Comments on: How To Learn Multiple Languages Without Getting Confused: The Laddering Method

By: Polish, German, and laddering | Learning Russian

Polish, German, and laddering | Learning Russian — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:18:23 +0000

[...] my mouth and my brain are in two different places. Khatzumoto has written a lot about laddering on AJATT, and I know that there are other people who highly recommend [...]

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By: Chinoisfrancais

Chinoisfrancais — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 00:21:55 +0000

Merci beaucoup pour cette méthode.

I’ve been speaking French for about half a year now, and have kicked up my approaching fluency by immersing myself after reading of your ideas for doing that. I’m also very glad that I bought a monolingual dictionary relatively soon. It keeps me from having to context switch back into English every time I need to look up a word (I can’t give you credit for that idea though, unfortunately).

Now, I was thinking for some time about which language to learn next. I thought that I would want to learn Spanish next, but the more that I thought about it the less it held my immediate interest. I had wanted to learn Chinese for a long time, but all of the information about how hard it was turned me off to it. The characters scared me, and the tones didn’t help that.

I read a wealth of information on your site, and I realized how possible it was for me to learn Chinese. I finally decided to go for it and get some studying materials for Chinese in French. I’m pretty excited about it, although I know to succeed I will need to have a similar approach as my French that got me where I am, able to handle conversations as long as they aren’t too fast. I’m in the process of looking for podcasts and other material to start listening right away, while the books travel to me from France.

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By: Patrick

Patrick — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:09:32 +0000

Hello !
Really GREAT website.
I discover it this morning and will be back very often.
I totally agree with this article. I am french and I started learning japanese
last month.
Material in french to study Japanese is pretty poor, so I decided to use english
material to do it. It works fine for me.
English and Japanese do not mix in my head.
I was using the “laddering method” without kwowing it
Bonne journée à tous ! Jaa mata !

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By: Francis

Francis — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:03:18 +0000

Wow, I’ve taken Japanese for a while now, and started Chinese a year after Japanese and never took the risk of studying Chinese in Japanese! I can’t wait to try it out this quarter!

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By: Candice

Candice — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:43:03 +0000

Great site! The most helpful thing I’ve found on language learning so far!

The article about laddering is very true. I am a Peace Corps volunteer living in an African francophone (French speaking) country. I am learning the African language in French, and I notice both languages go much faster when it’s done this way verses learning the African language in English (my native tongue). I think it’s very important that the two languages you are learning are at different levels; one needs to be at least a comfortable intermediate level. A bonus of laddering is that if your base language isn’t very strong, you’ll not only NOT forget any of it (which is a problem when learning multiple languages), but laddering provides a great support for the base lang.

My best advice for language learning is exactly the main point of this website: immersion. When you have no choice or outlet, the language will come. Language learning can be very intimidating (especially for Americans) but it really is all in our heads. To learn multiple languages fluently is not a miracle or just something you read about online. The proof is in the hundreds of thousands of Peace Corps volunteers who can converse in a foreign language in two months and are fluent within two years.

My question:
Anyone who’s learned multiple languages at once, do you feel that your progress was slower because of it? I’m wondering if spending equal time on two languages means both will move at a slower pace than if i put all my efforts into one language (which seems like common sense, but seeing everyones comments about laddering, it seems like learning two using the laddering system wouldn’t slow things down all that much?). Sure, laddering works much better than learning two languages NOT laddering, but does it slow down progress compared to learning just one?

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By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » How Do I Learn 500 Languages At Once?!

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 03:01:24 +0000

[...] language-laddering thing seems like an exception, but the laddering is really about how to keep your L2, while also [...]

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By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:31:59 +0000

Here’s an interesting perspective on learning multiple languages:

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By: Stephen

Stephen — Sat, 30 May 2009 06:46:02 +0000

First off I just wanted to thank you for this AWESOME site. I really appreciate all the work and humour that goes into it!

I have been learning Japanese for a little bit, but I can’t help but be almost equally interested in Chinese (mandarin).

My studies have kind of suffered because I tend to dwell between the two, but as you mentioned I think I need to, SOMEHOW, go with one for now and THEN move onto the other one……sigh, that’s NOT going to be easy xD

Anyway, I wanted to ask you how you’re Chinese is coming along? Having heard all your experiences and success in Japanese, I am curious as to how your Chinese studies/learning exp. compared to Japanese.

Thank You and again keep up the great work!

Cheers

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By: Kira

Kira — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:44:59 +0000

Hey! I like this idea, I’m learning Japanese now. In high school I have to take Spanish >.< By then, I think I’ll finish both RTK 1 and 3. I’m afraid that I won’t have a solid enough base for Spanish from Japanese. Also, I really wanted Japanese to be the springboard for learning Korean. Wouldn’t it be odd if I went English-Japanese-Spanish-Korean? I have no interest in learning Spanish, or continuing it after the required 3 years. I know you said to use another language for the springboard, but what if the class is taught in English (I have to take them… not my idea choice). Should I just use English for both Spanish and Japanese?

Thanks!

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By: Anathema196

Anathema196 — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 06:53:49 +0000

Hey,

I have a question about learning 2 languages at one. I went to Korea for a month and now I’m trying to learn it at the moment using your methods, I can already read Hanguel 한글, and I am also trying to learn Japanese at the same time. The RTK book doesn’t come until later this week.
So my question would be, would it be advisable to start doing my sentences for Korean all while learning the Kanji from RTK, and then when I finish learning all of the Kanji and Kana, start using Korean as the base language or Japanese? or could I use English for both?

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By: Melanie

Melanie — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 22:05:57 +0000

Hey,
something is really bothering me at the moment. Its a nice idea, but I just found some problems for me: I’m German and I’ve started Heisig in English. But the difference to the German variant seems not so little. Some of his stories are just not fit for anyone who isnt English, example: nighttide. In Eng, of course you associate water with that. In German, the word is kind of like evening times O_o , no water… So should I jump back and forth from English to German? I’m a bit clueless and confused about how to study at the moment. Hope you got a solution for this ( just please dont say: study more English…)

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By: Sonja

Sonja — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:09:58 +0000

Hey! That was some pretty good advice… I’m pretty (overly) ambitious when it comes to learning languages, and find myself mixing up various languages all the time – no matter how grammatically different they are (like you mixing French and Chinese)… ridiculous. Laddering sounds like a great way, and I know it works because I tried learning Russian in French, and voila, aucun probleme.

Is this the only solution though? I guess the problem is that learning another language becomes a slightly more tedious task, having to think in two foreign languages simultaneously. Right now I’m learning Japanese in English (English being my mother tongue), but find French popping up occasionally when I speak. Really annoying…

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By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com: How to learn Japanese. On your own, having fun and to fluency. » Taking A Break: The Third Way

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 04:23:22 +0000

[...] mental and financial energies divided between two languages, better to acquire one first and then use it a mental and financial hook for the second: emotionally this decision can be painful, but methinks you’re better off making it than [...]

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By: Alec

Alec — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:25:37 +0000

Thanks for the advice, Victoria! I’m about to start studying Mandarin in September and the thing that scares me the most is the tones. I realise I have to do a lot of listening but I’d not heard of “singing” the language. I can see how useful this will be and I’ll try singing Mandarin when I start. Thank! =) (*Runs to check out Victoria’s blog.*)

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By: Victoria

Victoria — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:26:24 +0000

> Why is it? Do the tones really screw people up? A lack of desire/materials? Or the
> same reason most people don’t learn Japanese correctly (textbooks, classes, etc)?

From my personal experience with Mandarin, I’d say its tones that screw people up, but that’s not to suggest they’re actually that difficult. The problem is that people don’t expect them, think their “weird” so lack confidence that they will learn them, don’t know how to approach them and don’t have realistic expectations about how long it will take to learn them.

To learn tones you need to do a lot of listening; as with all language study, there’s a lot of people who don’t appreciate the need to actually *do* the homework. With Mandarin, listening is very important – you need to give your brain a chance to realise it needs to start paying attention to aspects of speech its usually ignored (unless you’re coming from another tonal language). Its possible your brain has actually put effort into ignoring it, to cancel out the effects of regional dialect so it can figure out what the word is.

It took about a year for me to start tuning into tones, and that was with 2 hours lessons a week and probably about 2-3 hours listening a week in my own time. If I was starting now, I’d get some Mandarin podcast burned to cd and put it in my radio alarm, watch a lot more Mandarin TV/film, and just try to increase my exposure to it as much as possible. People give up before they get to that stage, because nobody tells them how long it will take, or gives them confidence that it can be achieved.

Secondly, there’s speaking it. You have to accept that to speak Mandarin, its probably more akin to singing. I heard so many people try to “speak” Mandarin, I found it hard to take seriously in the end. They just didn’t get it – which is a shame because I know some of them really wanted to. You’ve got to sing it. Let go, do it in private – you *will* feel self conscious. Start SLOWLY – you have to slow things down massively to get to grips with articulating sounds in a different way. Only when the tones are coming out right should you speed it up. Everyone wants to have learned their basics yesterday, so they speak, or try to tone too quick, and “Hi its great to meet you” comes out as “You! Very fat please postbox” or something random like that. Saves embarassment, FAILS as communication.

To sum it up, if you’re going to learn Mandarin, just give yourself a goddamned break. Don’t expect to tune in for a year or so, but know that if you put the time in you will.

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By: All Mandarin, All The Time

All Mandarin, All The Time — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:02:35 +0000

[...] writes about mixing up languages when learning more than one at the same time on his blog. I read this, but at the time I thought it was total hogwash. I’ve tried to learn many [...]

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By: Alec

Alec — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 09:52:03 +0000

Peter:
I’m not Khatzumoto but here’s what I think: Learning French from English at first will probably be more efficient as the words and their uses are more similar. There’ll be less explanation (Eg; The usage of ‘Comment ça va ?’ is more similar to ‘How are you’ than ‘Genki desuka’.) and you’ll end up more accurate than if you learnt from Japanese. However, this won’t be benefit your Japanese obviously. If you learnt French at first from Japanese, your French might suffer but your Japanese will benefit. It’s just a balancing act I imagine. If you’re learning a language unrelated to both, I would think it would make sense to go the second language (Japanese) which you’re trying to learn and don’t want to forget.

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By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:02:17 +0000

khatzumoto,

I understand that Chinese and Japanese differ, but they share kanji. What about languages that are entirely unrelated (at least, apparently)? For instance, can one use Japanese as a base language from which to learn french?

Thanks again for the great website and congratulations on the “book launch”.

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By: All Japanese All The Time Dot Com » Chinese Project Notes 10: Big Developments (Anki, Text-To-Speech, Cantonese, Victory Calendar)

Tue, 06 May 2008 01:02:04 +0000

[...] you may be aware, Cantonese has been “on my radar” for quite some time. When I made the decision to learn it, I was already focusing on learning Mandarin. The reasonable [...]

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By: khatzumoto

khatzumoto — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:13:55 +0000

Some say 一石二鳥 (hit two birds with one stone), and that can work sometimes.
But, the idea that 二兎を追う者は一兎をも得ず (the hunter who chases two catches neither) applies even more often.

Do one. Then the other. I know it’s a tough choice, but you’ll be grateful later.

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