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Dual Language
During my Russian language studies, sometimes I get tired and I have to take a small break from my studies. The time period could be anything from a day to a week. I do this just to settle what I have learned. I found out that doing this allows my brain to “bake” what I just learned. However, during this time I do not do any language learning at all. For that reason, I thought in pick up a second language, Arabic to being specific. My idea involves use the “spare” time from Russian and uses it with Arabic.
My concerns are the followings:
Is this is a healthy approach to language learning?
Is it good for my Russian and Arabic?
Is it possible? Have any of you tried something similar? How you did it?
Any comments and/or suggestions are welcome.
What about the dialect, classical Arabic or Egyptian or any other?
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Re: Dual Language
To my mind this can lead to a mess in one's brain only. If you want to make use of your breaks, take up a different activity. I mean something different from intellectual work.
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Re: Dual Language
I never had a problem studying more than one language, the brain seems to sort them out. The only thing is time and how far you want to progress. With Arabic you're learning a whole new alphabet and from what I understand the reading is complicated by the fact that vowels are often not written, you have to know what vowel is missing.
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Re: Dual Language
As long as you take on languages from different language groups, it is okay. Especially if they have different phonetics and writing systems.
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Re: Dual Language
I agree it could be OK.
It just depends on your linguistic skills. What is your native language, BTW? And how many foreign languages did you learn?
To my opinion, Arabic is one of the most challenging among the world's major languages. The Arabic script is the only one I couldn't master at all. Not only the vowels are not written! The letters a joined together within a word and they change their shape depending on their neighbourhood. It was hard for me to recognise separate letters within a written word when I tried learning it. However, I believe more practice could help.
And the pronunciation is really challenging. Arabic is famous due to its guttural consonants. Some of the consonants (like D, T, S, Z) have "plain" and "guttural" versions.
I tried learning Chinese and Japanese, and I've managed mastering them to some extent. Arabic seems to be more difficult. Maybe, it's just for me.