I've discovered why learning multiple languages at the same time isn't the best idea in the world. First, it takes lots of time and effort. Second, it slows your progress. Third, code-mixing is incredibly infuriating. Code-mixing is, as I have recently learned, the term for when a person mixes up the words between multiple languages while attempting to code-switch. Imagine you're an English native who has decided to learn French and Italian at the same time for whatever reason. So, after studying for a period of time you have chosen to give having a conversation in French a try, but to your dismay, an acquaintance tells you that you weren't speaking pure French. In fact, you had unintentionally used a few Italian words under the premise that they were actually French words. This is code-mixing, and it sucks! What has happened is you're studying two very similar languages at the same time, and you haven't strengthened the neural pathways for either one sufficiently yet, to compensate your brain instead reaches for the nearest thing to what you're grasping for, which just so happens to be the Italian equivalent to what you want to say. In a way, you could look at it as your brain using the autofill function found in your browser's search bar.
However you choose to look at it, it sucks. Any time I attempted to speak Spanish or Portuguese, I would code-mix and begin speaking a pidgin called Portunhol. I could be understood, but I was repeatedly being corrected because of it. Eventually, I decided to watch a video of a polyglot answering the question "Should I learn multiple languages at the same time?". Her reply was more complicated than a yes or no. Her suggestion for whoever decided to learn multiple languages at the same time was to learn diverse languages to prevent code-mixing, or to reach a comfortable level of speech with a single language first before beginning another. So, I dropped Spanish and put the freed focus on Portuguese. Now I no longer have a code-mixing problem, and it shouldn't crop back up, so long as I strengthen my neural pathways for Portuguese. Once I reach a comfortable level of speaking Portuguese, I will slowly start picking Spanish back up. My suggestion, for anyone else with this problem, is to do what I have done or to switch to two different languages. I know, I know. I said in an earlier post that if you're going to learn multiple languages, you should learn languages that are similar for multiple reasons, and that still stands. Just don't immediately begin learning your target languages at the same time! Chances are it will end with code-mixing and frustrate you TO. NO. END! Now, I know some of you are thinking "But, Caelan, I'm not like you. I can do this, no problem." which is fine. Eu não dou uma merda. You can do whatever you want. If, you think you can learn two romance languages at the same time, then feel free to do so. You're not the people for whom I wrote this post. I wrote it for everyone who's looking for advice on learning a foreign language, with as few complications as possible. To those people, I wish luck on their language learning journey and bid farewell for now. Tchau!
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