|
 |
Forgetting native language in homecountry | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 1 of 18 29 November 2014 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
|
I made an booking for a tournament on 21 December, in my home country, and I told the
organiser that I would play "on the 21th", i.e., I said "on the twenty-oneth" because I completely forgot that in English it is "twentyfirst" as the first three ordinals have irregular endings, and I also wrote in my plannerbook, "21th December". The man did not seem surprised that I messed up, althogh I still did not realise yet. It was only when I told my friend who would participate too, "I shall play the schedule that starts on the twentyoneth December" and he said, "What the hell? Twentyoneth? Did you forget how to count?" and only after about 15 seconds did I realise that I committed a grave error. Even now I see a post-it note for the tournament on my desk saying "21th Dec". I thought that it was quite shocking because that seems inexcusable for a native speaker to say, but somehow it never occurred to me that there was something wrong with "21th". I usually surround myself in my target language, especially Spanish, and most of my online chat and communications are in Spanish and Dutch, and basically only English is reserved for necessities like going to the store, doctor's surgery, and only with a select group of closer friends from long ago do I use English, but otherwise I think in Spanish or some other target language to imrpove my performance, as well as my computer work, and daily house routines. Is it possible that I lose my knowledge of details of my native English despite living in an Anglophone country? I generally do not care about my English skills, but I notice that I start to make weird mistakes that usually natives do not make. Does this happen to those who try to function in a target language even if they live in their home country? Of course though my Spanish and other languages improved in terms of speed as I think regularly in Spanish, or Dutch, or whatever as a training exercise. Edited by 1e4e6 on 29 November 2014 at 9:01pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| shk00design Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4443 days ago 747 posts - 1123 votes Speaks: Cantonese*, English, Mandarin Studies: French | Message 2 of 18 30 November 2014 at 6:14am | IP Logged |
|
In the Chinese community, it is easy for expats who emigrated out of Asia to forget how to write the characters
although many kept up with their fluency in speaking by watching TV programs & movies. Some had gone to school up to a high school level but after a few years lost the ability to read street signs, a newspaper or a restaurant menu. Personally I was brought up in Hong Kong and went to a school with a curriculum in Chinese up to a Gr. 4 level. Over the years my written Chinese actually improved although I use English in Canada more frequently.Over the years my Chinese not only kept up but improved. I took a year of Mandarin in a regular school in HK but picked up using Pinyin phonetics to enter characters on a computer on my own many years later. I was in Hong Kong recently for a few weeks and kept up with reading local Chinese newspapers (The Apple Daily, Ming Pao, Singdao, etc.) on top of the English editions of the South China Morning Post & The Standard. I can pick up 98% of a news story in English and between 90-95% in Chinese. While in Hong Kong I came across an article on Marco Polo in the Chinese edition of The Sun. I translated it into English and E-mailed the translations to someone who is interested in Chinese history. Much of the text was easy to understand except for the Chinese translations of foreign place names which I had to lookup. Once I was invited to dinner at a local restaurant. After doing a Google search in Chinese I found 2 other locations for the same restaurant. Even after returning to Canada, I would read news articles online from the CBC, BBC and a few Hong Kong dailies in Chinese. In my teenage years, my parents had a subscription of the Chinese edition of the Reader's Digest. My older siblings would put off reading the articles even when they had better Chinese language fluency. Many years later, I still retain the ability to read Chinese newspapers, restaurant menus but my older siblings lost the ability to read. When they go into a Chinese restaurant, they would order common items most restaurants should have or ask a waiter for recommendations to get around reading the menu. Nowadays, when you move to another country, you don't have to lose your fluency in your native language all that much as long as you get into a habit of watching videos and reading news articles from your home country online. Getting access to media from different countries is much easier on the Internet. Since I left Hong Kong with only a primary school level of Chinese, my language skills can only get better. You definitely have to put in the effort. In the past looking up words & phrases in a Chinese dictionary (printed copy) involved looking up radicals and counting # lines for each character. It gets too cumbersome that some got put off looking up new words. When you are online, all you have to do is Copy & Paste characters into a computer dictionary. Edited by shk00design on 30 November 2014 at 6:28am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Via Diva Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation last.fm/user/viadivaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4233 days ago 1109 posts - 1427 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: German, Italian, French, Swedish, Esperanto, Czech, Greek | Message 3 of 18 30 November 2014 at 6:56am | IP Logged |
|
I think nearly everything can happen, and sometimes it is really easy to lose some things even in your native
language. I tend to think in English a lot and later I find myself assimilating English grammar to Russian words. My knowledge of Russian is actually above average, but it all is purely intuitive and it came through reading, so maybe it's easy to tamper with knowledge gotten that way. Still I am sure that surroundings should prevent you from losing too much, unless you live alone and don't go outside for months in a row. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| epictetus Groupie Canada Joined 3881 days ago 54 posts - 87 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 18 30 November 2014 at 9:17am | IP Logged |
|
I have found this to a lesser extent with Canadian and British English. I read British authors, watch British
comedians, TV, and so on and I have as many good friends in the UK as in Canada. As a result, my English has shifted in that direction, both intentionally and unintentionally. Grammar usage is more subtle (the government are versus the government is) but I often forget that - ize endings are not just features of American English, but Canadian English too and that the 'perfect' tenses are used less here making me sound a little out of place often times (I had/have done versus I did). I've occasionally forgotten an English word such as 'current' and end up translating the Spanish 'actual' to get it. Probably more of a weak memory than anything else. I would suppose your question is really a merger of more common questions: 1. Can I forget my native language? 2. Is living in a country enough to maintain/learn a language? Of those questions, everyone will have opinions and experiences. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| chiara-sai Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 3707 days ago 54 posts - 146 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2, French Studies: German, Japanese | Message 5 of 18 30 November 2014 at 10:47am | IP Logged |
|
I have lived in the UK for 3.5 years and I often cannot recall words in Italian or mix up idioms (for example I
say ‘fa senso’ instead of ‘ha senso’ when I want to say that something ‘makes sense’, except that ‘fa senso’ means ‘it’s gross’!). I don’t think my accent has deteriorated at all, nor my grammar (except that one time I constructed an Italian sentence with a very English grammar, including ending it with a preposition, and everyone looked at me as if I were drunk!), it is mostly a problem of vocabulary and idioms for me. I do worry that learning languages might lead to a situation in which I can’t speak any language natively anymore, but I suppose it should be easy to avert this by incorporating more resources (books, movies…) in your native language in your daily life. For instance I have decided I will read an Italian book for every 3 English books I read. Edited by chiara-sai on 30 November 2014 at 10:51am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| 1e4e6 Octoglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4289 days ago 1013 posts - 1588 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, Swedish, Italian Studies: German, Danish, Russian, Catalan | Message 6 of 18 30 November 2014 at 11:41am | IP Logged |
|
I understand when people mess up their native language after living in a foreign country where a different
language is spoken, but I seem to mess up my native language whilst living in a country where it is spoken, which seems even odder i.e. I said twentyoneth as a native English speaker whilst living in an Anglophone country, which is quite embarassing when I finally realised what I had done, but I think in Spanish and Dutch to a lesser extent whilst living in a place that speaks neither, but I still found this phenomenom intetesting (and a bit disturbingbat the same time). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4664 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 18 30 November 2014 at 1:16pm | IP Logged |
|
The only effect on my speaking comes when I have been speaking another language for a time and then switch back to English, e.g. my wife got back from a trip and I asked her how her "voyage" had gone after I had just spoken French for a while.
On the other hand, the effect on my orthography seems to be more permanent. I now sometimes have to consider for a little bit, for example, whether "literature" should be spelled with one T or two in English, whereas before it was totally automatic. Nothing too disconcerting, though... 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 8 of 18 30 November 2014 at 3:15pm | IP Logged |
|
I've noticed that the higher level I reach in more languages, the more I tend to forget words or sentence structure in English. When I read, it's not usually in English unless it has to be. Reading for pleasure in my case is done in either French, Spanish, or Italian at the moment. When I talk or listen however, it is mostly in English. What's really strange though is that since I've tacked on Spanish, I've also noticed a slight memory loss. Not just in speech, but sometimes I'll forget something I said earlier or an event that happened. I can't speak English as fluently as I used to and sometimes I have to pause to think of the right word to say. There are even times when my brain tunes out dialogue in a show and I end up missing that bit.
In fact, just in writing this message, I've had to backspace a few times because I wrote something wrong. Edited by sillygoose1 on 30 November 2014 at 3:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
