can you learn and master four languages in less than five years?

Answer 1

It depends on several factors. Four languages which are linguistic sisters, e.g. the Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian), will have so many similarities that this will speed up learning (but may lead to a few confusions with 'false friends'). If the languages are from the same family as your first language ("mother tongue") you will find it easier, hence faster, than if they are from other families. English is an Indo-European language and you will find more cognates to help you learn e.g. German or Greek than you will in e.g. Japanese or Arabic. It also depends on where you live, obviously if you live in the country whose language you are learning this will give you much more input and opportunities to practise than if you are attending classes for six hours a week. Finally, it is much easier for small children, e.g. parents of two different languages, nanny or grandparent of a third, living in a country where a fourth language is spoken. Particularly if you are male, after puberty the hemispheres of the brain lateralise and it is rare to master the phonology of new languages. You also need to define 'master', it could be argued that many people don't even fully master their first language, just look at some of the posts here ;-)
As a child, living in the country where each language was spoken, I learnt one new Indo-European language every two years.

Answer 2

eh.. it depends...
that's what i'm trying to do: i speak english and french fluently but i still have lessons at my level at school for both, and in addition, i've been learning german for the past 3 years, and italien for the past 1 year. it's really hard to keep up with all of them!
but maybe that's because i'm not a brain at school; one of my cousins speaks italien and german fluently and since he started middle school (he is now end of high school) started english and french and i can tell you, he is incredible he speaks both languages extremely well. but maybe that's an excepiton...
how old are you anyway? do you mean learn 4 languages from scratch in 4 years? or do you already speak 2 languages and you wanna learn 4 languages english included?? dôn't really understand you there..

Answer 3

yea
you can master even japanese

children first learn 'hiragana' and 'katakana' and are gradually introduced to 'kanji'. there aremore than 60,000 kanji, but most books and newspapers use only 1,850kanji.
you better study 'hiragana' and 'katakana' first.
then start 'kanji'
each represents the same 47 syllables, and the alphabets are used together with kanji in writing modern japanese.
my husband mastered 'hiragana' and 'kanji' in 2 weeks.
he didnt speak japanese when he came to japan. but he can speak fluently now.
you can do it too !

Answer 4

personally no but i can speak two languages and am learning a third. i guess it helps to be some kind of super genius, which i am not. :P

Answer 5

yes, that what european schools teach, i took english, french, and latin in school for several years, and privately learned spanish in less than 5 years.

Answer 6

Yes.

Answer 7

With a German teacher like mine. Yes you can.

Answer 8

4 ......no I did 2 though

Answer 9

WITH ROSETTA STONE . YES.