Earlier in my life, I studied French and German at the same time.  I took it seriously with lots of effort and private tutors for practice.  Unfortunately, the languages interfered with each other.  So I focused on learning one language, French, and dropped the other.  Later, after my French was solid, I studied a new language, Spanish, with success.

I just finished a year of French lessons to rebuild my old skills.  I am now starting a year of Spanish lessons to rebuild my old skills.

My suggestion is study/practice one language intensively for a longish period of time such as two weeks/two months/a year and then alternate.

Hey there,

In college I took English, French, German and Spanish. I was reading books and taking classes of these languages every day. For me, studying different languages and switching from one language to the other, was what made my day so interesting :) 

I think it is possible to learn two languages at the same time, which I am currently doing - I'm learning Dutch and Korean.

However, to do this successfully, you have to keep two things in mind:

1. To avoid mixing up the languages, try to learn two very different languages at the same time, which is what I'm doing. As a native speaker of German, learning Dutch is not very difficult for me, but it still involves learning vocabulary, studying grammar, and lots of practice, practice, practice ... ;-)

This is also the reason why the second language I'm currently learning is Korean - it is *very* different from any language I know (I only know Indo-European languages) and thus more difficult to learn. So I'm learning a) two very different languages, and b) one easy (for me) and one difficult language at the same time.

For example, I would not recommend learning French and Spanish, or German and Dutch at the same time, as they are too similar.

2. It requires discipline. You should try to do something in each language every day, and if it is just writing what you have done that day in a few sentences. Don't do that in both languages at the same time; set aside 15 minutes for each language, and try not to do one language first, and the second right after.

As others have said before, once you've reached an intermediate level in any language, it becomes easier, so try to get to at least A2/B1 level in any language you're learning to ensure that you won't forget everything again if you need to take a break from learning.

Hope this helps, good luck!

Hi Carina

I think there is no right or wrong answer on your question: everyone learns languages in a different way. I studied three foreign languages (French, English and Spanish) at the same time when I went to university and I never experienced big problems during those five years.

But, as Chris writes, if you feel your foreign languages are interfering one with another, then I think it's a good idea to first focus on one of them. Once you're confident in that specific language, you can continue with the other language. 

Regards

Karen 

I have read before that as you reach a certain level in a language, let's say intermediate, that language is somehow saved much better in your memory and brain than when you would learn a new language for a few months and then disregard it. I have seen some language learning experts advise not to learn two completely new languages at the same time, but of course you can learn, let's say, Greek and maintain or improve the languages you already speak. However, those same people still think it can be done, but it's not going to be easy.

It's an interesting topic, because personally I have been struggling to make a breakthrough with Russian several times in my life, and I still want to achieve something with it, but I am seriously studying Japanese now and decided to just concentrate on that. I think if you are learning on a very elemental level, it's easy to mix up the new information you get, especially in relatively difficult languages. Apart from Japanese, I keep somehow practising languages I already speak, but no other new language. I have some experience with the confusion as explained in post #2 above and it's terrible.