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Forgetting native language in homecountry | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| anamsc2 Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 4558 days ago 85 posts - 186 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Catalan, German Studies: French | Message 9 of 18 30 November 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I think people have slips of the tongue in their native languages all the time, whether or not they're proficient in or learning a foreign language. It's just that once we're learning other languages, we now have an explanation!
There are also interferences that can happen especially if you just were using a foreign language (sort of like a priming effect). 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Monox D. I-Fly Senior Member Indonesia monoxdifly.iopc.us Joined 5134 days ago 762 posts - 664 votes Speaks: Indonesian* | Message 10 of 18 02 December 2014 at 5:20am | IP Logged | |||||
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It's normal in my country, especially because usually we have two native language: The national language and the regional language. I live in Indonesia, by the way. Because we must master at least two languages, when we have become quite fluent in the third language we learned, it's common that one of the two languages would be steadily forgotten. More so if we have gotten used to think in the third language. It happens to me too, such that now when I am working in a book publisher I still need to learn much about Indonesian language.
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| Cristianoo Triglot Senior Member Brazil https://projetopoligRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4120 days ago 175 posts - 289 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, FrenchB2, English Studies: Russian | Message 11 of 18 02 December 2014 at 3:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I see a lot of exaggeration on this.
Will you forget your native language while living in your homecountry? no. Will you make small mistakes while talking or even mixing up some words from TL? yep, not because you are losing your language, but because your target language is not strong enough to stop interfering. Also, everybody make mistakes while talking and close friends are ruthless as always :) 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gomorritis Tetraglot Groupie Netherlands Joined 4277 days ago 91 posts - 157 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English, Catalan, French Studies: Greek, German, Dutch | Message 12 of 18 03 December 2014 at 11:06am | IP Logged | |||||
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I think it's easy to have slip-ups in your native language when you have mostly contact with other languages. And not just single words: last Christmas I said a whole fairly-long sentence in English to my brother, just out of the blue. And I didn't realize until some seconds later. I spend 95% of the year mainly speaking English, by the way.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| caam_imt Triglot Senior Member Mexico Joined 4861 days ago 232 posts - 357 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, Finnish Studies: German, Swedish | Message 13 of 18 07 December 2014 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
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For three years I have spoken almost all the time English and then for two years Finnish.
I have spoken Spanish for like an hour every one or two weeks during this time. Nowadays when I speak Spanish it takes me some time to fetch certain uncommon words and only rarely a word or two come in Finnish (usually a short, kind of automatic word). So, only this has happened while being 5 years in another country. I believe you won't lose your native tongue so easily :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| captainalan Diglot Newbie United States Joined 4773 days ago 2 posts - 6 votes Speaks: Spanish, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Korean, Esperanto | Message 14 of 18 07 December 2014 at 6:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In literature on education and psycholinguistics type stuff, there's a lot on language
attrition. There are tons of cases documented of children being adopted or immigrating to another country at a young age and forgetting their "heritage language". I imagine things get less plastic as people move past adolescence, but certainly it takes human interaction (whether online, through video, etc.) to stay current with any language, even a person's first language. My grandparents (Chinese-American) for example, do not know the Chinese word for "subway" or "computer" because their Chinese learning ended decades ago. But I see no indication of them having lost the grammar/structure of the language. A maxim: "Use it or lose it" May be true for L2, but I don't think it's true for every aspect of L1. Contact between different languages is interesting -- and as far as I am aware, there have been mixed findings on this topic, varying in different regions. I imagine most people on this forum are not "typical language learners" in that they are more motivated and interested in language than your average compulsory Spanish/French/English... class student. Therefore they are more keenly aware of the differences between the languages they speak and how their language compares to that of speakers around them. Most people, I imagine, shift their language to communicate with the people around them. Speaking more standard English might even throw people off (i.e. "I did well on the test" vs "I did good on the test") and create more distance. Continuing to participate in using these "innovative structures" will more likely than not cement them in speakers' repertoires. Another maxim: "Practice Makes Permanent" 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gemuse Senior Member Germany Joined 4081 days ago 818 posts - 1189 votes Speaks: English Studies: German | Message 15 of 18 09 December 2014 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||
Did you mean "...English is only reserved...."?
Did you mean "Is it possible that I lost my knowledge of..." or "Is it possible that I may lose my knowledge of..."? Edited by Gemuse on 09 December 2014 at 1:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Maecenas23 Triglot Newbie Ukraine Joined 4610 days ago 21 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Ukrainian*, Russian, English Studies: German | Message 16 of 18 12 December 2014 at 5:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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I recall I've once read a scientific article which stated that to maintain a high fluency
in your native language you need at least 3 to 4 hours exposure and speaking a day. The conclusion was that it's impossible to reach a nativelike fluency in more than 3 or 4 languages at the same time. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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