The Polyglot’s Guide to Learning Your First 14+ Languages

TL;DR: Refocus the goal of language learning into developing one’s language learning ability. This will in turn grant the learner increased confidence and ease with studying desired language, while increasing exposure to new languages.

This is a guide written for English speakers (especially monolingual) interested in learning many languages quickly. The number one advantage to learning a new language is already having mastered multiple other languages, even better if some of them share the same linguistic family. You notice patterns quicker, understand grammar intuitively, retain words faster, connect etymologies, and know what study methods work for you.

I want to be clear that this is not a guide about “collecting languages.” Instead, we can think of each language one learns as contributing to their “language intuition,” and the best way to grow it is by having to restart language learning over and over again. Therefore, this will be a bit of an enfant terrible guide, treating languages as tools for building aptitude rather than as the cultural worlds they properly are.

This guide encourages reading first, writing second, speaking third, and listening last. While my proposal would probably upset the well-intentioned theorists of critical polyglot studies, a perspective I am wholly sympathetic to, the underlying reality is that the majority of monolingual English speakers are a) scared of language learning and b) have no idea how to learn them. The goal is to treat the underlying issue–not failing at Spanish, but rather that few people know how to learn a language.

As you will see, this guide also centers European languages. My intention is not to further amplify the prestige of West European and American languages (which are so disgustingly tied to cosmopolitan identity that rejecting their present utility would be purely performative). The goal is to position these European languages as an incredibly accessible start in order to have the necessary skills and intuition to learn any desired language independently and effectively, whether it be Chinese, Finnish, Zulu, or Arabic. You should not treat learning Dutch as purely a means to learn Dutch, but also as a means to learn how to learn a language.

Also, this goes without saying, but even learning European languages has the likely impact of decentering the way one experiences an overly Anglocentric world. While this may not be a revolutionary action, it does amplify dialogue across borders and oceans. Even if one’s intentions are impure (maybe you want to impress Norwegian oil barons), the process of learning a language always contains the seeds of humility, curiosity, and empathy. You have to be pretty extreme in your political cynicism and white supremacy to fully suppress this.

The majority of languages that people study as an adult come from the Indo-European family. This is a family includes the following extant branches:

• Albanoid
• Armenian
• Balto-Slavic
• Celtic
• Germanic
• Hellenic
• Indo-Iranian
• Italic

Some of these names are probably familiar, some not. Germanic is where English comes from and Italic is the family from which romance languages originate. The other key families from this list are Balto-Slavic (which includes Russian, Polish, and Serbo-Croatian) and Indo-Iranian (which includes Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, and Gujarati). The vast majority of English speakers want to learn languages associated with cultural capital and/or tourism (see French and Italian).

The number one determiner for success in learning a language is passion and dedication. Barring this, the other key criteria are the simplicity of its grammar and the proximity to the language(s) you already speak. Luckily, Indo-European languages are also the easiest to learn for an English speaker. Therefore, by building a strong base in both Germanic and Italic languages, you not only will have the smoothest route to building up language learning skills but also study the languages you likely want to learn.

The aspirational goal of language learning (especially in classroom settings) has always been to expose someone to another way of making sense of the world through the embodied, social practice of linguistic exchange. However, most people feel so alienated by the analytical aspects of language learning that they fail to build a meaningful connection with the culture. My sincere hope is that by intentionally centering language learning itself as the skill, that one can feel secure when engaging with the more important cultural and social features.

Routes

Today I read in over 12 languages, with at least conversational fluency in over half of them, but if I were to somehow start again from scratch, I would follow one of the following two routes to becoming a polyglot:

Route 1: Skill Building and Speed

This route prioritizes the ease of language learning starting from English in order to steadily build up confidence with Indo-European lexicons and grammar. This also is the guide route which I more strongly recommend.

Part 1. Norwegian (Bokmål) + Italian

Part 2. Danish + (Brazilian) Portuguese

Part 3. Swedish + Spanish

Part 4. German + French

Part 5. Dutch + Russian

Part 6. Romanian + Ukrainian

Part 7. Persian

Part 8. Hindi/Urdu

Explanation:

Part 1. I strongly recommend English speakers looking to master their first foreign language to begin with Norwegian Bokmål, a language literally standardized to be straightforward and accessible. Bokmål literally means “book language,” as it was a reformed literary language adopted from Danish. This should be simultaneously studied alongside Italian which has straightforward, accessible phonetics and grammar, and which also went through meaningful standardization.

Part 2. Swedish and (Brazilian) Portuguese should come next as they build extremely well off of Norwegian and Italian. I recommend Danish before Swedish because of its greater morphological compatibility with Bokmål (as it came from Danish). I recommend specifically Brazilian Portuguese before Spanish because it has easier conjugations and is more standardized than Spanish which has immense diversity across both transcontinental and transoceanic borders.

Part 3. Swedish and Spanish come next as you will be able to learn each EXTREMELY quickly by this point. Congrats, you read (or maybe even speak) in seven languages already.

Part 4. German and French will be the first languages that present significant difficulties. Both of these languages have much more extensive and irregular grammar than the previous languages, but with the etymological base you have built up, you will have to stress mostly about grammar (cases, greater conjugational complexity, additional pronouns, trickier word order) and not vocab. In both cases, the grammar will largely just be an expansion of what you have already learned.

Part 5. Having learned German, Dutch will be easy as cake, and Russian will now be much simpler because of your familiarity with grammatical cases.

Part 6. Romanian is the last romance language to learn, and is intentionally placed after Russian because of its various borrowings from Slavic languages. Ukrainian shares the majority of its vocab and grammar with Russian, and will open you up to learning West Slavic languages afterwards.

Part 7. Persian is recommended as you will have confidence in learning a new script after having studied Russian and Ukrainian, and the grammar of this language is fairly consistent with the rest of the Indo-European family. In many respects, the grammar is actually simpler than other Indo-European languages as it has no gender nor cases, and boasts fairly regular morphology.

Part 8. I last recommend learning Hindi and Urdu, which many consider to be effectively the same language written in two different scripts. The biggest barrier for this language will be new grammatical concepts like split ergativity and loads of new vocab, however for Urdu especially, much of the vocab will be similar to Persian.

Route 2: Borrowings and Centrality

This route is constructed based on the influence of language on other languages, as well as centers more popular languages as your base.

Part 1. French + German

Part 2. Norwegian + Italian

Part 3. Danish + Brazilian Portuguese

Part 4. Swedish + Spanish

Part 5. Russian + Dutch

Part 6. Romanian + Ukrainian

Part 7. Persian

Part 8. Hindi/Urdu

Explanation:

Because of the long history of imperial domination and linguistic prestige, French and German remain strong outliers from which many other languages borrow from. The rest of the list follows the format of Route 1. The disadvantage to Route 2 is that German and French are significantly more difficult grammatically than their close familial counterparts, but the silver lining is that everything else will feel easy afterwards (until you reach Russian).

Questions

Why study so many languages?

If you are reading this guide, you probably already have an initial interest in language learning. As I stated in the intro, if you have a base in quite a few “easier” languages, you will have the necessary skills to move on to more complicated languages quickly. Treat studying these first language as a skill

Why reading and not speaking?

Only a select few savants are able to maintain a high level of speaking in more than a handful of studied languages. For the majority of polyglots, people retain reading knowledge passively and only focus on speaking when they plan to travel soon to a place where the language is spoken. Reading is also much quicker to practice and you can practice it at home.

What are easy languages to learn outside of the Indo-European family if I did not want to begin with these?

In terms of ease, I would strongly recommend starting with Indonesian (Malay), Swahili, Hawaiian, Maori, Tagalog, Vietnamese (reading only) and Yoruba. I do not speak any of these languages, but they have relatively simple grammar, use the Latin alphabet, and barring Hawaiian and Maori, are widely spoken (tens of millions of speakers). If you want to learn a major world language like Arabic or Chinese, then I strongly recommend first building up skills in a much simpler language before taking these on. Arabic is hard because of a mixture of complex grammar and vocab, and Chinese is difficult because of the immense amount of Hanzi you need to learn. The hardest (but perhaps most rewarding) language I have studied is by far Japanese, as every character contains a plurality of meanings and possible pronunciations. However, I would never have been able to even know how to approach this language if not for my previous 10 languages. Even though Chinese may seem harder because of the tones, Japanese has much more complex grammar so learn Chinese first if you are on the fence. It goes without saying that Korean is easier than both Chinese and Japanese thanks to its alphabet. Knowing Korean before learning Japanese is also a huge benefit because of many shared words and grammatical forms.

Should I study Esperanto?

Absolutely. I would recommend studying Esperanto first for either route if you are willing to study a constructed language that is has a small linguistic community. Having a strong command of Esperanto grammar, roots, prefixes, and suffixes will be an immense help with learning Indo-European languages. It has entirely regular grammar and was also designed to be accessible for new learners.

The Method

Reading a languages consists of just two elements: grammar and vocab

The good news is that, while we might think of learning a language from scratch as a daunting task, there is actually a limit on the amount of “necessary” information you need to become proficient in reading.

With vocab, to feel relatively proficient you need to familiarize yourself with ˜2,000 words. At this level you should have relative ease reading everyday writing like news articles, academic writing, and TV subtitles. I have a sample of the first 2,000 words here. Study these words in any order that is most useful for you.

To read more complicated texts (e.g., literature, poetry, legal documents) efficiently you will need at least 5,000. For the next 3,000, you can either search for an official B2-C1 vocab list and work through those, or you can simply just add words to your studying as you come across them (I much prefer the latter because vocab needs to become much more specific at this point).

If you are new to a language, you might view its grammar as a collection of horribly dense arbitrary rules that only get more complicated as you progress. However, while most languages have advanced grammatical elements, 99% of what you will need can be summed up in the following list:

1. Nouns
2. Verbs (Present, Past, Future, Negation, Participles)
3. Adjectives (Comparative, Superlative, Adverbs)
4. Pronouns
5. Determiners
6. Conjunctions
7. Prepositions
8. Numerals, Dates, Time
9. Questions

THAT IS ONLY NINE THINGS AND MOST OF A LANGUAGE OPENS UP TO YOU!

and depending on the language…

1. Gender
2. Formality
3. Articles
4. Cases
5. Demonstratives
6. Passive Speech
7. Subjunctive Mood
8. Conditional Mood
9. etc.

Of course this list cannot be exhaustive, but for the majority of commonly studied languages the above elements are what you will need.

While this may seem like a lot, once you memorize the rules associated with each of these elements there will be very little more to learn to become reading proficient. I have spent thousands of hours of my life studying vocab using Anki and it has enabled me to confidently read in over 12 different languages. I currently have about 25,000 cards in my deck across my languages (not even including Russian which I read fluently in). With the three study tricks I have below, you will be able to master the majority of these in a few months.

STUDY TRICKS

(1) Study 25 Words a Day

By using a repetition-based card memorization app like Anki you can make sure that you have a good balance between learning new cards and reviewing old ones, with errors caught and fixed. When learning a new language, I like to begin with 25 words a day. This way the review portion does not become overbearing while still making massive progress. If your goal is 2,000 words, then you can reach that in just 80 days of consistent study. I have provided advanced Anki studying tips at the bottom of this page.

Anki is free to download online and costs $25 on the app store. It is a worthwhile investment to have it so easily accessible. I use it on the bus, while on walks, and when watching TV.

(2) Study by Root

Study words by shared etymology. For example, if you were studying English, you might put the words “mother,” “motherly,” and “maternal,” “motherland,” and “grandmother” together. Then, you might put “land” and “grand” as the next words in your sequence. This way you only have to learn one root and get (in this case) five words out of it. This is also helpful for studying word formations as you will quickly pick up patterns (e.g., make certain adjectives by simply adding “-ly” to the end). Even though “motherly” is not a very common word and will not be on most beginner or even intermediate vocab lists, by memorizing it you have another connection made to the word that you ultimately need to remember: mother. You should also include key phrases the word is in after you add the word. For example, with the word “corner,” you might immediately add “on the corner” as a card after. Also, this should be obvious but if the language is gendered, you should always include all common gendered variations of the term (this mostly happens for professions such as teacher).

(3) Write a Mini Textbook

Make your own mini textbook website or Google Drive folder. I use a mixture of official textbooks and AI assistance to write my mini textbooks of just the essentials I need, explained in the most immediate and logical way possible for how I understand the concept. I break each grammatical concept into one “chapter,” and create vocab lists and assignments for myself to study. Here are some screenshots from my in-progress Norwegian “textbook”:

Also, always make sure to double check AI responses to questions (it often hallucinates, especially with less commonly studied languages).

(4) Turn Grammar into Vocab

In my theory of language learning, the more we can treat grammar and vocab as simple equations of equivalence (e.g, gato = cat, -ar ending = infinitive verb form), the easier everything will be.

Allow me to elaborate. Based on the Spanish verb chart above, we can see that there is a 1 to 1 equation for how conjugation takes place. If the pronoun you want to use is yo, and the verb endings is -ar, then you know that you replace -ar with -o. I therefore create the following Anki card:

I recommend sorting your grammar cards into different decks under a “grammar tab.” Here is an example:

Additional Anki Tricks

1. think of your Anki deck as your personal dictionary. Whenever you are reading a text, always have it open in another tab so refer to, the search feature is much quicker to navigate than online dictionaries, and this way you can always check if you have seen the word before. Always add new words when you see them, even if they seem niche. Often the words you least expect are the ones that resurface again and again. You should feel a sense of ownership over the words you put in your dictionary, they are YOUR words now.

2. record your own voice saying the words when you create the vocab cards so that you have auditory alongside visual stimulus. If the language you are learning does not have standard pronunciation, then you should always confirm pronunciation either using Wiktionary.org or Forvo.com

3. one of the most useful aspects of Anki is the fields feature. When creating an Anki card, you can add fields to add additional information to the back of the card that is key for the target word or grammatical element. I have found incredibly useful application for this in

1. examples usages of the vocab or grammar
2. highlighting verb conjugations or irregular forms
3. showing verb mood (especially important for many Slavic languages)
4. showing which syllable stress falls on

4. use tags to mark words that fall into specific categories. For example, you might add an “irregular” tag to all of your irregular verbs so that you can easily check which of YOUR words fall into this category.

For more language learning tips, check out my previous article explaining why Duolingo is failing you.