Warning – don’t learn really similar languages at the same time, unless you’ve been at least a solid intermediate for several years in one of them when you start the other. I know everyone is different and all that, and maybe you’ll be ok even if you ignore my warning, but check out what happened to me (some of this is a recap from earlier posts).
In the summer of 2021 I was getting stir crazy from staying at home due to the pandemic. I was ready to travel, and noticed that Brazil, a place that I’d always wanted to visit, was actually completely open to tourists. Of course, I had to learn Portuguese first and try to use the language when I was there, haha. So I quickly learned enough to be fairly comfortable. It only took 3 months, because I have a strong background in Spanish. In fact, Portuguese was the easiest language I’d learned up to that point, by far. There was actually very little interference with Spanish, which was a nice surprise. Sure, I spoke some Portunhol in the beginning, but it faded away fairly quickly. Anyway, I went to Rio for a month and had a blast.
Some of you may know that I travel around half the year, and Rio was just the beginning of my annual trip, so I travelled for a few more months, my point being that I wasn’t able to use the language much for quite a while. When I got back to the states, I put Portuguese on my normal maintenance schedule, which means I reviewed it about once every 10 days. It had declined a bit, but was still a passable B1 or so. I wound up learning German in 2023 to a strong intermediate level. It interfered a bit with Russian in the beginning, but never with Portuguese. So that’s a good example of two languages not interfering because they are too different, even though they are only 2 years apart. I put German on my maintenance schedule.
In 2024 I added Italian, and that’s where my problems started. It pretty much killed my Portuguese. For those who don’t know, Brazilian Portuguese and Italian are extremely similar. Although I considered my Portuguese level to be a weak B1 before starting Italian, when I tried to speak it, I either had to use Italian words, or I had to sit there and think about it for a long time, use google translate, ask the teacher, etc, to avoid using Italian. From the very get go, I’d dropped down to an A2 in Portuguese, and shortly after that, A1ish. I was crushed and ashamed, and after about a month made the decision to drop Portuguese completely.
That decision actually made me feel a lot better, because I could once again speak all my languages comfortably. Italian was also quite easy for me, because of my background, but I learned it for a solid 6 months and reached a higher level than I’d ever been in Portuguese. After those 6 months, I went on my annual trip, did a German spurt and a Lao spurt and returned home. To make sure that my Italian stayed put, I did another spurt. But after a month, it was apparent that it was in really good shape, so I made the leap and decided to try to get my Portuguese back.
Less than a week into my Portuguese spurt, my Italian was in shambles. Again, I was crushed. But this time I dropped it immediately. I learned Portuguese for only one month, and it’s now the best it’s ever been, I’d say closing in on B2.
So here is my plan. Rather than trying to take it all the way to a high level, I want to concentrate on separating these two languages once and for all. My reason for that is making sure my Italian was in much better shape didn’t stop it from getting destroyed by Portuguese, so I don’t expect the reverse to work. To separate them, starting tomorrow I’m back on Italian again. I won’t even try to maintain my Portuguese. As soon as I feel Italian is recovered, I’ll switch to Portuguese, again not maintaining Italian. And I’ll continue this pattern, thinking that the spurts will become shorter and shorter over time, eventually reducing to one day, and then I’ll converse with teachers that speak both languages and try to do half Italian/half Portuguese classes. After that, I’ll finally attempt to put them both on maintenance and move onto my next project.
I still have 3 month left in the states; hopefully that’s enough time to get this done!