Learning Two Languages At Once and Self Study

[wigglybob]

Has anyone learned two languages at once? How was that experience? I'm currently taking Sanskrit at my uni, but I also want to learn Japanese by self study. They're not related; therefore I won't be concerned about confusing the two. I'm ready to dedicate my time to both languages.
On to self study. For monetary and schedule reasons, I'm attempting

Comments

[di_glossia]

I've almost always studied two or more languages at the same time without confusion. That is to say, in a classroom setting, I have never had issue with confusing the languages. Outside the classroom, especially in speech, I make mistakes, but that is mostly because I don't know a word in one language that I know in another and my mind supplies a "more foreign" word than my native language.

Different languages are just so...different. The spellings are different, the sounds are different, and the grammar is different. It's only one or two false cognates that trip me up.

With regards to self-study, I think music is one of the best tools. Get into the music scene of whatever language you are trying to learn. YouTube is a great place to find foreign music videos. Not only does it help with remembering things like articles, tenses, and slang, singing along helps with pronunciation. Listening to major news programs has the same benefits. Keeping notebooks of words is also useful for me, as is writing words over and over again. If you're learning a language with a different script, this is vital. I like workbooks for this reason.

Penpals are great, but I've had a couple experiences where one party disappears for a while and communication breaks down, which is sad. Striking up conversations with anyone you think might speak your target language is a bit of a hit-or-miss, but I've had some great conversations that way. Just this week, I met a Russian language teacher whose accent I mistook as Austro-Bavarian. Obviously, she turned out not to be German, but she did have a Masters in that language so we had a great little conversation.