Today I was discussing "propedeutic Esperanto" with my father. While he agreed that Esperanto could help in breaking mental barriers to language acquisition, he strongly disagreed with the idea that one's first foreign language (FL1) is the hardest one to learn. His experience seems to indicate that it is the second foreign language (FL2) that is the hardest. His first language is Russian and he speaks fluent business English (his day-to-day English needs improvement though). He has attempted to learn an FL2 thrice (Korean in high school, German in college and Kazakh in his late thirties), and failed miserably every time. He also gave two examples from people he knew. The man who tried to teach him Korean was a Sakhalin Korean, so his native language was Korean and his FL1 was Russian. He never got any good at English, even by Soviet standards. Another example is my father's classmate who emigrated to Israel in the early nineties. He spent years trying to learn Hebrew and when he finally reached fluency he discovered that he forgot nearly all of his English. My father thinks that the brain does not find it too hard to grasp the FL1 because it treats it and the native language as separate categories of data, say "The Native Language" and "The Other Language". When we try to learn an FL2 it interferes with "The Other Language" category and it takes considerably more effort to learn to create new categories for additional languages.

As for me, Japanese is technically my FL4, but I would be lying if I said that I was fluent in my FL2 and 3 (Kazakh and German, respectively). I started learning Kazakh very shortly after I started learning English in kindergarten, so the initial difficulty was about the same. Overall, I have had a much better immersion environment for English (no-Russian-allowed English classes at school, language school in England every summer, 2 years of high school in England and a year of college in the US vs. 10 years of living in a Russian speaking area of Kazakhstan), so my Kazakh is good for nothing now. My German is a bit better and I get decent marks in it, but it still sucks compared to my English and I am not really interested in fully immersing myself in it. It was quite difficult when I started it back in middle school, but I am not sure whether it is the "FL2 barrier" at work or just really poor teaching methods. Since I am not done with RtK yet, I cannot really comment on the relative difficulty of Japanese.

I wanted to ask people who speak more than two non-native languages, what was your experience like? Did you find the first or the second foreign language harder to learn?

Barry Farber, who is apparently proficient in 25 languages, says in his book that the first foreign language is always the hardest to learn, no matter what language it is. I think that's a bit of an overstatement, but I think if anybody's an authority on the matter, he is.

Perhaps the experiences of your father and his acquaintances are more a factor of the dissimilarity of the FL2s to their L1 and FL1, and also of their level of interest in the languages. We all know motivation is a big factor in language retention.

As for the guy who emigrated to Israel, maybe it's just because of the Use It or Lose It factor. If you spend enough time without using a language you know, you will forget it, even if you're not working on another, separate foreign language.

From my own experience, I've found it a lot easier to study new foreign languages after having reached a good level in Japanese. I haven't learned any FL2 to a respectable level yet, but I would like to think that's merely due to not spending enough time on it, and not because my L1 and FL1 are preventing them from getting in.

It could be a problem with not learning your FL1 well enough before starting your FL2, so too many words in your FL1 are still associated with their English (or other native language) equivalent. Also, learning your FL2 by using your FL1 may prevent this, but it still requires you to be very proficient in your FL1.

Depends on the language surely. If you're a native English speaker and learn something like Chinese or Arabic as your FL1 and then something like French or German as your FL2, the former are obviously going to be more difficult.

Japanese is my FL4. German, French (and later English) I learned naturally through exposure. I'm fluent in all three. I grew up in the German part of Switzerland, my parents were both from the French part and only spoke French with me.

Latin, my FL2, I had to learn at school and that was really hard. I guess I was too young.

English was a bummer, too, but only because I was lazy and never studied. Later I went to university in the States and the problem was solved.

Japanese is OK, but I have to put a lot of effort into it, maybe because I'm an old fart, I dunno.

I will also say it depends on the language,the level you are aiming to and the age you're learning the language :
-The younger you are, the easier it is.
-If the langage is next to your native language (for a french, spanish, intalien, portuguese and even english share lot of things), you'll aquire an intermediate level easily. It will be maybe more difficult to become perfectly fluent because similarities hide difficulties sometimes.

In France, the two first languages which are learned is either english or german : people who learn german learn english as a second foreign language, and have in general a better level in both languages than people who do English/German or English/Spanish.

You know, I've always wondered how people like Barry Farber can say they are proficient in 25 languages. First of all, disregarding the extreme amount of time that would take to learn all 25 (even if you just assume a year spent living in the respective country for each, probably subtracting a bit for similar language families which would be easier to learn), then think about the upkeep of those languages. He would have to do so many different things in so many different languages every day to keep proficiency in them.

I couldn't imagine. Four or five languages I think is the max one can be good in at one time, and sustain that level for an extended period. People who say they can speak 25 can probably make out some signs and do basic day to day stuff in a majority of those languages.

Well, most people lie about how good they are at foreign languages. Polyglots are just really good at it.

I'm not sure about the difficulty but I'm pretty sure that 2nd, 3rd, 4th languages etc. are stored in the same area of your brain. Your native language has its own territory. I say this because when I'm speaking Japanese all of a sudden a Spanish or Portuguese word will pop into my brain and vice-versa. I've met a lot of people who have had the same experience too. This might make 3rd and 4th languages more difficult. Also in some countries (not the U.S.)people start studying foreign languages in elementary school, before your brain becomes rigid. So of course you will be better in a language you started learning before puberty than one you didn't start studying till after.

I think this is only true for languages that aren't known well. I think it's like your brain has a place for languages it knows well, and another place or no place at all where what we are learning goes.

I think there is a certain extra difficulty in learning FL1, because you're not very used to thinking out of the box, not aware of the fact that many things can be looked at in very different ways, and therefore be said in a lot of different ways. Once you've learned that basically your own, native language also has its quirks, shortcomings and strange rules and exceptions, the next FL will be easier I guess.

As for my personal experience: very hard to say. In the last year of primary school, we started learning some English. In high school, English was continued, and next to that started French, German, and Latin reading and the next year Greek reading was added as well, though only obligatory for two years, luckily. That is such a multitude. English was the first and since exposure was and is so very high to it, thanks to television shows with subtitles and games that were anglo-only, it was by far the easiest to learn. In he other languages I never came further than a basic level, because I never sought to. After high school studied Spanish and honestly, it struck me as one of the easier languages to learn, thanks to its relatively simple system of writing and pronunciation. Now I know that learning Japanese, because of its entirely different writing system, and Hungarian, which is unrelated to most languages, is much, much harder.

So, concluding, I would say it absolutely depends on the language, and exposure. Not on strict order. A language which is in the same family as your mother tongue is easy to start in - although the finer details might bring great difficulties if the languages are very close. A language like Japanese necessarily entails more work to learn. But I do think I am very lucky to have found a forum like this one and a program like Anki, because it makes learning Japanese easier than ever. Japanese has never been so accessible. I am happy to live in the information age.

I would say it all depends on your interest in the language.My native is Arabic,over the years i learned English pretty easily,in school i studied French for about 7 years,well that was a failure,not because of being the 2nd foreign lang,but because i simply didn't like it,after 7 months of studying Japanese,im now ages better at it than French,because i love it,next im aiming for Spanish and German,2 languages that i feel that i like,so we'll see how that goes

phantombk201 Wrote:I would say it all depends on your interest in the language.

Well I'm not sure I know Dutch, English and french very fluent. I know some German (FL4) too, however since I haven't used it for years, no more fluency there. I learned some Spanish too (the basics) (FL5) and FL6 is now Japanese. Although I really love to speak/read Japanese fluently, it's the hardest till now.

If I hadn't so many interests and hobbies, I'd try to be more fluent in FL4/5 too. Did i mentioned I'd love to speak Chinese (FL7) and portuguese (FL8) too? *sigh*

hehe,well you can't get them all,i'd rather focus on 5 or 6 languages than have my brain explode

phantombk201 Wrote:hehe,well you can't get them all

True Still, there is no harm in dreaming - http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=3785
For the record, my own "polyglot dream list" consists of at least 15 languages, and that is without counting dialects

I guess cos the more languages you know the easier it gets to learn them because of the shared vocab and grammar between them I can see how you could have a functional command of maybe 5 - 6 languages... but like 40?? Seriously?

I've actually experienced the same thing as komorikun. I was yelling at a cousin who speaks Japanese ("learned" in college) but not Spanish (once upon a time I was near-fluent, use-it-or-lose-it).

I was trying to say, Give me that! And it came out all garbled. "Dame yo!" He got really confused. Especially when I got annoyed at myself.

Da->Dar: to give. Dame is a reflexive literally meaning give me. If you don't have a really good grip on your languages, and there are a lot of shared words (cognate or otherwise) or worse yet, phonemes, you're gonna screw up.

At least I know I'll always get the word for bread right. Consolation prize?