Re: Language Fluency

Chris Bates said:
>
> its not a problem of course if your
> aim is passive understanding (as in reading), but it is you intend to
> speak or write those languages. I'm not saying its impossible... just
> that it takes more mental discipline and practice to separate the two,
> than if you were learning two (or more) unrelated languages.
Again, I don't think "practice" (in the sense of speaking or writing) is
very much involved at all in the process of foreign language acquisition.

In any event, few of the EU languages are so similar as to be subject to
frequent interference. (They're from three language families if you count
Maltese, including several branches of IE.) I don't consider Spanish and
Portuguese to be so similar as to be confusing, for instance. Czech and
Slovak are probably the only ones that are that similar.


-- Mark

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