fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2749 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2749 ⌋

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Are you sometimes influenced by your first language when you communicate in another language? Do you have moments when you go "Shit, I totally forgot my native tongue"?

Like I am German and sometimes when I write in English I catch myself capitalizing random nouns. Or as I am spending more and more time on the internet communicating in English, I sometimes can't think of the appropriate German vocabulary when talking to my friends in person. Or the grammar will come out completely wrong because I have two ways of expressing myself in my head.

I grew up bilingual but pretty much speak only in English these days. A while ago I panicked because I forgot how to say "bucket" in French and was like: "OH MY GOD. WHAT IS IT? IT'S NOT UN BOUQUET."

sure, all the time. When I was living in Japan I would have weird panicky moments where I couldn't remember how to English at all. Back in America, I sometimes literally can't think of a way to describe something without using a Japanese word.

Now that I'm learning Spanish for my job, I tend to get Spanish and Japanese tangled up a lot when I speak.

Adding a third language just makes everything worse. When I had to learn French in school, I just couldn't get the English voice in my head to shut up.
Also idioms are the worst because I think of the perfect idiom in the language I'm not currently using all the time.

Oh man I have this problem all the time. So many times I have forgotten the English word for things and could only remember the Japanese one.

All of those. And then there are times I speak in a mix or completely in a different language than intended and only notice when people blank stare at me or point it out.

Sort of? I mean, the two languages are both really common here so if it's a common word that you can't remember, you can usually use it from the other language and be understood even if you do get odd looks for it.

My friends always look at me like I'm completely nuts when I use an English word. But then again I do think the trend to replace perfectly fine words with English ones to sound more intellectual/cool/whatever is seriously annoying.

That's not exactly the case here. I mean, where I live 2/3rds of the population is bilingual English/Spanish and both languages are used regularly enough that it's not all that uncommon to hear words being used interchangeably during the course of a conversation*. It's just when it's a really common word that it gets a little weird since you wouldn't normally switch between the languages to say something like say...water.

So doing that might get you an odd look, but that would be about it.

*Tbf, there's also a pidgin of the two languages so that might also be a large part of why that happens.

Once I had spent a long time reading in English on the net while playing Pokemon on the DS in my native tongue and when I looked down at my game I literally couldn't read what the text said. It was like staring at hieroglyphics. Only lasted a second or so but I remember thinking "that's got to be what it feels like to be illiterate."

Oh yeah. I'm BARELY fluent in Korean, and yet I still code-switch all the time. "God, it's so chupta out here. Why does the baram have to be so strong???"

I'm not very multilingual because my French and German are both horrible, but I do catch myself switching unintentionally between them when I'm practicing forming sentences.

Yes and no.

The thing is my second language is actually my primary language, so that makes it complicated. I'm used to tone switching a lot, and I do it on almost a daily basis. So sometimes there's this sentence and one word in another language.

I also sometimes "translate" expressions from one language that don't really exist in the other.

I've been in situations where I was in mixed company and speaking 4 different languages with people at the same table and at some point my brain just goes "nope" and I start babbling.

What also gets confusing is that different words can have different genders in different languages.

It's also funny to do grammatical cases on words in languages that don't have them. And yes I do that (but few people can appreciate it).

I seem to be able to learn a language reliably well. When I go to use it, I start using another language -- like speaking Japanese when I want Spanish, or Italian when I want German. It's so frustrating. And I can't write well in ANY of them, so... yea, that's always fun. Fortunately, it's only to be a little more helpful in retail, so no big deal yet.

[ SECRET POST #2749 ]

Multilingual people

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