Relaxation before going on

Spent a bit of time to review a French textbook.   It's funny that the Japanese class is no longer available in my area.   So based on the rules that I will learn 2 languages at a time, I decided to pick French.  (The other would be my main thread.)

Language always make you ask deep questions about human being.  For example, does learning two languages give positive or negative effect on learning.   Would it make one better/worse in one of the language learning?

In the place where I came from, as well as many places in the world.  Students are usually exposed to bilingual teaching.   In some strange place such as Singapore and Hong Kong, students are even exposed to three languages (e.g. Singapore : Bahasa, Cantonese, Mandarin and English).  When you visit these places, there is no lack of people who can master all the languages they got exposed.   This sounds like a plus for bilingual learning.    That's also the basis why I tend to always learn two things together. 

In languages which have the same origins, for example, Italian and Spanish.  Learning the structure of the language from one or the other is also quite helpful.  For example, professoressa and professora are based on the same root.  So once you learn one of the languages, after some practice you can get another one. 

In fact, this is perhaps the basis of why textbooks usually teach students the concepts of cognates and false cognates when they teach European languages.   Because a romance language X is likely to have tons of cognates with English.  So if you are a good speaker in English, you will automatically acquire a bunch of words very quickly.   

If we believe that English can be a language which gives cognates, then why not another romance language?   That's another plus for bilingual learning.

Now are there any downsides?  From my experience, there seems to be some indeed.  To summarize it,

If the two languages are closed, then learner confusion increases.   Whereas if the two languages are distant, then learner's cognitive load will increase.

Let me first talk about the case when the two languages are closed.  e.g. Let's say the Spanish/Italian pair, when I tried to learn both together, one obvious effect is that sometimes I mixed up the answer for the languages.   Mainly because they are so closed.   To counter this issue, I have to constantly construct a 3-column table to make sure I can differentiate the subtle difference between the two languages.  

An interesting effect is that my Spanish actually turns out to become better during this process.  For example, I have stronger grasp of digit words and words because I need to make sure both sets of rules are correct in my head.  The downside of this is that I have less time to learn Italian.   So there's is indeed a trade off.    This will happen on closed language or dialect pair.   Example, I can think of including French vs Spanish, Spanish vs Portuguese, Spanish vs Italian and Cantonese vs Mandarin.   These pairs are all very closed but slightly different.

What if the language are distant?   Other than you need to spend extra time, in my opinion, the real issue is that usually the languages are not just linguistically different but they are also culturally different.

For example, what if you want to learn both English and Japanese together?  Think about it! Easy going English and the whole frigging polite system of Japanese!  This is what make learning difficult.

Though at the end of the day, I am still a mild advocate to learn two languages together.   My reason , ultimately, is this - learning a language tends to open a person's mind.   Some people say this is a Mind Hack.  With my own experience, there seems to be basis on it.