Unlike multilingual speakers who acquire several languages as their mother tongue, polyglot speakers need to knuckle down to be able to master various languages. Why are many people willing to give their life extra load to learn more than 2 or 3 languages? Once you are bitten by a polyglot bug, you will feel the fun of learning languages and the excitement of leveling up a new language knowledge.
It is obvious that learning a language requires certain efforts, just like when we are learning to ride a bicycle. And here are some challenges when trying to master more than 1 language (at once).
Time – in order to be able to learn a language, we need to spend at least 1 hour a day to study. It could be memorizing new vocabularies, repeating the old ones, understanding the grammar, or simply talking with a native speaker of the language we are learning. If 1 language needs 1 hour, you can calculate if you are trying to learn more than 1 language at once.
Forgetting – Likely happens when moving to another language learning. Once we decide that we have mastered a language, we will excitedly welcome new vocabularies and grammar of the next language. This may make us reluctant to repeat the previous language mastered because it means more time is needed for language learning.
Pronunciation – Each language has different sounds. Sometimes, the sounds are very different from our mother tongue, for example, the Mandarin language for Indonesian learners. This requires extra effort to adapt our tongue. Also, when trying to learn more than 1 new language at once, most people mess up the sound of each language.
Indeed, there are many challenges to become a polyglot, but there are also lots of fun. If you are thinking about becoming one, try to learn 1 language at a time. Learning 2 or more languages at once will easily make you confused. We also recommend you to find partners to practice the new language you are learning. There are many language communities out there or you can even join a polyglot community.
Have fun learning new languages!
