The temptation to learn an easier language is so real.

At the begging of the year, I starting messing around with a bit of Japanese. It's been a little wonky, mostly from not committing to one resource. There's no real urgency, which is fine. I'm just learning for fun. It's obviously going to take a long time, but Japanese culture and media is dope and, imo, worth the time.

HOWEVER, wouldn't it be great to just kinda, you know, scoop up another language real quick? Knowing Spanish already, it's really tempting to dive into another Romance language. I already have my preferred resource with Assimil and I could even study in Spanish as well. If I did just one Assimil French lesson a day, I'd finish both the "With Ease" and "Using" series in a little over five months. Heck, I studied a bit of French a few years ago. Maybe with that and my knowledge of Spanish, I could do two lessons a day and finish in under three months! What's not to like?

But this is the same kind of thinking I did before I ever dipped my toes in the language learning pool in the first place and it lead me to reading a lot about languages rather than learning one for a long time. A lot of thinking and planning, a lot of distraction, and little action or commitment. But then again, maybe there is something to this line of thinking. Let's say I put Japanese on hold for just six months and really committed to learning French or Italian. Yes, I'm putting off Japanese, a language/culture I do have a genuine, intense interest in, but in doing so I'd gain a really meaningful grounding in another culture I'm interested in as well. It makes sense, but I also see the ouroboros-like thinking going on.

If you know that you have a set number of languages that you want to learn, does the time it would take/ease to learn them factor into the order in which you tackle them?

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