Hello, Aubrey. How's your day going today? I'm great. Lindsay, how are you? Good. We are here

on a sassy Saturday. So, loving that. Middle of the summer. What an exciting time, right? Right. I

know. And I am excited about this question that a listener sent in about learning multiple languages

at the same time. And I'm curious, Lindsay, I know that you have learned multiple languages. Yes. So,

was it difficult to start learning Arabic after studying, you know, Spanish, Japanese, and French?

It was actually Arabic is a really hard language to learn. Um, and I didn't make it past the very

beginner like you know enough to talk to a taxi driver, negotiate a little bit in Arabic,

but it was because my mental models were kind of set up my mental models were set up similar

for Spanish and French versus Japanese. So now I had to add a third mental model for Arabic

um in terms of the writing and just what I expected to happen and to come next like

anticipating is part of language. What word do you think should come next or how should this

word sound or how should I write this? There are scripts we have, right? I have a feeling a lot of

our listeners are in this same boat where English is a second or third or even fourth language

and you're trying to keep up with these other languages. This has been for me learning Spanish,

I have really let my French go by the wayside a little bit. I have to continually keep French

at the forefront as well. I don't want to lose it. So, I'm excited to answer the question that we got

today to dive into some tips for anyone out there who is learning multiple languages. Yeah. So,

I'm going to read the listener question. So, here it is. Hello, I'm one of your listeners of

your podcast. This is from Anton, by the way. I've been learning English for seven years. According

to your test and a few others, my level is B2. I can understand native speakers as well as most TV

series and YouTube. I think I have C1 listening skills. Speaking is a problem, though. It's worse

than B2. I'm thinking of learning Spanish. I do a lot of listening in English literally every day.

If I do the same with Spanish, will it affect my English? I hope I'm able to take everything

in. However, I'm 43 years old and my main goal is English. Thank you. I appreciate your work. Very

helpful for self-taught learners like me. Best regards, Anton. That's great. That's such a great

question. Thank you for listening, for sending in the question, Anton. Lindsay and I are both right

there with you. And I think a lot of our listeners are too. We've wanted to pick up other languages,

but we do worry sometimes that it will affect the other languages that we have tried to master

because it's it's an addictive feeling. It's a really powerful and amazing feeling when you can

have a true conversation with someone in another language, that connection. And so we want that in

another language and another one, right? Um but we do worry that if I if I switch to this one,

am I going to lose all the work I've done with this other one? Exactly. Okay. So, I'm excited

to dive into this. We did some research here to understand, you know, what happens to our

brains when we're learning two languages and we're also going to share tips that will help you learn

another language without hurting your English. And so, we looked into the research came from um

Tinguan in the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. That's a big word.

Bilingualism. This was published back in January of 2020. What did they find in that journal?

Yes. So, first of all, learning more than one language does not hurt your English abilities

and that learning multiple languages actually strengthens your working memory. And I can really