Inside the Mind of a Language Learner
Constantly thinking about words in your target language? Forgetting words in your native language? The mind of a language learner is full of new vocabulary and word order.
What is important here is not how language learners think, but their open mindset that allows them to learn a language. Like many things in life, you need to try to remove the mental blocks that stop you from reaching your goals. If your goal is to learn Spanish, you need to be truly open to the idea. It does not help to start by thinking that it is “too hard” or that you “don’t have time”. You have to figure out why you want to learn a language.
Find your why.
At the basics, language learning is “learning new words for the same thing.” It allows you to communicate with more people and have new experiences. You have to figure out your personal WHY. Why are you interested in learning a language? Is it due to heritage? Will it make you advance in your job? Do you love the culture? You really need to find a motivating factor to help your brain realize why you want to learn a language.
Knowing multiple languages at once.
Once you learn your first foreign language, you get all the key grammar components that allow you to have the knowledge to apply them to other languages. This at least works for some languages in the same “family”. For example, knowing the grammar of Spanish helps when trying to know the grammar of French or Italian. Your mind now has the knowledge of the grammar to apply to learn new languages. Even outside the same language “families” all languages have nouns and verbs, so the basics of grammar that are now known in your brain will help you to learn other languages.
Yes, the mind of a language learner can get messy: you will forget some words, stumble through sentences, and mix up grammar. Anyone’s mind could be like that though, so you might as well try to learn a new language, which will allow you to gain much more knowledge than just “learning news words for the same thing.”