Learning a language related to your mother tongue is generally less difficult than learning one that’s distantly related or completely unrelated. However, getting to grips with a language that’s very different to the ones you already know can be very interesting and exciting. Such languages can seem strange and exotic, and other people may be suprised, amazed and/or find it hard to believe that you’re studying them. Once you become more familiar with a language, the strangeness tends to diminish. Perhaps that’s when it’s time to have a go at a different, even stranger language.

What’s the most unusual language you’ve studied?

Addition: by ‘most unusual language’ I mean the language that’s most different from the ones you’re familiar with. For me it’s Chinese and Japanese – everything about them is different: the grammar, the pronunciation and especially the writing systems. This is one reason why I chose to study them at university rather than French or German, which don’t seem very exotic to me.

The other day I come across the interesting idea of language cross-training (I don’t remember where though, unfortunately). The writer suggested that when learning a language, it can sometimes be beneficial to have a break to learn a bit of another language. The aim isn’t necessarily to become fluent in the second language, but the process of studying that language can help to keep your brain flexible as you grapple with different sounds, grammatical structures and word order. For example, while learning Spanish you could take a break and learn some Turkish. When you go back to the Spanish it will probably seem easier.

Have you tried this technique? Does it work?

Yesterday I was discussing language learning with a friend and he mentioned that when he was in Japan studying Japanese, it was fairly easy to understand the other students, but very difficult to understand the Japanese themselves.

If you learn a language from a textbook and/or in a class, it’s often quite a surprise to discover that native speakers of your target language don’t speak textbook: they don’t necessarily give model answers to your questions, or speak in complete sentences, and they tend to use a lot of words you haven’t heard before, including slang. Most of your fellow students, and other people who have learnt the language as a second/foreign language, speak textbook, so they are usually easier to understand than native speakers.

Some textbooks claim to teach you the slang and other more colloquial aspects of language, but they tend to become out-of-date quite quickly because language is constantly changing.

In order to learn the language that native speakers use, you have to spend as much time as possible listening and speaking to them.

When learning a language, it’s natural to compare your own progress and abilities with that of others. There’ll usually be other learners who know more than you, at least about some aspects of a language, or who speak and/or write with more fluency and confidence than you. You might also meet people who have been studying a language for a shorter time than you but who have achieved a higher level. This can be discouraging and frustrating, however we learn things at different rates, so such comparisons are not particularly helpful, unless you’re doing some research into second language acquisition (SLA).

Whenever I meet someone who is studying or has studied any of the foreign languages I know, I usually compare their level with my own. If they have a lower level, I feel that I’m doing ok, but if they have a higher level, I feel a bit jealous and resolve to study more. I also wonder whether I’ll ever achieve their level of fluency.

If you’re studying with someone else, some degree of competition can be a good thing, as you can encourage one another to keep going and to achieve more. Too much pressure is probably doesn’t help though.