549: Learning 2 languages together? Don't make this mistake

Now, look, my line here is very simple.

I've always said the same thing.

I've always found the same thing in all the different languages I've learned.

Everybody I know who learns lots of languages says the same thing.

So I think this is going to be just a case of, like, just trust me on this, OK? And that is that once you get your language to a B2 level, there's upper intermediate level, then you are unlikely to ever forget it.

Every language, I've learned eight languages, every language I've learned to a B2 level or above, I can get kind of rusty, but it's always still there to be reactivated within a day or two, sometimes in 15 minutes or so.

On the flip side, every language where I've only got up to an A2 or a B1 level, so a kind of low intermediate level, as soon as I've stopped learning it and I kind of go off, get on with my life, I forget the language.

Sometimes it's in three months, six months, 12 months, but I forget it.

So what is B2 level? B2 level is what I call the pub test.

What's the pub test? The pub test says, can I go to a pub sit down with someone that I just meet for the first time, be here in hand, have a conversation about something, just shoot the breeze, chat about stuff, and both of us can enjoy the conversation on a human level without either of us having to overly slow down in order to accommodate the other person.

In other words, can we just be normal in a pub chatting with someone? If you can do that, you're at B2 level.

That's the pub test and it's a pretty good shorthand for when you actually get to the kind of level where you're not going to forget the language.

And I think the reason is, I'm no neuroscientist, but I think at that point, when you can speak the language that well, there's just something that happened in your brain where your brain has adapted to the language and it knows it at a good enough level to mean that it's just not going to stop.

And this is found in research as well.

So there's a classic longitudinal study by Baric 1984, this was done, which found that learners who achieve high proficiency lose the most in the first five years or so after the end of learning, but then proficiency stabilizes for decades into what he calls perma-store.

And perma-store is like long-term retention of core knowledge.

And the key thing here is that these are learners that achieve high proficiency, which means you get to that good level.

You will learn, you will lose or forget a little bit in the first few years, which is stuff that maybe you haven't internalized quite so much, but then everything else enters this perma, wonderful word isn't it, perma store, where it will just stay in your long-term memory and you won't forget it.

You know, I'm not a scientist.

I can't tell you why this happens.

I'm just going to say that if you are at this point where you feel that you really want to learn another language, but you're not at B2 yet, I would say, honestly, it's best just to keep going to get to that B2 level and to really go out and use the language a little bit.

Because having put in all the work that you've obviously put in to get to this level, It'll be a bit of a shame to lose it again just because, you know, for the sake of another few months of work.