Below is an approach that is pretty weird, and is probably laughable to some people. But, it's working for me, and I've never heard of this before, so I decided to share.
Background
When I was little, I used to pretend I was some kind of spy that could speak all languages.
A few decades past since then, and I've learned, speaking a new language is not as easy as it sounds.
I've started learning plenty of languages. Spanish, German, Esperanto, Hebrew, Chinese... The list goes on and on.
But as soon as I started learning one, I'd keep getting thoughts: why this language? Why not literally anything else?
This would continue to happen, regardless of my reasons for starting.
I've tried many different tools for learning. Rosetta Stone, Duolingo, various audio recordings, flashcards, and watching movies/TV in the language.
The results were always the same: I'd remember a few words/phrases from the language, and that's all.
With my years of learning, I can probably ask "how are you?" in most languages, and "where is the bathroom?" in a few.
I have always been better at Math/Science than Literature/History. I preferred finding patterns over diving into stories.
Although I keep gravitating towards language learning, I can't help but feeling that the learning process always feels like diving deep into the story of that language/culture.
The general method I've heard of becoming fluent in a language, basically involves "falling in love" with the it, enough to want to learn it for many years.
This has slowly brought me to the conclusion that I'll never become fluent in another language...
Sure, I might think a language is "prettier", or some culture is some way "better", but that is never enough for me to marry it.
I faced the problem, and decided to start with this assumption:
I will never become fluent
Okay, where can I go from here?
If I assume I will never become fluent, can I avoid some aspects of the language, and turn this into a pattern based experience?
Theory
Lots of languages are very similar to each-other.
Spanish and Italian, German and Dutch, Russian and Ukrainian.
Indeed, people usually avoid learning such languages at the same time, due to risk of confusing the two.
To me however, these languages are so similar.. Same grammar, same genders, similar vocalizations, it feels like a missed opportunity not to somehow learn them as the same time.
But how?
By not aiming to become fluent.
I don't need to speak in the language. I just need to understand it.
A good analog of this in English is the word Pig.
There are multiple words that basically mean "pig" - swine, hog, boar, pork
Sure, all of these words have slightly different things, but they all basically refer to the same kind of animal.
If you look up how to say "pig" any European language, you will frequently find it will sound similar to one of the English variations of the word.
I don't need to know what those languages are. Knowing the meaning to be "pig" is enough.
So, I just need to memorize all words meanings, without knowing what language they are in.
An obvious consequence of this: I will never fully speak the language
..and that is something I am completely fine with. Learning to speak any one language will take way too long to specialize in.
I would much prefer to fully understand 5 similar languages, than fully speak in only 1 language.
One main problem I have had with this plan is grammar. Some languages have extremely different grammar... simply knowing vocab words will not be enough to understand the full meaning of each sentence.
That is why learn languages under the same family. They'd normally have extremely similar grammar, gender, and vocalization.
Practice
I have one obvious bias - I was brought up learning two languages at once: English and Russian.
Comparing the European family trees, Slavic languages have separated into multiple languages at a much later time period than most other languages.
As a consequence, Slavic languages are much more similar than most other languages.
With my target being "lots of similar languages", the Slavic family seemed the most obvious solution.
I am learning 9 languages at once:
Belarusian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Macedonian, Serbian, and Slovenian
With Macedonian, Serbian, and Slovenian, I also basically get Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin for free.
Main issue with Slavic languages: The spelling may be significantly different. Not only because they vary between Cyrillic and Latin letters, but also because letters sound differently in different languages. (The Russian "е" makes a sound like yes, while the Ukrainian "е" makes a sound like test.)
To combat this problem, I've completely simplified the process, and removed text all-together. I just listen to recording people talk in their native language.
I am not learning how to read or write. I am only learning how to listen and understand.
50languages has a good set of audio starting phrases / vocabulary, all provided for free.
I copied audio of vocabulary from that site, into Anki, an open source spaced repetition flashcard program.
On the "front" of the flashcard, I just include the audio of the word. On the "back" is the English translation.
A problem arises when same sounding word means different things in different languages.
A recent example for me is the Czech word for chicken vs the Macedonian word for dog, both sounding like "Kooch-e".
To combat this, in addition to the audio recording, I also write out the name language on the card, to help me distinguish each.
I have started this about a month ago, and I am really enjoying it.
I am learning about 7 new words, in the all languages, every day. I'm experimenting with adding even more words per day.
My retention rate is really high. Partly because I already know Russian, and partly because of the repetition of basically the same word being said in different languages. That along with Anki's spaced repetition algorithm, is making this very easy to retain.
Conclusion
I don't have problematic thoughts "maybe I should be learning some other language?" At most, I have thoughts about rating which of the Slavic languages I think is best, which keeps varying back and forth.
I am very engaged with the learning process. I find it pretty awesome I am learning 9+ languages, very quickly.
I actually feel my Russian is improving. Similar to how in English "pig" can also be called "swine". Same thing in Russian. I am learning alternative rarer, but still valid, words that can be used in the language.
It almost feels like I am doing some kind of linguistic science - Seeing how words are similar between the languages. I get to observe how the same word gets changed among the languages. This helps me keep being engaged in this "pattern finding" format. Rather than diving into a specific culture, I am analyzing the similarities between multiple languages.
I'm learning the words so fast, I am actually afraid I'll soon be running out of vocab words from 50languages, and will need to find some other source of audio recordings, especially for those rarer languages like Macedonian and Slovenian.
Overall, this feels awesome to me. Although I will never be fluent in these languages, I really feel like I am having significant progress learning them.
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from Тавтай морилогтун | Languagelearning http://bit.ly/2H8W9zr
via Learn Online English Speaking
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