THREE LANGUAGES AT ONCE
Is it possible to learn three languages from scratch simultaneously?
With this experiment I want to show that the brain is capable of learning at any age — even three languages at once — if we respect its natural process: start exclusively with sounds.
The river and the little fish
A baby does not study grammar. First it accustoms its ear to a «river» of sounds where it cannot tell where one word begins and another ends. Little by little its brain finds patterns and begins to recognize «little fish» in that river: isolated words that at first it does not know the meaning of, but that it manages to identify.
My methodology for this challenge:
- Passive sound immersion: I will listen to radio in Chinese, Russian and Greek every day, taking advantage of any free moment (walks, shopping, chores), up to 2 hours in total.
- No pressure: At first I will understand nothing. I will simply let the sound accompany me.
- Pattern identification: I trust that my ear will discover those «little fish» by context or similarity.
- Technological support: Unlike a baby, I will use AI to check specific doubts about meaning or writing once a pattern is established.
The plan
During the first weeks I will limit myself to listening, until the continuous flow of sounds begins to fragment and I can recognize isolated words. At that point I will begin to mimic them, even if I still do not know their meaning. In parallel I will ask the AI about the words I clearly recognize, and later I will incorporate the 100, 200 and 500 most frequent words, along with everyday expressions. I trust that both paths — continued exposure and high-frequency vocabulary — will converge and produce a succession of small «aha» effects, in which what I hear finally begins to make sense and motivate me (more).
My goal is to demonstrate that, after a few months, the brain will have completed its auditory statistical phase and, using the most common vocabulary and phrases I find online, I will be able to manage minimally in the three languages.
I use the radio for the great variety of voices, accents, genres, ages, volumes, topics, contexts and formats it offers in short lapses. An ear faced with that great variety will be better trained than one used to hearing only one or a few voices.
EXPERIMENT LOGBOOK
Week 29.06.-05.07.26:
This week I started looking for beginner videos in the three languages. As I expected, they seem boring and slow, as if made for people with comprehension problems or cognitive limitations. After being exposed for more than three weeks to all the sounds of each language and, as I mentioned, starting to consult the AI, all of that has allowed me to learn to read in Russian and Greek almost without realizing it, simply by using them — like how one used to memorize phone numbers. I have also started with Chinese writing, which is a whole other world, like an alien code. Chinese is a tonal language (a syllable can have up to five meanings depending on the tone), so I have begun practicing tones. There is plenty of material online about it. Still, every new Chinese listening feels as if the announcers tried to invent new sounds just to intimidate me. In Greek, on the other hand, I still cannot identify a distinctive feature that makes it recognizable, but I sense that it exists. In Russian I have identified particular sounds that I cannot yet reproduce fully. I hope to achieve that in the coming weeks (or months). I must also note a dip in motivation these days. Fortunately, I know this pattern and I will not be fooled. I imagine the brain, knowing that reconfiguring itself will not be easy, tries to discourage you. Or maybe it is testing you: if you persist, it understands the task is relevant and continues; if not, it was mostly in vain. I won’t give up and will continue as planned: listening to the radio at least two hours in total per day (sometimes more in one language than another) and continuing to check with the AI the words I recognize. Next week I plan to start watching videos and listening to radio programs whose context I know in advance so I can prepare the appropriate vocabulary. I imagine it will be exciting: a big leap compared to previous weeks.
Week 22.-28.06.2026:
Although I still understand almost nothing of Chinese, I am beginning to feel auditorily comfortable, as I believe I can recognize most words. It is such a feeling that I think I will soon be able to mimic all the sounds. I have tried this in Russian and Greek and plan to do it more often in the coming weeks. From about the second week I began checking with the AI the words I thought I recognized. I can currently recognize several dozen words per day in Greek and Russian. In Chinese, the first word I isolated was «coffee». Luckily, shortly after I recognized 谢谢 (xièxiè, ‘thank you’), which I now hear everywhere. I also notice the big differences I perceive between Chinese, Greek and Russian speakers, especially among female presenters. Russian women sound sometimes fearful or oppressed, as if they had lived through traumas. Chinese women sound argumentative, able to impose their ideas and topics, while Greek women seem to enjoy life carefreely and express it in their voices. Russian male presenters, for their part, sound monotonous or oppressed, as if someone were constantly behind them controlling what is said. It is rare to hear laughter on Russian radio, unlike in Chinese radio where I often detect a certain arrogant masculinity (often a sign of fear), which women seem to compensate for.
Week 15.-21.06.2026:
Why did I choose radio in the experiment to accustom the ear to the new sounds of Chinese, Greek and Russian? I often recommend podcasts to my students. However, I have noticed that radio offers a much greater variety of voices, topics, tones and context changes in a short time, which makes everything more ‘exciting’. And when an event is emotionally charged, the brain interprets it as vital and prioritizes its storage in memory. Perhaps the most difficult part of this phase, especially with Chinese, is that I still do not recognize the contexts. It is not the same, for example, to know they are talking about the weather as to not know at all what they are talking about. Knowing they are talking about the weather makes it easier to fish out a term related to temperature, rain or degrees. In Chinese, however, that is not yet possible. The good thing is that it forces me to concentrate only on the sounds, which is the main idea of this phase: to become so familiar with the sounds of each language that none of them feel strange anymore.
Week 08.-14.06.2026:
In Greek and Russian the «little fish» begin to appear sporadically and the murmur of each language becomes clearer. In Chinese, however, it remains almost a closed chest. While listening to Russian I noticed that the word ‘pogoda’ repeated every hour, and the AI told me that Погода means ‘current weather’. I also begin to recognize other recurring elements: news broadcasts and their segments, for example. By querying the AI I have, without intending to, almost casually learned to read Cyrillic and Greek — they are actually quite similar.
Week 01.-07.06.2026:
As I expected, my ear initially perceives in each language only a stream or flow that runs more or less compactly, without internal subdivisions except at the beginning and end of presenters’ interventions. Fortunately, this happened to me long ago with Italian: a colleague talked non-stop during breaks thinking I understood, but I could hardly make out ‘pizza’, ‘pasta’ and ‘ristorante’. Soon that changed. In this case I know it will not be so easy, because Italian is very similar to Spanish. Still, in the first week I could already recognize several Greek words, because they are also used in our language. Besides, I have no problem hearing three completely new languages throughout the day, even though I live in Germany, at home we speak Spanish and I also have students whom I train to be fluent in American English. I think it’s obvious: the brain cannot know that the new sounds belong to three different languages; languages have always adopted new sounds, a phenomenon that I imagine will increase with globalization.