Something that I couldn't have imagined has happened... I've learned more Japanese than Spanish, and now I find it hard to learn new Spanish words and grammatical concepts.

I've had a lot of experience with Spanish growing up; a lot of my friends spoke it, took Spanish in school, I would hear it at work, and I even picked up a few words and phrases there and would use them regularly.

I began casually studying it a few months ago with the intent of teaching my soon-to-be-born daughter some Spanish. I also began seriously (and I mean seriously) studying Japanese for some future plans.

I'm remember everything from Japanese - from the vocabulary, verb forms, particles, even writing kanji! Once I see the word, write it a few times, perfect the stoke order, it's locked in, and it only takes a couple of minutes per word. I've learned around 700 words just this month by doing this.

Spanish... I can read a word over and over, write it over and over, and it's forgotten after a few hours of studying. I'll remember the word if I hear it, but I can't recall them on command like I do with Japanese.

At this point, I know more Japanese than I do Spanish. I've been using Anki along with various auxiliary methods to absorb the language and it's structure, but tonight, I tried using the same method for Spanish, and I didn't feel the same "learning juices" flowing. Like, as soon as I moved onto a new word, I felt it all slipping away.

And don't get me started on verbs. With Japanese, I remember the rules (that I've studied) and how the words change, but with Spanish, it's like... another language. I haven't gotten the same "ah-ha!" moments.

When I was casually learning Spanish, I was doing so via duolingo and watching TV in Spanish. I feel like that was more productive, but I couldn't do it the same way with Japanese, which is why I moved to anki. And found great success. I thought that I could do Spanish that way too and be on my way to being a full fledged polyglot! But, it doesn't seem like it's going to be as simple as that.

Has anyone else who have studied multiple languages found that they can't learn one language using the same methods that they learn another?

submitted by /u/TopMindOfR3ddit
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