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The risk of confusion greatly overstated? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 16 10 March 2010 at 9:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
The main problem with this is that it's sheer nonsense. When I slip a non-English word into my speech in place of a common English word, it's not because I don't know the English word. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5926 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 10 of 16 10 March 2010 at 10:20pm | IP Logged | |||||
Edited by mick33 on 10 March 2010 at 10:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| FrenchLanguage Senior Member Germany Joined 5738 days ago 122 posts - 135 votes | Message 11 of 16 10 March 2010 at 11:35pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I basically do it like this: German and English are my two main languages.
French is a language I "only" speak "almost" fluently. I can say everything I want in French and usually understand everything, thouhg sometimes I still have to ask them what word xyz meant or how to say xyz (but can say this kind of thing really quickly sorta like "hey wait a second..I dont know the meaning of word xyz, could you explain it to me real quick?". Doesnt really happen often, but I think it shows that I dont speak French "perfectly". Being able to speak French that way, and not using it nearly as much as the other two languages makes sure French stays "at the back of my mind", thus I dont really ever mix it up with English&German. (I really am fairly fluent at it, though). If I ever want to learn another language Ill probably make sure itll be another "at the back of my mind" languages......in case I move to another country, where neither German nor English is spoken, that might be a problem, though! but as long as I dont plan on doing that (if, then Ill probbaly move to an English-speaking coutnry), I dont have any issues with it. That being said, I used to have enormous issues with being paranoid about mixing up stuff..would always question whether I really have to say it like this or like that in German(!), which was really annoying back then. I think many parents who push their kids to group up bilingual underestimate this problem. Ive heard bilingual people say they feel like they dont speak any 1 language perfectly. If I ever become a dad Id probably make sure my kids grow up only learning/speaking one language, and then introducing English to them relatively early (early teens)..if they want to learn of course.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kottoler.ello Tetraglot Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6005 days ago 128 posts - 192 votes Speaks: English*, Russian, Mandarin, French Studies: Japanese, German | Message 12 of 16 13 March 2010 at 1:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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I've been studying French for much longer than I have Swedish, and while I've only very rarely and with limited success conversed in Swedish, I speak French with my friends who also speak it as much as I can and have generally had far, far greater experience with it. However, after watching a movie in Swedish the other day, I found myself almost completely unable to speak French. I would try to say something that would normally just come out easily and either I would essentially draw a blank or it would come out in Swedish. It felt really awkward. I've heard some people say that it took a while for them to develop the ability to switch easily between their L2 and L3, like the brain naturally has a setting for "natural language" and "foreign language" and then will develop more "settings" as the languages are developed.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 13 of 16 13 March 2010 at 1:31am | IP Logged | |||||
This definitely happens. During my first week immersed in Esperanto, I couldn't speak more than 5 words of Italian without switching into Esperanto. I could manage English sometimes, but not always. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| robsolete Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5387 days ago 191 posts - 428 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 14 of 16 13 March 2010 at 4:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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After years of Spanish I just started on French and am noticing how much proper pronunciation seems to matter with these things. I still dont have a great handle on French phonics yet, so whenever I find myself getting lost in new vocabulary, my Spanish brain takes over and starts reading the French in Spanish intonation.
THEN I start to have issues with confusing the languages when I pause to think. So now I am really starting to emphasize proper pronunciation in my reading, or at least pronunciation distinct enough from Spanish so that I stop crossing the wires. I find it really strange, but this seems to help. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5768 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 15 of 16 13 March 2010 at 1:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I tend to mix languages up during my learning process. Whenever I have learnt a new sound, a new word, a new sentence structure, my brain tests it against a selection of cases where it could be used in other languages to know when to use it and when not - and with which vocabulary set/grammar/phonemic inventory/register. The more intensive I study a language I am still mediocre at, the more new material I have to try out in my other languages, and the more I tend to mess up my already fluent languages. But this is only temporary. It is a bit of a nuisance because it makes me sound like a moron, but I've got used to that.
I also might try to substitute a word with its translation from another language because in one language, the word is more 'active' than in the other. That is to say, there is no clear divide between active and passive vocabulary. There are words that are purely passive for me, for whatever reason (swearwords I would never use, specialized terms I am not sure about whether I understand them), and there are the words I use dozens of times every day. But most of my vocabulary is in-between, I usually can use it actively but it has to be triggered by a reason - situation, collocated words, having heard it not too long ago -, and the equivalent in a different language might be more dominant at some moment. This is equally true for sentence patterns and probably linked to them.
Are you sure about this? Are you surrounded by people who would always point out that you made a mistake when you don't correct yourself immediately? The people around me only would point it out if: -they didn't understand what I was trying to say -it sounded so funny that they had to laugh -I made the same mistake repeatedly or -we are close enough that we can criticise each other openly and they do have the spare time to point out a mistake to me 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| OlafP Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5437 days ago 261 posts - 667 votes Speaks: German*, French, English | Message 16 of 16 13 March 2010 at 11:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Let's not make the mistake of mixing up different categories of errors after I said before that a slip in a situation where you have to be quick with a response has nothing to do with mixing up languages. You will be aware of such an error, because you know that you could have avoided it if you had had more time. If you don't notice your mistakes then this means that you don't know the language well enough. Under such circumstances you should be self-critical enough to realise that the sentences you produce sound a bit strange at times. People who are not aware of their lack of knowledge are trapped in a vicious circle as described by the Dunning-Kruger effect. You can test your command of a language only with native speakers. How do you get a reliable answer from them? Asking them straight questions about how you're doing won't work. Most people try to be nice and friendly, i.e. they will tell the truth if it sounds pleasing and lies if it doesn't. So this method fails exactly when you need it the most. (That reminds me of my chemistry lessons at school. Rules in chemistry apply if and only if you don't need them.) You can pay someone to tell you the truth, but maybe you don't have the money or you want to spend it on something else. There are more sneaky ways to get what you need. First of all you should love your enemies, because they will tell you the truth more often than your friends. I'm in the miserable situation that I don't have any enemies, because I don't take me or anyone else serious enough. So I had to find another way to exploit the native speakers that are available to me without having them realise what is going on. Every now and then I have to write lengthy mails containing diplomatic twists in order to straighten out a convoluted situation. If I write it in French I talk about it to a French native speaker in my team in English, saying that this is a tricky situation we're in, and we need to find some good explanations, so I'm wondering what you would write, and maybe you could have a look at it. So I forward the mail, and by accident it happens to be in French. They will think I need some advice on how to communicate the situation, but usually I will ignore their comments on this. Instead, they will fix any language issues along the way if necessary. They would have assessed the language as well if I had asked them, but the result would be different. When you're asked to comment on the language itself you start to get picky about all and everything, and you may reject some expression just for the sake of it. This seems to be something psychological that I think nobody can avoid easily. So ask about the content, not about the language. Now back to your question: having used this method for quite some time I have the empiric proof that I never mix up languages when I have time to think about what I want to say. I sometimes get the usual remarks like "yeah, this is not wrong but it sounds a bit weird", and along with it a correction. That is exactly what I need! No more, no less. But I don't mix up languages, because I verify everything if I'm not sure, I don't use expressions that I'm not sure about when there is no time for verification, and I get corrections from native speakers that show me where my weaknesses are. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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