Well of course I wouldn't be learning them each and every day - there simply isn't that much time. It'd most probably be 3 or 4 hours per language per week, if not 2-3 hours a week for each. Regardless, I think that should be relatively sufficient for now. I don't expect to gain advanced fluency in them but so long as I reach a stage in which I can talk about everyday life subjects confidently, then I'm happy.

¡Hola! Me llamo Chung y tengo dieciocho años. Mi cumpleaño es el doce de septiembre. Hoy es sábado, el veinticinco de julio 2009. En Australia llueve y hace frio. Lol and that´s pretty much how far I´m at with Spanish. Ah well, that´s a start.

That's a problem. You really should study a language every day in order to develop.


How cold does it actually get in Australia? It being in the Southern Hemisphere and all...

I'm learning Spanish too - (it's "cumpleaños" and "frío" I think). I'm currently also learning Italian and so far, no trouble in mixing them - but more of a beginner in Italian. It even helps me a lot because I can guess words in Italian from my Spanish knowledge.



WTS - Spanish and Portuguese seem too similar to be learning at the same level - However I've never tried Portuguese.

Yes, you're right. not "ambitious", but confusing. Especially between Spanish and Portuguese.
Italian is more different (I'm italian) and I assure you it's another "subject"...just be careful with the Iberian languages not to have a chaos in your mind

Yes, Italian is very different from Portuguese and Spanish in both speech and writing. I can't really understand articles in the Italian Wikipedia in the way I can understand Portuguese Wikipedia's...

Same here.
On a side note, what if there was an Italian colony in the New World? Let's say the Italians brought slaves from Africa just like the other Europeans did. Now lets say this colony eventually got its independence from Italy. What kind of Italian would they speak? I guess it would depend on which region of Italy the Italian conquerors would have come from.

I don't want to discourage you but starting three new languages at the same time might be a little much. It might be a better idea to stagger them (ie: start learning one now and in a year another, while continuing with the first and then a year later start the third, while still studying the first two as well). Also, no one here can tell you exactly what would be best, we can only give you pointers. It is up to you to decide if you are motivated and, well, just plain smart enough to do it.

I would also like to comment on your choice of languages. While they are all good ones to learn and spoken over wide areas, as well as having many other non-native speakers and speakers living in communities in many countries and of course they all have great literary traditions, I wouldn't recommend learning all of them, at least not now. You see, the problem is that they all use a very similar vocabulary. Once you've learned all three you might look back and think you wasted your time learning slight phonetic and orthographic variations on the same words. This may in fact look like a good thing but keep in mind that, if you say learn Italian and Spanish, you'd find it not to hard to decipher signs and many other forms of written Portuguese. For this reason I do not think it would be a good idea to learn such a small set of languages when the Indo-European family is so much more diverse and that's not to say how small the Italic sub-group is when compared to all languages that are alive today.

But like I said at the beginning of my post, ultimately its up to you!