Learning a language is by no means an easy thing to do. Quite often, you will experience words, sounds, grammars, and nuances that are different from what you are normally used to in your native languages. And so, there is a split opinion on whether or not it is advisable to learn multiple languages at once. The theory behind the camp against learning multiple languages simultaneously is that, language learning is dependent on limited resources (like time). Learning multiple languages at once would dilute this limited amount of resources, which would lower the efficiency of learning either language. This theory is called Complex Dynamic Systems Theory.

But there are several arguments for learning multiple languages at once, more so when these languages are closely related to one another. Additionally, there are some studies assessing the efficacy of multiple languages at the same time. For one, there is a 2020 publication that suggested that learning multiple languages (well, 2 in this study) simultaneously does not hinder the development of either language. Other arguments may also include being able to compare across different languages one is learning, especially when these languages are related to one another, drawing some patterns that could help when learning these languages. Another piece of advise a learner might also encounter is to learn one language to an intermediate level like German, before picking up the other languages that are related to it such as Dutch.

Whichever side you might pick, there are definitely resources out there that can help you pick up one, two, or multiple languages at once, and I have been recently made aware of one such book that claims to help you do so. This book is titled “Learn & Retain Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French with Spaced Repetition”, produced by ADROS VERSE Education S. R. L., a language learning company dedicated to producing books and flashcards meant to help and guide learners in their language learning journey in some of the world’s most commonly spoken and learned languages.

From the title, this book is specifically aimed at learning the main Romance languages, which are French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. And if you take a look at the front cover of the book, you will notice that the Spanish flag is used to represent Spanish, but the Brazilian flag is used to represent Portuguese instead. I have dedicated an entire essay to my opinions on using flags to represent languages, so check it out when you can. And so, before we start talking about the contents of the book and resources themselves, we have to clarify some things to set our expectations. This book is meant to guide the learner in Portuguese as it is spoken in Brazil, Spanish as it is spoken in Latin America, French as it is spoken in France, and Italian as it is spoken in Italy.

As a publication advertised to provide a “complete learning path” to the four languages with “6 levels of difficulty”, and featuring a 409-page book, my first impressions were filled with scepticism over whether or not this would live up to expectations. However, the book does not make reference to any CEFR level, that is, the Common European Framework of References for Languages, and so it does not explicitly claim that you could attain fluency or meet certain language proficiency standards (like CEFR B1 or C1) with their book alone. Additionally, the book is complemented by a set of Anki flashcards, with instructions on how to get Anki to work, and how to use Anki with the book to pick up the learner’s target language(s). More Anki flashcards can be purchased from their website, or you could create them yourself using the template given in the complementary set.

The Anki flashcards used together with this book mainly contain words to build vocabulary with, and are sorted into word classes such as verbs and adjectives, with additional sections highlighting certain word categories such as numbers and anatomy. There is also a section containing common phrases, with each flashcard containing the translation of a word or phrase in all four target languages. Anki flashcards are perhaps one of the most popular ways of building vocabulary in language learning, with a space repetition system in place to aid memory and recall. Perhaps I would dedicate a completely separate review to the Anki method some time down the road.

Looking into the book, however, my first impression was, this is dense. When presented with a book catered to learning four languages at once, one of my main concerns is how information is organised and presented in a coherent manner. Additionally, another challenge of making such a publication is striking the balance between information density and ease of use. For a book which key selling point is facilitating a comparison between four closely related languages, I would say they have found a decent balance. The four languages, where they are mentioned in a table or in separate sections under the same grammatical feature, are consistently ordered as Spanish-Portuguese-Italian-French, and this order is preserved even as language pairs are compared, such as the comparison of gustar and piacere in Spanish and Italian respectively.

These chapters are organised into six ‘difficulty levels’ from beginner to ‘fluency’, covering increasingly advanced grammatical topics in the languages the further one goes, from the basic present tense conjugation to the subjunctive tense. Overall, I am sceptical of the ‘fluency’ claim, and it did not really help once I took a closer look at the contents in that level.

Looking back at my personal learning journey in French, I realised that I have actually acquired these tenses, and other grammatical features during my beginner (for Ordinal Numbers), early intermediate (Passive Voice), and advanced intermediate stages. These generally equated from CEFR A1.2 to B2 levels, which are not quite fluency. For fluency, one would be expected to articulate and express themselves across a wide range of topics smoothly and with relative ease, almost as if they are a native speaker. This would involve understanding which grammatical functions to use, the vocabulary to recall, and discerning the nuances between these choices. As such, gunning for fluency would place less focus on attaining new grammar bits, since one would be expected to be acquainted with them earlier on, and more focus on discourse, coherence, expressions, and vocabulary. These contents under the ‘fluency’ label, personally speaking, would be better defined as ‘advanced’ for these reasons. This has made me sceptical of the ‘fluency’ part, which I would maintain in this review, though I could give a benefit of the doubt when it comes to the flashcard set for this level, which is outside of the scope of the review.

On top of this, there are grammatical ‘cheat sheets’ in the appendix, separated by language, mainly to help with discerning conjugation patterns for verbs and nouns. Made available in colour, perhaps the only colour pages in the book other than the cover page, these pages provide a nice visual summary of important grammar patterns a learner is most likely going to encounter.

Taking a further look into the book, it seems that the book essentially functions as a grammar manual, while the Anki flashcards is meant to be a vocabulary companion which sort of follows the structure of the book. I have tried using the book and the flashcards together to get the complete user experience, and I think how these two complement each other is pretty much as decent as it gets. While the book does not exactly signpost you to the exact set of flashcards to use, the flashcard sets are labeled with the relevant section header in the book chapter. Since the book primarily focuses on the grammar, the order of vocabulary flashcard sets to complete are sort of up to the user to decide.

It does however, miss certain colloquial things which would deviate from the standard grammar. For instance, in French, the grammatically recognised way to form the negative is to use the ne … pas structure. However, in spoken French, it is quite common to simply drop the ne, and use … pas instead. This leads to one hearing sentences or phrases such as je sais pas (I don’t know) in everyday speech, compared to je ne sais pas in text, or more formal contexts such as schools and work. I believe that there are also more deviations from standard grammar in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, though this construction in French is perhaps the one I remember the most. Factoring these in would have presented with more organisational issues though, so perhaps it is better to focus on the standard grammars.

Fortunately, if learning four languages at once is not really up your alley, there are similar products made to teach these languages separately, or as pairs (Spanish and Portuguese, and French and Italian). In my opinion however, the silver lining of this very book (and complementary Anki flashcard set) is that it allows comparison of language features across the four most commonly learned Romance languages, such as word forms, suffixes, particles, and rules. As such, I would particularly recommend this book for the language enthusiasts out there who enjoy picking out patterns not only within languages, but also between closely related languages.

Link to the book

I think I would be doing away with the numerical system of rating things, and instead focus on providing a summary of the good and the bad, preserving the table format, with whom I think I could recommend the method to, if I could give a recommendation, such as the paragraph above.

The good	The not-as-good
Decent balance between organisation of content and content density	I am generally sceptical over the claim of attaining fluency from this book (and flashcards)
Decent complementation between the book and the flashcard set	[Understandable] Omission of cases where notable colloquial speech deviate from standard grammar
Overall unique characteristic of the book is achieved, i.e. the comparison between four closely related languages