring spirit vagabond

approach to language learning, dabbling in these other languages.

Although of course it had to be very good in French because all

of my courses were in French.

I had to write my exams in French.

I had to do my oral exams in French.

Everything was in French.

So I was focusing on French.

But starting to explore other languages, the same thing happened

with, with Mandarin, which was the second language that I went after

in a concentrated way because I was working for the Canadian government.

I was assigned to go to Hong Kong to learn Mandarin.

In those days, cultural revolution, Taiwan wasn't such a good idea.

I had to choose between the American Defense Language Institute in Monterey.

And going to Hong Kong, I chose to go to Hong Kong.

Of course, when we started in a new language, the first

three months are tough.

We're crawling, you know, up this steep slope and it's tough and it

looks like we're not getting anywhere.

But in fact, we do make sort of noticeable progress early.

We all of a sudden understand certain things.

We're all of a sudden able to say certain things.

But then as we continue along, we gradually find that there's

a lot there that's going to keep us busy for a long, long time.

And so when I was doing Mandarin, I wasn't attracted by studying other languages.

I was totally focused on getting to be as proficient as possible in Mandarin.

However, it turned out that I ended up going to Japan.

So once in Japan, now my total focus was Japanese.

And of course, living in Japan, surrounded by Japanese speakers,

those were ideal conditions.

And so I more or less learned on my own, which was not the case

in Hong Kong, where I had to rely on my teachers and my reading and

my listening, because of course.

The environment in Hong Kong is not a Mandarin speaking environment.

But so I had three situations where I was focused on one language and while

on that language trying to become as proficient as possible in that language.

At no time did I think that by learning this other language,

therefore I was, you know, losing the language that I had studied earlier.

It never crossed my mind.

And I have found that as I continue learning languages, I

become better and better at the languages that I learned earlier.

So you don't lose anything by exploring.

Someone who, say, lives in North America, who is an immigrant,

who has to work here, there is no limit to how much you can improve.

You are surrounded by the language.

You can listen as much, read as much, talk as much.

It all depends on your initiative and finding material and finding

people to talk to and Making sure you communicate with people at work

and, uh, don't fail to inhibit it.

There is no limit there.

Sort of category two to me is, so if the first category is getting from A1,

call it, zero beginner, zero level, up to as far as you can go, which for the

sake of argument is, C2 on the European scale, there's that trajectory, but

there are languages where I have sort of plateaued at what I would call a B1 level.

And those are languages that I have a lot of passive vocabulary.

And I, at some point was able to speak.

And a lot of that was motivated by travel.

So I was going to go to Romania.

I studied Romanian for two, three months.

Uh, I was going to go to the Czech Republic.

Plus I had family reasons.

My family was.

From what became Czechoslovakia.

So I wanted to learn that language.

I had learned Russian.

So Czech kind of appeared as possibly low hanging fruit and I got it

up to a certain level, but then I haven't done much with it since.

Similarly with Greek and my Korean has kind of stagnated.

So there are a number of these languages where I've kind of stagnated,

but whatever I have done in those languages has given me a glimpse of

that culture and has been enjoyable.

And therefore, to me, there's nothing wrong in doing that.

That is.

Call it vagabond, dilettante, learning, but still tremendously

enriching from my point.

Of you and I can always go back and improve even though I don't

touch them and I don't even worry about what I'm forgetting.

When I need it again, I'll go back there and refresh it.

I should add that um, Korean I thought would be low hanging fruit from Japanese

and Chinese and undoubtedly I have an advantage over people who don't know

Chinese characters or other languages.

who aren't familiar with the sort of word order and structure of, of

these, uh, call them Altaic languages.

I think the term is like, uh, Japanese and Korean, but I

have found it quite difficult.

And it confirms back to me that some degree of focus is necessary.

Uh, you can't just assume that because it's low hanging

fruit, it's going to be easy.

Similarly with Portuguese, I'm managing Portuguese, but I'm not

great because I haven't given it the amount of attention that it

deserves relying more on my Spanish.

So the low hanging fruit approach is not necessarily a winner.

I was motivated to some extent by the same low hanging fruit, Mirage, with my

Ukrainian, or with Slovak for that matter.

And it does require a lot of effort.

Even if it's perceived as kind of a related language, or a similar language,

or a lot of common vocabulary, you have to put a lot of effort into it.

But regardless of that, whatever that level is, it's good

enough, it's fine, I'm happy.

Now, the next level of my languages is languages that I think I speak quite well.

B2 minus, me 2 plus, somewhere in that area.

In other words, I don't feel any stress speaking those languages.

I speak without stress, but not without mistakes.

I make quite a few mistakes.

I like to say that my shirt tails are hanging out.

It's a bit clumsy.

Obviously very basic mistakes in grammar, but none of that prevents

me from Consuming the language, i.

e.

watching movies, talking to people, participating in

conversation, even reading books.

I mentioned previously that I have read books on paper, cover to cover,

including English, 13 languages.

So that requires a certain level of vocabulary.

But that doesn't mean that I can participate freely in a conversation.

But I have a level there that, given an opportunity and a need, I can

bring them up to that next level.

And that includes Portuguese, that includes Russian, Ukrainian,

German, Swedish, I can't think of them all, but Cantonese, it's fine.

I wish they were better, but I'm not going to put any effort into them.

And finally, I have those languages which I speak, I think, really quite well.

French, which is my best language, Japanese, Mandarin, and Spanish.

Not without mistakes, but quite comfortably.

Quite comfortably to the extent that I make the other person feel comfortable.

I even get complimented, which may or may not be a good, uh, measure because

people are, tend to be quite polite when you're speaking their language.

But I know people, polyglots who are much better than I am, who are extremely fluent

in half a dozen, even a dozen languages and are exploring other languages, and

it all depends on how much time you have.

What your motivation is, what's important to you at a given point in time.

And I don't think we can say that you should do this.

Like sometimes, oh, you should focus on pitch accent in Japanese,

or you should focus on slang.

My son played hockey in Japan, and when he would, we went out drinking with his

teammates, and of course they're speaking using slang words that I never heard.

It's fine, I'm not going to go and get a dictionary on Japanese

slang and bring myself up to speed.

What I have there is good enough for my purposes.

And so this gets back to the point that the choice of whether to focus on one

language or to be as good as you can be in that language, achieve native

like pronunciation, all these things.

If you want to focus on that as a goal, that's excellent.

That's fine.

No one can criticize you for doing that.

By the same token, if you want to explore a bunch of languages, Maybe

have a few, your favorites that you're particularly good at and others

that you would like to improve but never get quite get around to doing.

That's also fine.

So I think the key in language learning is to enjoy the process right now rather

than going back and try to improve my level in languages that I have already

learned to these different levels.

Why am I attempting Persian and Arabic and little dabbling in Turkish?

And even, you know, I've set myself a goal of starting up Hindi this year.

Why bother?

Well, because it's so interesting.

I can, I was just listening in Levantine Arabic to a television

program about the Phoenicians.

I didn't understand all of it, but I understood some of it.

And if I do it in LingQ and look up the words, I understand most of it.

And similarly, I have listened to content on Iranian history and

Iranian identity and so on and so on.

I'm not quite at that level in Turkish, but that's all part and

parcel of enjoying the language.

And the more different languages I explore, the more I'm able to

enjoy this experience in different cultures and different languages.

So, you know, there are different reasons for studying languages, but

there are no hard and fast rules, in my opinion, as to whether you should

focus on one or learn a number.

I think I've touched on this before.

It relates to the subject of studying more than one language at once.

So you might want to check these videos out.

Thank you for listening.

Bye.