JavaScript is required

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

Last updated: May 30, 2025

A photo of the a man juggling baseballs, just as  you're wondering if you can get by with multiple languages up in the air simultaneously

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

If you're interested in learning one language, you're probably interested in learning two (dozen).

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:

If you consume media in another language, and you understand some of the messages within that media—conversations, dialogues, sentences, phrases, utterances, words, whatever—you will make progress.

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

  • You don't need to spend a lot of money on classes
  • You don't need to have a perfect (or even good) system
  • You don't need to move abroad
  • You don't need to do an exhaustive survey of all the language learning apps and textbooks out there
  • You don't need to be super smart or have a good memory

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:

  1. The beginner stage kinda sucks, and now you need to spend twice as long in it
  2. A lot of "know how" transfers from your second language to your third, and you lose that benefit by doing two now instead of one now and one later

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:

Language learning isn't a linear process. Each stage of language acquisition has its own unique challenges and joys.

Or, to get a bit more concrete:

  • The beginner stage
    • Plus → There are tons of resources and your path is very straightforward
    • Minus → It's boring as hell; you know so little that you can't really do anything but grind through that textbook / course / app / whatever
  • The intermediate stage
    • Plus → Progress largely comes as a byproduct of entertaining yourself; eventually, long before the advanced stage, learning your language will become quite effortless
    • Minus → There is no real path; the most optimal way to learn and the most important things to learn depend entirely on your personal goals and interests

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:

  • There's a ~50% chance it'll be one of about 100 words
  • There's an ~80% chance it'll be one of about 1,500 words

The closer you get to 1,500 words, the more things begin being accessible to you. This increases your odds of finding a piece of content you both enjoy and understand.

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

  • Your tastes (sci-fi requires a lot more specialized vocab than, say, high-school romances)
  • Your willingness to look things up (if you don't mind looking up several words per sentence, you can start immersing very early on)
  • Your tolerance for blurriness (If you're OK with just getting the gist of things, your life will be easier; if you need to understand everything, your life will be harder)

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.

👉 The point 👈

By learning two languages at once, you are effectively doubling the amount of time it takes you to hit 1,500 known words in either language. In other words, you extend the amount of time you spend at the stage where languages drain you, instead of entertaining you.

It’s not to say that you couldn’t do this. You can, if you really want to. It just increases the likelihood that you'll burn out—that you'll give up on two languages instead of learning one.

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:

  • Some personal things: How you learn, which times of the day you're more/less effective, if you prefer to knock out the day's studies all at once or piecemeal your way through it, how to deal with low-motivation days
  • Some linguistic things: The different tenses that exist, how noun cases work, how verb conjugation works, the concepts of verbal aspect or mood—how languages work, in a theoretical sense
  • Some roadmap things: What hurdles await you as you progress through the beginner's stage, how other people have gotten over those hurdles, and which approaches do/don't work for you
  • Some resource things: What apps and textbooks exist, which ones you find useful, which ones you'll actually stick with
  • Some stuff about memory: How good your memory generally is or isn't, how to work around that, and how to commit different types of things to memory
  • Some stuff about your goals: What do you actually care about in another language? Do you want to be bilingual, or are you happy with being good enough to have conversations and consume media? Do you care more about reading, listening, or interacting with others?

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.

Your third language will be much, much easier to learn than your second language.

French is my 7th language.

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

  • The new sounds I would need to learn, how those sounds worked, and how to learn them
  • How I'd go about learning my first 1,500 words, and which words were/weren't worth learning
  • How well I did (or, rather, didn't) need to understand grammar early on
  • Which sorts of content I could realistically work through from day one, and several progressively harder bits of content I could work through as my level improved, until I was ready for most modern French novels
  • Which holes of knowledge I needed to fill in now and which ones I could ignore until later
  • Exactly how much I needed to learn "formally" before I could transition to focusing on immersion
  • Which resources were available, and which ones I'd use for which things
  • A pace of learning that was sustainable for me but would also lead to being able to read French books in a realistic time frame

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:

  • When I started studying Spanish, the subjunctive mood kicked my ass. I had to learn what it was, why Spanish speakers used it, the nuance it added to a sentence, how we do/don't use it in English, and then learn several new conjugation tables.
  • In French, the only thing I needed to learn was a few new conjugation tables. I already knew how the subjunctive worked! I just didn't know how to put French verbs into the subjunctive.
👉 The point 👈

If you learn two languages at once, you're running into two languages blind.

If you learn one language at a time, you go into your first language blind, and then (basically) coast through your second language—you'll know how you learn, the hurdles that await you, how to get over them, and stuff like that. The difference is very noticeable.
~
~

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.

The typical language learner when told that it might be possible to learn two languages simultaneously

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

If you consume media in another language, and you understand some of the messages within that media—conversations, dialogues, sentences, phrases, utterances, words, whatever—you will make progress.

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:

A screenshot showing how Migaku uses memes to make the learning process a bit more entertaining

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:

The best way to learn 10 languages is to know 9 languages and then learn one more. The best way to learn 9 languages is to know 8 languages and then learn one more. (You see where this is going).

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.

At this point, gradually start tweaking your schedule such that more of your time is being spent interacting with your target language and less is spent studying it.

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:

  • (a) it involves you reading, listening to, or watching something
  • (b) you somewhat understand that thing
  • (c) it doesn't bore you.

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

A screenshot showing how Migaku enhances YouTube subtitles, even on YouTube,

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.

A screenshot showing the flashcard Migaku generated from a YouTube video

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.

At this stage of the game, you basically can't help but make progress. So long as you're spending time in your target language, you'll make progress as a byproduct of entertaining yourself. This is the most exciting stage of language acquisition.

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!

But, when you're ready, it's time to make two important adjustments:

  1. Take time that you've been using to consume media (or doomscroll) in your native language and give it to your second language
  2. Take the time you'd been using to immerse in a second language and use it to actively study a third language

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:

  1. You're interacting with your second language at least a few times per week
  2. You're actively studying your third language every day

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.

The limiting factor on how many languages you learn is not related to intelligence or memory, but rather time management. How efficiently can you dice up your days and weeks, such that you can have meaningful interactions with several languages?

For me, the balance looks like this:

  • English (N) → I work in English, and my wife and I speak English at home
  • Spanish → I read ~3 chapters of a Spanish book per week
  • Japanese → I read ~3 chapters of a Japanese book per week
  • Russian → Basically abandoned; I do not really use Russian anymore
  • Mandarin (immersion focus) → I read a chapter of a Mandarin book most days
  • Korean → I read a few Korean webtoons per week
  • French (active study) → I'm currently building my French vocabulary and working through a French grammar dictionary
  • Wildcard → I listen to an English audiobook or foreign-language podcast while doing chores or exercising

There's a few important things to notice here:

  • I don't really consume media in English; pretty much all of my media time is spent in another language
  • The overwhelming majority of my media time is spent reading; I decided that I would rather read books in several languages than be totally fluent in one
  • I interact with most of my intermediate+ languages a few times per week, but I interact with Mandarin daily; my "immersion focus language" rotates, such that each of my languages gets the spotlight for a couple months per year
  • I have dropped Russian for the time being—I'll come back to it eventually, (probably when Migaku releases Russian support...) but I don't have any immediate need or want for it, so the opportunity cost it imposes upon my time doesn't make sense right now

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:

Immerse in and maintain several languages simultaneously, but only ever actively study one language at a time.

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 💪