Want to learn multiple languages at the same time? Hear me out.

If my 10+ years in online language learning communities has taught me anything, it's this:

But should you?

Let's get into it:

First, let's talk about how language learning works

Before we get too far along, you need to understand that language learning, at its core, is pretty simple:

That's not easy—at least not at first—but it is fairly simple.

Until the advanced level, you literally just need to find some sort of content you somewhat enjoy and can somewhat follow, and then regularly spend time interacting with your language.

I feel so strongly about this that, when I begin studying a new language, my one and only goal is to get my foot in the door with some piece of content. If I can do that, everything else falls into place.

And, in brief, this is the reason why learning multiple languages simultaneously isn't a good idea.

Why learning multiple languages at the same time isn't a great idea

I could talk about a lot of things here, but there are really two concrete and unavoidable hardships you inflict upon yourself by actively studying two languages at once:

Now let's elaborate a bit.

Reason 1: Learning two languages at once doubles the amount of time the beginner stage takes

We've got a much longer post that goes into detail about the five stages of language learning, and we invite you to read that.

For now, though, there's one key thing you need to understand:

Or, to get a bit more concrete:

What overcoming the beginner stage of a new language entails

I personally take the "intermediate" stage to mean "independent"—you know enough of the language that you can begin learning by following your own interests.

As pro-immersion as I am, though, I understand that you can't just start reading books and watching YouTube in another language. You need to understand content to learn from it, and you need a bit of a foundation under you to begin understanding content.

But how much of a foundation do you need?

We go heavier into statistics in this post, but, if you take any random word in any random sentence:

The "golden" number will differ from person to person, depending on factors like:

Regardless, so long as you stick with it, you'll eventually find something you enjoy and understand. You'll learn a ton while working through that. It'll be hard at first, but it'll get easier as you go. Eventually, consuming content in your target language will become a primarily fun and enjoyable activity. It’s something that you’ll look forward to—not something that takes a lot of effort.

Reason 2: Learning your first foreign language involves learning much more than just another language

I'll need to expand on this a bit, but learning your first foreign language will require you to learn a lot more than "just" another language.

To learn another language well, you're also going to have to learn:

I could go on, but I'm sort of rambling already, and I think you get the point.

Why it gets easier to learn subsequent languages

In the course of learning your first language, you’ll also learn a lot about linguistics in general, the psychology of learning, and what it takes for you to be productive. You'll take all of this knowhow with you into subsequent languages, and this will make the progress significantly smoother.

French is my 7th language.

Going into it, from literally day one, I already knew:

So, you know, I'm 100% confident that I'll be reading Albert Camus and his ilk within a few years. And it's no wonder. What would you do if you knew all of the bumps in the road you'd encounter beforehand and how to get over them? What would you risk if you knew that you couldn't fail?

That may sound kind of wishy-washy, so here's a concrete example for you:

How to learn multiple languages

Naturally, we're not saying you should learn only one language ever. If you're interested in multiple languages, we want you to learn multiple languages.

We started this article off with the Golden Rule of Language Learning:

And the way to successfully learn several languages is to structure your learning such that you're able to meaningfully interact with as many languages as possible as soon as possible.

You can experiment with what your exact routine looks like as you go, but here's how I personally do it.

Step 1: Focus on one new language at a time

For the two reasons listed in the previous sections, you should only be actively studying one language at a time. By "active study", I am referring to anything that you are doing which you don't necessarily want to be doing in order to build a foundation that enables you to consume media in another language.

So, for example, if you're going through Migaku's Japanese Academy to learn the 1,500 words that appear most commonly in Netflix subtitles:

Don't also be attending a French class or learning Korean's Hangul on another app. If you're in the process of building a foundation in Japanese, then all of your intentional effort should be going to Japanese, such that you reach the immersion stage as soon as possible.

This rule holds true no matter how experienced of a learner you are.

I've been at this for eleven years, and even though I know exactly that I'm doing, I still study only one language at a time. My time and energy is limited, and focusing on one language at a time ensures that I see results with the least amount of energy exerted, which means I'm less likely to burn out before achieving my goal.

Or:

Step 2: Shift time from active study to immersion

As you approach 1,500 words in another language, an increasingly wide variety of content is going to become accessible to you. Eventually, you're going to come face to face with a piece of content that you can make some sense of and that you enjoy.

That's going to be an awesome day. You'll remember it.

Don't get me wrong—I don't mean that it will be easy to consume media, or even that it'll be very enjoyable. It'll just have become possible. When this happens, you'll know.

By interacting with your language, I mean using it to do something you enjoy or find meaningful. Read books! Watch Netflix! Listen to podcasts! Play Pokémon!

Right now, anything is fair game, so long as:

So, for example, here's me watching a YouTube video about why we age in Spanish.

Migaku makes subtitles interactive in places like YouTube and Netflix, so when I stumble into a word I don't know, I can just click on it to see what it means.

When I stumble into a word that looks useful in a sentence that is accessible, I click the orange button in the top-right corner of the dictionary to make a flashcard. Migaku automatically fetches the word, the sentence it appeared in, takes a screenshot, and takes an audio snippet of the sentence being narrated.

From here, Migaku will nudge me to review the card periodically, ensuring I commit it to memory.

As you make flashcards from the content you consume, your vocabulary will improve. As you go on, you'll gradually build an intuitive understanding for how sentences in your target language are structured, and it’ll become easier and easier to consume content in your target language.

Step 3: Shift media time from your first language to your second language, then study time from your second language to a third language

As time goes on, the work:fun balance of the language you're learning will shift. Consuming media in the language you're learning will become increasingly effortless. Eventually, it'll have become a primarily enjoyable activity: you'll look forward to reading that Spanish book, watching that Japanese anime, watching that Korean drama, listening to that French podcast, or whatever your thing is.

This is a massive achievement, so go ahead and chill here for awhile!

I'm a bookworm, and my solution was to rotate chapters: one in English, then one in Spanish, and so forth. Experiment and find a balance that works for you. Basically anything goes, so long as you're meeting two conditions:

Finding this balance will require experimentation on your part and you likely won't succeed right away. Keep at it. You've already succeeded with one foreign language, so if you can get this balance down, you'll eventually succeed in another foreign language, too.

Step 4: Repeat as you approach fluency in more languages

From this point on, the process just repeats.

For me, the balance looks like this:

There's a few important things to notice here:

As with the previous step, how you handle this juggle is up to you.

Just know that, if you want to know several languages, you're eventually going to have to make some hard choices. You can do anything, but not everything. Once you reach the threshold of what your free time and time management skills allow you, you'll need to get creative.

My #1 tip for learning multiple new languages to fluency

If I were to boil this entire blog post down into a sentence, it'd be this:

So long as you can follow that rule, you'll be able to learn as many languages as you can make time for.

Good luck 💪