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Dehydrated Polyglot Skills | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Polyglots |  | |
| administrator Hexaglot Forum Admin Switzerland FXcuisine.com Joined 7375 days ago 3094 posts - 2987 votes  12 sounds Speaks: French*, EnglishC2, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian Personal Language Map | Message 1 of 13 25 November 2005 at 3:55am | IP Logged | ||
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I have read many times that polyglots needed a period of immersion to activate their language skills for those languages they do not use often.
And although I do not consider myself a polyglot (yet!) I have observed the same. For those languages I don't use intensively, the first day I arrive in a country I fumble trying to find the right word and make many mistakes. Then, at an amazing speed, the skills come back. The immersion really rehydrates the language skills and after a few days they come back in full force. They were always there, stored in a cool and dry place somewhere in the brain and only needed to me immersed to be alive again. I wonder if this happened to other people as well? 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Farley Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 7091 days ago 681 posts - 739 votes 1 sounds Speaks: English*, GermanB1, French Studies: Spanish | Message 2 of 13 25 November 2005 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I don’t consider myself a polyglot, but the same thing did happened to me a few years ago after a 2-week vacation in Germany. I could hardly make a sentence on the first day, but by the end of the two weeks, I was able to hold conversations with people to include some basic discussions of politics. I found that my German came back at an amazing rate each day. I felt that I regained all my German back to an advanced level within the two weeks. I think if I had stayed a month my conversation skills would have been better than ever. The same thing happens to me with French. Both my parents spoke French to me when I was young and even thought I never learned to speak French, I have always been surprised at the speed I can recognize spoken French when visiting a French speaking country. That is one of the reasons I’m studying French now. Edited by Farley on 25 November 2005 at 2:31pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5846 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 13 01 October 2009 at 10:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't travel and therefore I don't have any immersion situations. Dutch is an exception, because I live 25 km from the Netherlands. When I speak foreign languages perhaps I have one or two hours time for that. So I have to assimilate very quickly and it's part of my talent that I can do this. The trick behind this is that I can transfer my thoughts from one language to another voluntarily. Fasulye Edited by Fasulye on 01 October 2009 at 11:08am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Leopejo Bilingual Triglot Senior Member Italy Joined 6108 days ago 675 posts - 724 votes Speaks: Italian*, Finnish*, English Studies: French, Russian | Message 4 of 13 01 October 2009 at 11:35am | IP Logged | ||
That happens to my native language(s) as well... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Journeyer Triglot Senior Member United States tristan85.blogspot.c Joined 6867 days ago 946 posts - 1110 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German Studies: Sign Language | Message 5 of 13 06 October 2009 at 6:06am | IP Logged | ||
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I can say it's happened to me in Spanish and Esperanto, two languages that I let fall
into disuse. Now my German is getting rusty, but once you know a language, I think it comes back quickly. This is one of the main reasons the idea of learning lots of languages doesn't bother me, knowing that I won't be able to stay active in them all: If I need one I haven't used, I can just brush up on it and it'll come back with a little bit of work. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| shizuka30 Newbie United States Joined 5524 days ago 3 posts - 8 votes | Message 6 of 13 09 October 2009 at 7:44am | IP Logged | ||
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The same thing happened to me during a recent trip to Japan! Whenever I tried to think in Japanese, Korean got in the way! It wasn't until day three of my vacation when I felt comfortable thinking in Japanese again! Unfortunately I was on my way to the airport by then!
"Oh, great! NOW it comes back!" Ironically, when I returned to South Korea, I had trouble understanding Korean! It took a few days for me adapt to a Korean language environment again. I recently signed up for a Japanese class taught in Korean in order to avoid this problem in the future! 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 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 7 of 13 09 October 2009 at 11:02am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as I can see this 'latency' period is directly proportional with my general level in a given language. With Danish, English, German and French it is close to zero, with Italian, Spanish maybe 5 minutes (just to read a few lines and toss some sentences around in my head). During my recent travels to Iceland and Greece I had the same experience as Shizuka30: after 3-4 days I felt that I at long last was ready to try to speak 100% in the local language, - and then I had to leave...
An experience of of slightly different nature: in the 70s I followed a course in Romanian at the university for three years, the last two years as the only pupil, so I was fairly good at it when I left the university at the end of 1981. Then I spent 25 years without reading or listening to any Romanian. When I decided to relearn the language in 2006 I only remembered a few isolated words (steaua, scrumiere, tren), but about month later I spoke it well enough to perform simple tasks, such as buying - and changing! - train tickets and food, and once I even had a long discussion with a lady in ChiÅŸinau. Latin is another relevant case. I learnt it fairly well in two 'wawes' around 1970 and 1976, but only as a passive language. So even though I regularly saw Latin texts in museums and on old houses my skills inexorably seeped away, and I stopped trying to understand those inscriptions. However I could bring it back to life extremely quickly when I finally decided to relearn it, - for instance the irregular verbs came back almost from day to day (probably because I had learnt them using good ol' black school methods). The one thing that I had to add was thinking (and later writing) freely in Latin. Plus of course some vocabulary for things in the modern world. Since 2006 I have refined my study techniques, but I have also run out of languages in need of ressuscitation. Edited by Iversen on 11 October 2009 at 3:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Ulrike Tetraglot Newbie Germany Joined 5560 days ago 23 posts - 27 votes Speaks: German*, Latin, English, French Studies: Persian, Arabic (classical) | Message 8 of 13 12 October 2009 at 11:24am | IP Logged | ||
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I am convinced that one can never forget a language once learnt completely. Last week I was forced to speak Italian after a period of six years without using it. It worked quite well, I think.
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