I’m currently several years into vocabulary acquisition in Japanese, doing roughly 100 card reviews a day, but I’ve still yet to do a textbook or make any serious attempt at grammar and I stopped adding new cards. As a result, I’ve accepted that I am non-functional in Japanese but I don’t mind doing my current reviews to maintain what I’ve done so far. I realize I’m eventually going to have to spend more time in Japanese at some point but haven’t gone beyond cards yet.
With French, I stopped studying 10 years ago, but I can read fairly well, get around town and understand people when I know the context of the topic first. I feel like I”m within reach of fluency if I spent more listening time in it but I don’t do any right now. It’s annoying because if I applied the same amount of time on French that I do on Japanese, I would have been fluent a long, long time ago.
I keep reading “don’t study two languages at the same time”, but I wonder if that still applies to me given that I sort of understand French already. If I started doing a half hour of French a day, would it be counterproductive?
I also wonder if it’s productive or counterproductive to buy a Japanese textbook for French natives, and if that would either help or hurt learning both.
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I asked the god of all languages and they said that learning two languages at the same time is the eighth deadly sin, sorry.
No but for real, there is nothing wrong with incorporating some French into your studying. It’s not really counterproductive
People advise against it because it’s easy to mix words and rules from one language into another. But Japanese and French are different enough that it won’t be as much of an issue as if you were trying to learn, say, French and Italian.
I studied two foreign languages for my degree (French and Portuguese), and so it’s definitely possible.
The main challenge will probably be the amount of time it takes to study both properly. If you have a lot of free time, it may be possible to devote adequate time to both Japanese and French.
I think the nice thing about studying two languages at university was, technically speaking, it was my “job” to spend a lot of time studying them. I also had part-time work, but the bulk of my days were spent studying. So, time wasn’t such an issue compared to now, because I have a full-time job and only so many hours per week I can spend on Japanese.
Interestingly, I think it was easier to study French and Portuguese than, say, Spanish and Portuguese. A lot of people in my Portuguese classes were also taking Spanish and said they’d often get confused and mix up words between the two. On the other hand, they did have the advantage of passively learning a lot between the two languages as they studied, so it’s a double-edge sword.
In any case, French and Japanese are different enough that you shouldn’t get confused between them.
However, you do mention that you haven’t really dived properly into Japanese grammar yet, and so adding another big task to your plate could just overwhelm you and mean you never get round to doing that. But you could give it a try and see how it goes! Nothing wrong with experimenting and seeing what works!
One other note: If you’re feeling apprehensive about starting on Japanese grammar, I’d say just give it a go! Genki is awesome at guiding you through the concepts gently, and you can take it at your own pace, but you’ll learn a lot and improve pretty quickly with Genki in my opinion.
**tl;dr** It’s definitely possible; I’d say just give it a try and see what you can manage!
Since it’s probably impossible to “complete” a language, at some point, you’ll have to “study” multiple languages at a time (unless you truly limit yourself to learning only a single foreign language to the exclusion of all others).
I think it’s a little hard to be a beginner/low-intermediate with multiple languages at once, though. I studied German and Japanese, never at the same time, but was making incremental progress in each semi-alternatingly, and it was challenging at times to not get my wires crossed. It’s easier to focus if you stick to one.
However, if you’re already ace-level in one, and you want to start ramping up on a second, it probably doesn’t make sense to chase those diminishing returns of perfection before starting your next.
You’re NOT studying Japanese, so if you’re counting that as one of the languages you’re studying you may stop doing so.
I study Japanese, Latin and English right now. I’m proficient enough in Japanese so that I can just study while consuming media, same as English. So it’s mostly vocabulary reviews. In Latin I feel like a confused idiot, so definitely a beginner but it’s going forward. I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to do 2 langauges at a time. Efficiency *may* decrease the more you spread your attention, but that is a sacrifice I’m personally willing to make, since I like to learn new things. Like a professional jack of all trades.
If you’ve gone *years* learning only some vocab and not even attempting grammar seriously, you aren’t studying Japanese, you’re studying a word list.
It’ll be fine. But mostly because then you’d be studying *one* language.