Learning all four main Romance languages AT ONCE?

4 years ago

(This article was copy and pasted, i just found it interesting and thought we could create some chatter. :) )

So I'd recently seen Mikhail Petrunin's recent book entitled "Comparative Grammar of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French" which is all about simultaneous multilingual language acquisition (the strap-line being 'learn and compare 4 languages simultaneously'), and it looked really interesting. It's a big one, with 800 or so pages.
The Author describes how its usage can be greatly beneficial for studying and eventually acquiring all these languages at the same time, a resource he wishes he had access to when he was first learning them all.
This looks like a really interesting and exciting thing, and I can't wait to firstly get to grips with how to pronounce all the different languages well, then dive into this huge book and attempt to get at least a rudimentary understanding of each of these languages over time (focusing on some a bit more than others maybe?).
The only issue, and why i'm writing this post, is that obviously it's not usually recommended that one studies more than one language at a time, ESPECIALLY when there is a significant degree of mutual intelligibility between them - which in this case there is an abundance of.
I can see the use for those who already can use one or more of these languages well to look at similarities and differences in depth - while perhaps picking up a bit of a new lang at the same time, but will it be too hard and potentially damaging for a beginner to them all (not 100% beginner in french - been studying it on the side alongside german for the past month or two but mostly sticking to german which i've been doing for 5 months now and am relatively comfortable with).
My question is this: Despite how exciting this books seems, is it really a good idea at all to embark on learning all four of these languages (focusing on grammar cos it's interesting) at once, or could it confuse my brain for years to come if it fails and I then go on to try learning them all individually later on? Some of you will have much greater knowledge than me on this matter, and tips etc maybe for how to go about this challenge if it does seem plausible, so any advice would be grreatly appreciated, danke | merci | thanks


What do you all think? I would love to hear personal thought and stories! I have personally opinions on this matter as sell, but I would first like to hear from you all! 

Thank you all! Gracias a ustedes! obrigado a todos por suas opiniões! Merci beaucoup à tous!