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Forgetting the Language Before We Leave | ||
Tags: Forgetting a language | Living abroad | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| Principiante Senior Member United States lucasgentry.com Joined 6248 days ago 130 posts - 138 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 1 of 3 04 August 2014 at 6:18pm | IP Logged |
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My wife and I have been living in Costa Rica for about 10 months. Our first few months was a
lot of intensive Spanish study, but since then, we have mainly been taking Spanish- maintenance classes (i.e., just enough to make sure we don't lose what we have). Things have been great here, but as we come to the end of our trip, I find that my level of Spanish is dropping. I can still understand just fine, but my production takes me a lot longer than it used to, for some reason, and it's lower quality. My wife says that the weeks leading up to our Christmas trip (back to the States to visit family) were the same. It's almost like my brain is trying to move back to the States before I do. Also, strangely, whenever I think of the States, I call it "home" in my head, which is another weird, but related thing. In the last ten months, I've never called the US "back home". It was always, "where my family live" or "in my parents' city...". Does this happen to you guys too? With your brain trying to switch back to your native language too soon? I had a friend in college from North Carolina. She didn't have much of an accent, except for when she was talking about back home, or talking to people from there. We would meet in the dining hall and we all knew when she had just talked to her parents, because her accent had reverted. I think this is the same thing, but across languages, instead of accent. On a side question, how do you make sure your language skills don't fall, once you're out of an immersion environment? Edited by Principiante on 04 August 2014 at 6:20pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4089 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 2 of 3 04 August 2014 at 8:11pm | IP Logged |
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I'm willing to bet it's a common phenomenon. After all, people across the world check out of work mentally a bit too early on a weekly basis.
That said, it didn't happen to me when I lived in Scotland, and it isn't happening to me now that I live in France. But I don't refer to Sweden as "home" even to myself in my head, which probably affects how the mind prepares itself. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4434 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 3 of 3 05 August 2014 at 5:43am | IP Logged |
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When it comes to Spanish, there are many countries that use the language. It's like if you speak English,
you can be in England, Australia, New Zealand or Canada and get exposure to the language. You can be in Spain, Mexico, Argentina or anywhere in Latin America and get exposure to Spanish except that there may be local variations. I know a lady living in the US. She was brought up in Hong Kong using Cantonese. She lived outside Hong Kong since the age of 12 and rarely travels back. Yet she manages to keep up with her level of fluency in the spoken language by watching many Chinese TV shows. A few years ago she would go to a local video store and get DVDs in Cantonese. Now she would go to Tudou site and watch TV series and movies in Cantonese. Personally even living in Canada away from China or Taiwan, I would watch several hours of TV Mandarin programs online. I don't get to talk to Chinese every day but I have access to radio stations online and pre-recorded TV shows. Many of them have captions in Chinese so I can refresh my memory in writing the characters. I am sure there are all sorts of TV programs available from Mexico, Spain, Cuba, Columbia and other places where Spanish is spoken. Edited by shk00design on 05 August 2014 at 4:44pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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