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Why does language confusion happen? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3848 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes  Speaks: French | Message 1 of 9 25 April 2015 at 6:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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I've been reading on here, and one thing I've found once in awhile, is that people who speak more than one language fluently sometimes have difficulty telling the languages they know apart, I've never had that difficulty, I've always known which language I was listening to, even during the moment I described on an earlier post, which has started becoming a bit more frequent to me. Even when I randomly encounter a French speaking character in a book I am reading, I still know I am looking at French, even though I happened on it by chance. I do not plan on 100 percent fluency, just enough to be able to enjoy talking to people, and enjoying the various entertainment I've found I like. That being said, I do not speak more than one language besides English fluently, though I am at an intermediate stage in a couple. Most of the languages I am interested in have a different alphabet entirely from English. I'm new to the whole language learning thing, and have a billion questions, and try my best not to overload you all with them.
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4994 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 2 of 9 25 April 2015 at 7:14pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's probably not exactly difficulty telling them apart, but more like sometimes you don't notice if you're focusing on
the content. The prerequisite for this is you need to be able to understand both languages well, otherwise (a) it would be hard to focus exclusively on content, and (b) you would notice that you suddenly stopped or started understanding. There's lots of cool research about the surprising amount of stuff you can fail to notice when you're paying attention to something else. For example, when watching a video of a person performing a magic trick, the entire décor of the room can change, but most people won't notice. When you are talking to a stranger, the person can be switched for another stranger of the same race and gender, and many people will not notice if the new stranger continues to act in a way consistent with the content of the exchange. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Tyrion101 Senior Member United States Joined 3848 days ago 153 posts - 174 votes Speaks: French | Message 3 of 9 25 April 2015 at 10:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Interesting! I remember a Conan Doyle quote having something to do with seeing but not observing,is that what you are driving at?
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| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 4994 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 9 25 April 2015 at 10:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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That sounds like a literary mention of a similar idea. Though, could he have been referring to some people lacking
the necessary expertise to observe something? I come from a scientific perspective, where we talk about the phenomena of "change blindness" and "inattentional blindness," and the most famous of many researchers who study the topic is Dan Simons. Edited by robarb on 25 April 2015 at 10:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6844 days ago 4250 posts - 5711 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 9 26 April 2015 at 12:10am | IP Logged | ||
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I came to think of the fairly recent thread, Not know what language you're hearing.
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 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6638 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 9 26 April 2015 at 11:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion language interference occurs when you have holes in a target language and try to fill out those holes with whatever occurs in your mind. The result is confusion, but when it happen to me it doesn't feel anything like confusion, only as a shimmer of the prerunner of panick. I know which language I'm supposed to use, and I mostly also know which languages the intrusions come from. And if I don't notice the intrusions I can be confused by them.
Add to that the more or less deliberate guesses, which also may be confusing to others when they are wrong - but again: not to myself. Actually I can be speaking total nonsense, but because my guesses make sense to myself I am personally not confused at all. The other way round there may be lack of comprehension, but again confusion isn't the adequate word for it. For instance I still can't hear any consistent difference between Serbian and Croatian from a phonological point of view. But then I just try to understand what I hear without bothering to identify the language or dialect. I would speak about confusion (in the passive sense) if I thought I heard one language and suddenly realized it had been another. I can imagine situations where I was very sleepy and things like that might happen, but mostly I would know when I couldn't identify a language or dialect because of my own lack of knowledge. And then I'm not confused, but just baffled. Edited by Iversen on 26 April 2015 at 11:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4600 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 7 of 9 27 April 2015 at 1:24am | IP Logged | ||
I'd agree with this. If I'm watching a programme for its information content, then the language (assuming it's English or Italian) isn't important and doesn't always register. I don't think I've ever had the experience of watching something and then (as I'm watching) not being able to identify the language. I've certainly had the experience of discussing something I'd seen the previous day but not necessarily remembering the which language was spoken. That would be much like not being able to remember the channel on which a programme happened to be broadcast. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4468 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 8 of 9 27 April 2015 at 4:57pm | IP Logged | ||
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Another really cool but rare phenomenon is achromatopsia, which occurs after injury to (one side of) the brain that handles colour. In it people literally "see" black-and-white in one half of their visual field and normal color in the other half of visual space.
What is amazing is that people don't notice that their colour perception is screwed up. While this is is pretty counterintuitive, it makes sense once you realize that perception is not like a movie screen which you watch in the back of your head. If your brain doesn't represent something you not only don't perceive it, but you won't notice you don't perceive it. People with strokes, who often lose a part of visual field (it's like having a hole in visual space) often don't report noticing the hole for similar reasons. I also sometimes don't notice whether someone is speaking German or English for similar reasons. I am listening and understanding what people are saying. My brain isn't bothering to create a meta-representation that says what language I am listening to. I'm just listening to the meaning of what people are saying. Edited by patrickwilken on 27 April 2015 at 4:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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