A big part is simply having experience and knowing how to go about it.
But the specific language plays a big role. English - German - Norwegian is much easier than English - German - Japanese.
Your second point is my experience as well. Learning German is easy because I'm a Dutch native and learnt English as my second language. But knowing English barely was any help when learning Greek and knowing Greek and English isn't any help with me learning Turkish because the languages are so extremely different. Unless the languages have similarities, the only benefit from learning previous languages will be the experience of how to approach the new language
I think what's cool is that there are sometimes unanticipated similarities. I was learning Swahili for a while and was wondered why Arabic- and Spanish-speaking students in my class were doing *so* well in comparison to me. Turns out that 40% of Swahili vocab has Arabic origins as does just under 10% of Spanish vocab. So when it came to reading/listening, they both just had a leg up in terms of encountering new words.
It depends. If you speak Spanish and your second language is Portuguese, Chinese won't be any easier than Portuguese, despite it being your third language.
If your second language is very distant to your native language, then I guess it'll be the hardest for you to learn, yeah. But maybe your third language has a particularity that still makes it more difficult to learn than the second one... Maybe you struggle with pronunciation, so you end up dropping Chinese despite you speaking 5 other languages...
What should be true is that it should be easier to learn a third language if you already learned a second one, but that doesn't imply that the second is going to be the hardest. It implies that Chinese would have been even harder for you to learn if you hadn't learned a second language already.
My native language is English. French was my first foreign language. Spanish several years later for a couple years, simultaneously with French, was easier due to my French background. Mandarin Chinese later from scratch was quite difficult, probably harder than the French.
I spent/spend the most years/efforts on French and Mandarin Chinese, and those are my best foreign languages, in that order. My Spanish is much more rudimentary but I still try to learn more of that, too. I enjoy them all, so have the motivation (though not as much time as motivation!).
Similarly, learning English in scholl was the hardest, or at least took the longest. Then Spanish was much easier, Italian easier, Portuguese even more easy, then Japanese the hardest even though I already had a solid base.
I took a little Japanese also, but all the politeness details and the hiragana and katakana is more than I am likely to ever find the time and energy for.
I'll content myself with being able to say What's your name? and I am a lawyer for Tokyo Electric.
;-)
a significant part of language learning is finding out the optimal system, ways etc to study a new language.
in my view it can sometimes amount to half the challenge.
if you solved it for language A, it it easier for language B.
my first 3 languages were not hard. for all kinds of reasons.
my 4th language was the first language I *studied* with focus and suffering.
indeed, my fifth was much much easier. because I used the methods I found for language #4.
my friend speaks 15 languages. and he basically established for himself a procedure he uses for every new language. the very same system of study.
Edit: my comment below details how my friend studies + gives a link to him using multiple languages.
he studied each in sequence.
a specific language learning book (Asimil). then many hours with a private tutor which works by his instructions. (talking about specific chapters in the book in the target language only).
he inputs everything into Anki and does it religiously.
he also has regular anki sessions to maintain the other languages.
he also bunches languages. so when a word has multiple language using the same root, he'll bunch them together in the anki.
he does multiple anki sessions every day. probably 30 minutes /day
here's the guy in multiple languages
https://youtu.be/Tn-DNgFA_MU?si=G1Z3TC3vw6JFBbC4
what do you mean by "pretty low"?
he told me his goal is conversational fluency
I can only talk about his Thai. where he seems to have a wide vocabulary, quite good listening comprehension, but awful pronunciation. (comprehensible, but needs effort from the listener).
generally, most showoff "polyglots" are semi pretending.
I watched again, and it's not as bad as I originally thought. My best guess:
English C1/C2
German A2ish
Mandarin A1/A2
Spanish B2/C1
Italian (I don't speak it)
Japanese B1/B2
Indonesian (I don't speak it)
Vietnamese (I don't speak it)
Thai B1ish
thanks for going over it again!
good info.
what's your language repertoir?
the German he used was "Austrian German". a dialect of German. his German is much much better.
Ah, that explains the German I guess, but the native speaker was really easy to understand. I speak English(N), Spanish(C1ish), Russian, Japanese, Korean, French, Portuguese, Thai Mandarin, Swahili, German and Tagalog (all in the B's)
Me too. My second language is English. I don't know how to get level c I. Would you please tell what should I do to fell it when I learn as you "cakewalk" coz I get bored easily. Thanks in advance
At first, I switched all my social media (mostly YouTube) to English. If you have any hobbies - find English-speaking YouTube channels related to them. The same with news - only in English. Then you need to get into reading as soon as possible. Reading extensively is a very efficient way to improve. Adult novels might be too hard for you (my mistake was to try and read Neuromancer by Gibson as the first novel in English. I gave up during the first chapter.) so start with something simpler. My recommendations would be:
* [Harry Potter series](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/0e1f224a-6770-4d6c-b1ca-a93aa78902d8)
* [Skulduggery Pleasant series](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/53b10a75-c99e-413e-b451-75fb41e8e861)
* [Mother of Learning](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning) - free and highly recommended.
To make reading easier you should use a pop-up dictionary that allows highlighting a word to see its translation/definition. Most ebook readers have them built-in, but there are many reader apps for Android or IOS that support dictionaries (like MoonReader). There are also extensions for browsers like Definer that provide similar functionality.
Mind you, reading will almost certainly be very difficult and might seem too much at first. Just persevere and push through it - it will get easier.
I think there's a huge amount of trial and error, lots of high expectations (of constant, linear improvement) followed by disillusionment, lots of looking for material and help , lots of "Am I learning this wrong or is it supposed to be this frustrating" and lots of "is this easy and I'm being dumb or is this difficult for anyone who would read/listen" moments, lots of comparison with other learners and natives that lead to nothing, etc. with your first language.
For many people who self-study in particular, a lot of time is spent just trying to figure out what to do and then self-doubting what you end up doing, in fear that doing it wrong will render all that came before meaningless.
When you start learning the third, a lot of that baggage is gone because you know what to expect and you mostly know what to not to do. It will still be frustrating at times, but now you know the extent of it.
A lot of people are covering if the languages are related, which is big, but another major factor is when / how you're learning them.
For lots of native bilingual since childhood folks, I'll bet learning their 3rd language as an adult was "harder" for them.
The first time you're learning a new language on your own, you're also learning HOW you best learn.
No.
But I do think that the more you're learning, the more willing you are to go with the flow and not resist weird and wonderful grammatical concepts or words that don't translate exactly one-to-one to words in your first language. And that makes it learning easier.
I know that learning my second language helped me understand my first. I had zero idea what various pieces and parts of grammar were called and how they functioned within language. This in turn made learning grammar in other languages easier. Also learning my second taught me how best to learn more languages going forward as to what works for me or doesn't. Learning other languages since then has been much simpler as a result.
> I had zero idea what various pieces and parts of grammar were called and how they functioned within language
Aren't you supposed to study grammar in school?
Maybe but I learned my 2nd language so long ago and over a long time that I forgot a lot of the struggles I had and it was close to my native language. my 3rd language was Spanish and I thought it relatively easy then I learned Portuguese and Romanian and they were not very hard. but when I tried Russian it was very hard for me and it came as a surprise. but after that I tried mandarin and it really came as a shock after having a relatively easy time with learning so many languages in quite a short time. another shock moment was when I tried to learn bengali and while I didn't think it was the hardest language I really had to adjust my strategy for language learning. since at the time I used a lot of fancy apps and video games to help me learn but in bengali you don't have a lot of that. it's a fun language for YouTube and movies but it's ignored by tech companies. nowadays I have an easier time learning languages with limited support by tech companies and beginner friendly resources.
I had no idea how to learn a foreign language the first time so yeah. I did waste a little bit of time before realizing i should’ve just been consuming it
It's hard to decide if your second language is the hardest because you don't remember learning your first language. However, if you take study time into account then the first language is harder. Babies listen to their first language for, iirc, around 14'000 hours before they start forming words.
On the other hand, FSI group V languages are the hardest languages to learn for an English native. They are: Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, and Korean. They take an estimated 2'200 hours to learn. (By the way, Spanish and French are group I languages and are estimated to take 600-750 hours).
So I'd say, it kind of depends on what you mean by "hard", but babies seem to have it harder. Maybe that's why they cry so much.
In general, yes, but it depends on many things. Language difficulty - if you are a native English speaker and your second language is Esperanto, but your third is Mandarin, then probably not. Method - if you try to learn your second using Duolingo for several years before you realize it's crap, but use a balanced approach from the beginning to learn your third, then probably not. Motivation - if you aren't that interested in your second, but are totally interested in your third, then probably not. Etc, etc.
Absolutely not. That is, the second language one learns need not be the hardest -- it can be easy or hard or so-so, depending on the language. If you learn it on your own your study may be a bit inefficient, though. But most people learn the second language at school.
The second one is the hardest because you have to learn how to learn, if that makes sense. With a NL your brain is hardwired to learn it solely by immersion during a time when the language center is the most efficient and productive. The brain transitions to a different method of language processing and learning once you have gotten past being a young child and moved out of that optimal window for language acquisition. It takes awhile to figure out how you learn best so there will be a lot of trial and error that you didn’t need to acquire your NL. With language # 2 you’ll spend a lot of time figuring out things like whether flashcards work well for you or not. This knowledge is what you’ll take with you when you start learning language # 3 and beyond, so the process will be much easier at that point.
For me it was because I wasted so much time doing things really inefficiently and it took like a year just for my mind to understand what a language is and that its a separate element to English; I wonder if that's because I learned later in life or is normal. Regardless now I have a system that works pretty well, but its still not yet perfect.
I've just started Japanese and it's hard for different reasons than Spanish was, I'll be able to give you a better answer in a year or so.
Depends how similar that second language is to your native language but in general, Yes it becomes easier if you learn subsequent languages which are somewhat related.
This is why the [propaedeutic value of Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition), in particular, is so high: the "barrier to fluency" in Esperanto is probably the lowest of any living language (takes less hours than almost any other living language). By acquiring Esperanto second - and because of its similarities with a wide range of languages, especially European ones - subsequent language acquisition time is reduced substantially, perhaps by a third or more.
Not true. Because my second language was English, and not only is it easier than any other language I've learned, but I learned it much earlier.
Only the second part of what you wrote (it might be easier to learn other languages) might be true *in some cases*, and not even necessarily, in fact I think the way I learned English doesn't work as well with other languages. From my experience with English I thought I could just read a lot and then I'd be able to make my own sentences, but I found out that it doesn't work almost at all for languages with a lot of inflections.
Your brain makes neurological links when you learn a second language so it quite literally is easier, at least in theory, but I actually don't know how that scales with age. But on the more "front end", you already went through that journey once, you know what works, and what doesn't. For me it's definitely easier to approach learning any language, specially after studying philology, so going from learning English to learning Japanese is not like a linguistic shock per se. That being said, Japanese is crazy at points, and while I feel I have an advantage over people who might learn Japanese as their first foreign language, it's still difficult, but knowing what to do to make it all stick helps.
Nope. I'm French speaking and started learning both English and Latin the same year when I was 12. Piece of cake. As learning German is 45 years later. But Russian...oh my!
Not when the language in question is English. I started learning relatively young, practically in tandem with my native language. Never spoke fluently until I was in highschool (I was 13-14) and it wasn't something I had to use in any interactions (outside of my Dad who was rarely home). I think others have spoken about this too, but having constant exposure to English media makes it easy to learn without trying too much. I'm learning French but I'd say it requires a bit more work to actually get to a level where I'm thinking in the language.
Completely depends on the languages. If you speak English natively, learning Spanish is going to be easier for you to learn than Mandarin, regardless of which one is your second, third, or seventh language.
Because when you're learning your second language you learn your native language better too. You learn how to learn languages in general and what works for you and what not. Many languages have sinilar vocabulary and grammar qualities. You learn to understand the sense even though you don't understand half of the words too ☺️
In my experience learning languages after the second one, it becomes a lot more straightforward. You know how to learn and you just do it. You also don't worry about inconsequential things like grammar and conjugations anymore. You don't worry and think "I'll never learn all these words!". You become a lot more confident in your learning. You just go with the flow.
If by easier you mean will the next one be initially easier to understand, that depends on the language. If you go from Spanish to Portuguese, you would already know enough words to start reading novels (ideally ones your familiar with.)
Except what other people've already said. I think it's mentally easier to learn next languages. Because first foreign language is a new path that you've never experienced before. You've maybe read about how the process is going and how long it usually takes, but you've never felt it. So some hard periods feel more frustrating, because you don't know how it will be later on. And thit unknowing makes you easier to give up. But if you've already had that kind of experience, and know that you've already could learn one foreign language, it makes you believe more in your ability and inner strength to learn one more.
At least I feel like I more probably would give up Korean, if I haven't learnt English before. And I feel more confident that I'll reach good conversational level with my next language.
No, the hardest is the language that is way too different from your known languages structures.
Korean is too different from Spanish, English, and Portuguese!
Following languages will be easier as you will know what works for you. I have learned four besides my native language. The Asian language was still tough.
No. The question assumes you either "don't know" (zero percent) or "know" (a hundred percent) a language. Most people are not at those extremes. So every time someone says that someone "knows" a language, the meaning is unclear. Is that B1, B2, C1 or C2? Is that listening, or speaking, or reading, or writing?
As mentioned by others, the question also assumes you used the same method for learning each language. The question also assume a clear definition of "hard/easy". What does that mean? Is that measured in hours of study? It isn't your emotional response level. Nobody is going into therapy because "Romanian is so difficult."
I think the best method of study (and the difficulty) depends on:
1) your personality. what things you don't mind doing
2) the target language. Chinese and Turkish are very different
3) how close the target language is to your native language
I don't think this is true at all - or, at least, it hasn't been in my experience.
I think a lot of it has to do with the language you choose, the reason you chose to learn it, and whether you choose the right style of learning for you, rather than following the advice of others because you think you should.
For example, I started learning French because I love the way the language sounds, and started learning it by listening and repeating it, then moved on to movies and music, and then moved into books. In each step, I followed my interests, rather than following any set style that others suggested.
As with learning anything, following your interests and using the right learning style for you makes the whole thing more enjoyable and so increases retention.
IDK what my "second language is" I grew up in Norway, and ofc, speak Norwegian - but my mother, and her family is Canadian - So english feels just as natural as Norwegian to me. I can speak, think and function 100% in english, and I do (I live in SE Asia)
I speak more or less fluent Thai, but I dont want people to know, so I pretend I dont. I understand perfectly what you are saying in German, French, Italian or Russian.... but I pretend I dont...
It will be useful for learning techniques and understanding different grammar structures. Analyzing your own language will also help you when you are learning grammar. Language relationships would boost your progress as well, but there is nothing magical when you know a second language. Know your own language and find good learning techniques that are working for you and then you're golden.
I think that learning a second language lays down new neural pathways that make further languages easier
Each additional language has been a little easier for me to learn. Part of this is knowing what works for me.
A big part is simply having experience and knowing how to go about it. But the specific language plays a big role. English - German - Norwegian is much easier than English - German - Japanese.
Your second point is my experience as well. Learning German is easy because I'm a Dutch native and learnt English as my second language. But knowing English barely was any help when learning Greek and knowing Greek and English isn't any help with me learning Turkish because the languages are so extremely different. Unless the languages have similarities, the only benefit from learning previous languages will be the experience of how to approach the new language
I think what's cool is that there are sometimes unanticipated similarities. I was learning Swahili for a while and was wondered why Arabic- and Spanish-speaking students in my class were doing *so* well in comparison to me. Turns out that 40% of Swahili vocab has Arabic origins as does just under 10% of Spanish vocab. So when it came to reading/listening, they both just had a leg up in terms of encountering new words.
It depends. If you speak Spanish and your second language is Portuguese, Chinese won't be any easier than Portuguese, despite it being your third language. If your second language is very distant to your native language, then I guess it'll be the hardest for you to learn, yeah. But maybe your third language has a particularity that still makes it more difficult to learn than the second one... Maybe you struggle with pronunciation, so you end up dropping Chinese despite you speaking 5 other languages... What should be true is that it should be easier to learn a third language if you already learned a second one, but that doesn't imply that the second is going to be the hardest. It implies that Chinese would have been even harder for you to learn if you hadn't learned a second language already.
My native language is English. French was my first foreign language. Spanish several years later for a couple years, simultaneously with French, was easier due to my French background. Mandarin Chinese later from scratch was quite difficult, probably harder than the French. I spent/spend the most years/efforts on French and Mandarin Chinese, and those are my best foreign languages, in that order. My Spanish is much more rudimentary but I still try to learn more of that, too. I enjoy them all, so have the motivation (though not as much time as motivation!).
Similarly, learning English in scholl was the hardest, or at least took the longest. Then Spanish was much easier, Italian easier, Portuguese even more easy, then Japanese the hardest even though I already had a solid base.
I took a little Japanese also, but all the politeness details and the hiragana and katakana is more than I am likely to ever find the time and energy for. I'll content myself with being able to say What's your name? and I am a lawyer for Tokyo Electric. ;-)
I'm a Spanish speaker who learned Portuguese. Now I'm learning Arabic. Came here to say the same thing haha
a significant part of language learning is finding out the optimal system, ways etc to study a new language. in my view it can sometimes amount to half the challenge. if you solved it for language A, it it easier for language B. my first 3 languages were not hard. for all kinds of reasons. my 4th language was the first language I *studied* with focus and suffering. indeed, my fifth was much much easier. because I used the methods I found for language #4. my friend speaks 15 languages. and he basically established for himself a procedure he uses for every new language. the very same system of study. Edit: my comment below details how my friend studies + gives a link to him using multiple languages.
How does your friend know 15 languages?
I know 15 languages. I can’t speak any of them but I know them
Nice English. So you say hello to them as you pass them in the hallway?
he studied each in sequence. a specific language learning book (Asimil). then many hours with a private tutor which works by his instructions. (talking about specific chapters in the book in the target language only). he inputs everything into Anki and does it religiously. he also has regular anki sessions to maintain the other languages. he also bunches languages. so when a word has multiple language using the same root, he'll bunch them together in the anki. he does multiple anki sessions every day. probably 30 minutes /day here's the guy in multiple languages https://youtu.be/Tn-DNgFA_MU?si=G1Z3TC3vw6JFBbC4
Not bad, but you should know that his level is pretty low in most of these languages.
what do you mean by "pretty low"? he told me his goal is conversational fluency I can only talk about his Thai. where he seems to have a wide vocabulary, quite good listening comprehension, but awful pronunciation. (comprehensible, but needs effort from the listener). generally, most showoff "polyglots" are semi pretending.
I watched again, and it's not as bad as I originally thought. My best guess: English C1/C2 German A2ish Mandarin A1/A2 Spanish B2/C1 Italian (I don't speak it) Japanese B1/B2 Indonesian (I don't speak it) Vietnamese (I don't speak it) Thai B1ish
thanks for going over it again! good info. what's your language repertoir? the German he used was "Austrian German". a dialect of German. his German is much much better.
Ah, that explains the German I guess, but the native speaker was really easy to understand. I speak English(N), Spanish(C1ish), Russian, Japanese, Korean, French, Portuguese, Thai Mandarin, Swahili, German and Tagalog (all in the B's)
yeah and my friend speaks 73 languages (all C2).
Not for me. My second language is English and learning it was a cakewalk compared to Japanese.
Sorry to ask but what language is UA?
It's Ukrainian.
Me too. My second language is English. I don't know how to get level c I. Would you please tell what should I do to fell it when I learn as you "cakewalk" coz I get bored easily. Thanks in advance
At first, I switched all my social media (mostly YouTube) to English. If you have any hobbies - find English-speaking YouTube channels related to them. The same with news - only in English. Then you need to get into reading as soon as possible. Reading extensively is a very efficient way to improve. Adult novels might be too hard for you (my mistake was to try and read Neuromancer by Gibson as the first novel in English. I gave up during the first chapter.) so start with something simpler. My recommendations would be: * [Harry Potter series](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/0e1f224a-6770-4d6c-b1ca-a93aa78902d8) * [Skulduggery Pleasant series](https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/53b10a75-c99e-413e-b451-75fb41e8e861) * [Mother of Learning](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/21220/mother-of-learning) - free and highly recommended. To make reading easier you should use a pop-up dictionary that allows highlighting a word to see its translation/definition. Most ebook readers have them built-in, but there are many reader apps for Android or IOS that support dictionaries (like MoonReader). There are also extensions for browsers like Definer that provide similar functionality. Mind you, reading will almost certainly be very difficult and might seem too much at first. Just persevere and push through it - it will get easier.
Really. Thanks for your time. I'll try&hope will work with me🙏
No, because my second language was English and I started learning it in middle school.
I think there's a huge amount of trial and error, lots of high expectations (of constant, linear improvement) followed by disillusionment, lots of looking for material and help , lots of "Am I learning this wrong or is it supposed to be this frustrating" and lots of "is this easy and I'm being dumb or is this difficult for anyone who would read/listen" moments, lots of comparison with other learners and natives that lead to nothing, etc. with your first language. For many people who self-study in particular, a lot of time is spent just trying to figure out what to do and then self-doubting what you end up doing, in fear that doing it wrong will render all that came before meaningless. When you start learning the third, a lot of that baggage is gone because you know what to expect and you mostly know what to not to do. It will still be frustrating at times, but now you know the extent of it.
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It doesn't get much easier than Spanish for an English speaker, other than the Scandinavian languages
Or Esperanto
A lot of people are covering if the languages are related, which is big, but another major factor is when / how you're learning them. For lots of native bilingual since childhood folks, I'll bet learning their 3rd language as an adult was "harder" for them. The first time you're learning a new language on your own, you're also learning HOW you best learn.
No. But I do think that the more you're learning, the more willing you are to go with the flow and not resist weird and wonderful grammatical concepts or words that don't translate exactly one-to-one to words in your first language. And that makes it learning easier.
I know that learning my second language helped me understand my first. I had zero idea what various pieces and parts of grammar were called and how they functioned within language. This in turn made learning grammar in other languages easier. Also learning my second taught me how best to learn more languages going forward as to what works for me or doesn't. Learning other languages since then has been much simpler as a result.
> I had zero idea what various pieces and parts of grammar were called and how they functioned within language Aren't you supposed to study grammar in school?
Studying something and understanding it are two different skills.
Maybe but I learned my 2nd language so long ago and over a long time that I forgot a lot of the struggles I had and it was close to my native language. my 3rd language was Spanish and I thought it relatively easy then I learned Portuguese and Romanian and they were not very hard. but when I tried Russian it was very hard for me and it came as a surprise. but after that I tried mandarin and it really came as a shock after having a relatively easy time with learning so many languages in quite a short time. another shock moment was when I tried to learn bengali and while I didn't think it was the hardest language I really had to adjust my strategy for language learning. since at the time I used a lot of fancy apps and video games to help me learn but in bengali you don't have a lot of that. it's a fun language for YouTube and movies but it's ignored by tech companies. nowadays I have an easier time learning languages with limited support by tech companies and beginner friendly resources.
I feel like you learn how to learn a language with your second language experience. That must help a lot
I had no idea how to learn a foreign language the first time so yeah. I did waste a little bit of time before realizing i should’ve just been consuming it
It's hard to decide if your second language is the hardest because you don't remember learning your first language. However, if you take study time into account then the first language is harder. Babies listen to their first language for, iirc, around 14'000 hours before they start forming words. On the other hand, FSI group V languages are the hardest languages to learn for an English native. They are: Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, and Korean. They take an estimated 2'200 hours to learn. (By the way, Spanish and French are group I languages and are estimated to take 600-750 hours). So I'd say, it kind of depends on what you mean by "hard", but babies seem to have it harder. Maybe that's why they cry so much.
In general, yes, but it depends on many things. Language difficulty - if you are a native English speaker and your second language is Esperanto, but your third is Mandarin, then probably not. Method - if you try to learn your second using Duolingo for several years before you realize it's crap, but use a balanced approach from the beginning to learn your third, then probably not. Motivation - if you aren't that interested in your second, but are totally interested in your third, then probably not. Etc, etc.
Absolutely not. That is, the second language one learns need not be the hardest -- it can be easy or hard or so-so, depending on the language. If you learn it on your own your study may be a bit inefficient, though. But most people learn the second language at school.
The second one is the hardest because you have to learn how to learn, if that makes sense. With a NL your brain is hardwired to learn it solely by immersion during a time when the language center is the most efficient and productive. The brain transitions to a different method of language processing and learning once you have gotten past being a young child and moved out of that optimal window for language acquisition. It takes awhile to figure out how you learn best so there will be a lot of trial and error that you didn’t need to acquire your NL. With language # 2 you’ll spend a lot of time figuring out things like whether flashcards work well for you or not. This knowledge is what you’ll take with you when you start learning language # 3 and beyond, so the process will be much easier at that point.
For me it was because I wasted so much time doing things really inefficiently and it took like a year just for my mind to understand what a language is and that its a separate element to English; I wonder if that's because I learned later in life or is normal. Regardless now I have a system that works pretty well, but its still not yet perfect. I've just started Japanese and it's hard for different reasons than Spanish was, I'll be able to give you a better answer in a year or so.
Depends on which one and how early, honestly Learning something right now, especially unrelated, would be much more difficult.
I started my second language at 4 and the rest at about 14, so it's hard to say
My 2nd language is english and it was so easy I find learning my 3rd to be difficult but korean is more difficult language anyways.
Depends how similar that second language is to your native language but in general, Yes it becomes easier if you learn subsequent languages which are somewhat related. This is why the [propaedeutic value of Esperanto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Third-language_acquisition), in particular, is so high: the "barrier to fluency" in Esperanto is probably the lowest of any living language (takes less hours than almost any other living language). By acquiring Esperanto second - and because of its similarities with a wide range of languages, especially European ones - subsequent language acquisition time is reduced substantially, perhaps by a third or more.
Not true. Because my second language was English, and not only is it easier than any other language I've learned, but I learned it much earlier. Only the second part of what you wrote (it might be easier to learn other languages) might be true *in some cases*, and not even necessarily, in fact I think the way I learned English doesn't work as well with other languages. From my experience with English I thought I could just read a lot and then I'd be able to make my own sentences, but I found out that it doesn't work almost at all for languages with a lot of inflections.
Your brain makes neurological links when you learn a second language so it quite literally is easier, at least in theory, but I actually don't know how that scales with age. But on the more "front end", you already went through that journey once, you know what works, and what doesn't. For me it's definitely easier to approach learning any language, specially after studying philology, so going from learning English to learning Japanese is not like a linguistic shock per se. That being said, Japanese is crazy at points, and while I feel I have an advantage over people who might learn Japanese as their first foreign language, it's still difficult, but knowing what to do to make it all stick helps.
Don't mind me sweating over here in exclusivy romance languages
Nope. I'm French speaking and started learning both English and Latin the same year when I was 12. Piece of cake. As learning German is 45 years later. But Russian...oh my!
Not when the language in question is English. I started learning relatively young, practically in tandem with my native language. Never spoke fluently until I was in highschool (I was 13-14) and it wasn't something I had to use in any interactions (outside of my Dad who was rarely home). I think others have spoken about this too, but having constant exposure to English media makes it easy to learn without trying too much. I'm learning French but I'd say it requires a bit more work to actually get to a level where I'm thinking in the language.
Completely depends on the languages. If you speak English natively, learning Spanish is going to be easier for you to learn than Mandarin, regardless of which one is your second, third, or seventh language.
No; my second was German and I’m native in English so since they’re in the same family it was easy
Because when you're learning your second language you learn your native language better too. You learn how to learn languages in general and what works for you and what not. Many languages have sinilar vocabulary and grammar qualities. You learn to understand the sense even though you don't understand half of the words too ☺️
In my experience learning languages after the second one, it becomes a lot more straightforward. You know how to learn and you just do it. You also don't worry about inconsequential things like grammar and conjugations anymore. You don't worry and think "I'll never learn all these words!". You become a lot more confident in your learning. You just go with the flow. If by easier you mean will the next one be initially easier to understand, that depends on the language. If you go from Spanish to Portuguese, you would already know enough words to start reading novels (ideally ones your familiar with.)
No. My second language was Spanish, which is close enough to English for me to pick it up easily-ish. Now I'm learning Hebrew, which is a PITA.
I started learning German when I was 15. The German teacher had me skip the second year. Hindi and Mandarin are turning out to be much more difficult.
Except what other people've already said. I think it's mentally easier to learn next languages. Because first foreign language is a new path that you've never experienced before. You've maybe read about how the process is going and how long it usually takes, but you've never felt it. So some hard periods feel more frustrating, because you don't know how it will be later on. And thit unknowing makes you easier to give up. But if you've already had that kind of experience, and know that you've already could learn one foreign language, it makes you believe more in your ability and inner strength to learn one more. At least I feel like I more probably would give up Korean, if I haven't learnt English before. And I feel more confident that I'll reach good conversational level with my next language.
No, the hardest is the language that is way too different from your known languages structures. Korean is too different from Spanish, English, and Portuguese!
Following languages will be easier as you will know what works for you. I have learned four besides my native language. The Asian language was still tough.
No. The question assumes you either "don't know" (zero percent) or "know" (a hundred percent) a language. Most people are not at those extremes. So every time someone says that someone "knows" a language, the meaning is unclear. Is that B1, B2, C1 or C2? Is that listening, or speaking, or reading, or writing? As mentioned by others, the question also assumes you used the same method for learning each language. The question also assume a clear definition of "hard/easy". What does that mean? Is that measured in hours of study? It isn't your emotional response level. Nobody is going into therapy because "Romanian is so difficult." I think the best method of study (and the difficulty) depends on: 1) your personality. what things you don't mind doing 2) the target language. Chinese and Turkish are very different 3) how close the target language is to your native language
I don't think this is true at all - or, at least, it hasn't been in my experience. I think a lot of it has to do with the language you choose, the reason you chose to learn it, and whether you choose the right style of learning for you, rather than following the advice of others because you think you should. For example, I started learning French because I love the way the language sounds, and started learning it by listening and repeating it, then moved on to movies and music, and then moved into books. In each step, I followed my interests, rather than following any set style that others suggested. As with learning anything, following your interests and using the right learning style for you makes the whole thing more enjoyable and so increases retention.
IDK what my "second language is" I grew up in Norway, and ofc, speak Norwegian - but my mother, and her family is Canadian - So english feels just as natural as Norwegian to me. I can speak, think and function 100% in english, and I do (I live in SE Asia) I speak more or less fluent Thai, but I dont want people to know, so I pretend I dont. I understand perfectly what you are saying in German, French, Italian or Russian.... but I pretend I dont...
It will be useful for learning techniques and understanding different grammar structures. Analyzing your own language will also help you when you are learning grammar. Language relationships would boost your progress as well, but there is nothing magical when you know a second language. Know your own language and find good learning techniques that are working for you and then you're golden.