Become a Polyglot

English (native)
French (none)
Spanish (beginner)
German (intermediate)
Polish (beginner)
Latin (beginner)
Greek (none)
Hebrew (intermediate)
Arabic (beginner)

The question is.. whether to learn them concurrently, or one at a time??

Don’t think this is happening somehow! OK… revised plan..

• latin and german until the end of the year
• decide what to learn after that, at the time!

Possibly Shona and Polish.

I need a language proficiency for Grad studies and I am interested in the following:

Hebrew
Greek
Latin
Arabic
Turkish
French

French will likely be my modern language. In the mean time, I have been attending tutoring sessions for Hebrew. I will need to pass proficiency exams in both during Grad school.

On my list:
HIndi
Chinese
Japanese
Russian

I know a little bit of Hebrew, but I want to be a fluent polyglot, not “a person who knows a little bit in a lot of languages.” I want to know – in depth – the language and history, etc etc. Not just of Hebrew.

My main language goals:
Hebrew
Arabic
Spanish
Swedish

Because I already know what the word means.

I want to learn:

Spanish (studied for years, but I need to keep up with it)
Italian (currently earning a minor in, plan on studying in Italy)
Finnish
Georgian
Russian
Scottish Gaelic (I have dabbled in it)
French (again, dabbled before a trip to Paris)
Turkish
the list is ever growing…

I’m a native portuguese speaker. I can keep a conversation in english and spanish, and I know enough of italian and french to communicate.

Let’s say (for the moment) that I’m taking my year-by-year plan to become a polyglot (hehe) seriously. That would mean that this academic year (ending august 2009) I need to finish learning Latin, and brush up and go further with German.

• 39 chapters in the book
• 40 weeks from now until mid-way through August (16th)
• 1 chapter a week, to start off with!

• w/c 9.11.08, chapter 1

• 13 lessons
• 40 weeks
• 2 weeks per lesson
• other stuff later, like translating poetry
• W/c 9.11.08, chapter 1

I have studied (fully or in bits):

*German
*Latin
*Hebrew
*Spanish
*Polish
*Arabic
*Hungarian

But only German and English I can understand fairly well (or very well in the case of English :P). This year I’m concentrating on Latin and German, and next year I think I’m going to tackle ancient Greek and one other language—not sure what yet.

Perhaps I could make it a regular thing. You know, learn one or two languages a year, and make every fourth year a review year or something. How would it look—something like:

2008: Latin and German
2009: Greek and Polish
2010: Hebrew and Arabic
2011: review year
2012: French and Spanish
2013: Italian and Russian
2014: something else
2015: review year

OK, that’s probably a bit unrealistic! but hey.