14 messages over 2 pages: 1 2
Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5081 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French
| Message 9 of 14 21 May 2011 at 1:31am | IP Logged |
slav wrote:
Okay, my overall first language is Czech. I was born in the Czech Republic and the only language that I used up until the age of 5 was Czech.
Then I moved to the US, and I learned English really quick. |
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How old are you? if you are just 11, you have spent more time of your life speaking English than your native language, so, you were a kid, kids are smart, now English is one of your native languages. Conclusion, it's normal in your situation.
1 person has voted this message useful
| slav Bilingual Triglot Groupie United States Joined 5007 days ago 43 posts - 54 votes Speaks: Slovak, Czech*, English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish
| Message 10 of 14 21 May 2011 at 2:34am | IP Logged |
Matheus wrote:
slav wrote:
Okay, my overall first language is Czech. I was born in the Czech Republic and the only language that I used up until the age of 5 was Czech.
Then I moved to the US, and I learned English really quick. |
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How old are you? if you are just 11, you have spent more time of your life speaking English than your native language, so, you were a kid, kids are smart, now English is one of your native languages. Conclusion, it's normal in your situation. |
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I'm fourteen. But I speak Czech half of the time.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 5081 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French
| Message 11 of 14 21 May 2011 at 3:30am | IP Logged |
slav wrote:
Matheus wrote:
slav wrote:
Okay, my overall first language is Czech. I was born in the Czech Republic and the only language that I used up until the age of 5 was Czech.
Then I moved to the US, and I learned English really quick. |
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How old are you? if you are just 11, you have spent more time of your life speaking English than your native language, so, you were a kid, kids are smart, now English is one of your native languages. Conclusion, it's normal in your situation. |
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I'm fourteen. But I speak Czech half of the time. |
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I thought you weren't speaking Czech any more. I have a friend who moved to US with his parents, and they stopped speaking Portuguese at home (after one and a half year) so the parents could learn from him, because he learnt the language very fast. Now they only speak English (for more or less ten years). He can still speak Portuguese, but his actives skills are not good. He forgot a lot of words, but he does recognize them passively.
1 person has voted this message useful
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5009 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian
| Message 12 of 14 24 May 2011 at 7:43pm | IP Logged |
Hello,
you're for sure not alone. Even though I haven't experienced this, some of my friends had troubles coming fully back to czech language even after one year abroad. It was visible mostly in their writing, which in some cases tried to implement foreign grammar to czech language. And what makes huge impact is, that you have spent all your schoolyears in English. I guess the difference will be huger in a few years as you'll learn much of new vocabulary in English only.
2 persons have voted this message useful
| zenmonkey Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6552 days ago 803 posts - 1119 votes 1 sounds Speaks: EnglishC2*, Spanish*, French, German Studies: Italian, Modern Hebrew
| Message 13 of 14 24 May 2011 at 10:32pm | IP Logged |
I'm another in the same case. Actually I'm slightly more comfortable at times in my second and third languages than my mother tongue.
1 person has voted this message useful
| jhwheeler Tetraglot Newbie England Joined 5001 days ago 7 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, French, Portuguese, Spanish Studies: Esperanto, Latin, Dutch, German
| Message 14 of 14 25 May 2011 at 1:21am | IP Logged |
Well something similar, albeit certainly not the same, happened to me. When I was a kid
(until I was 7), my mother spoke to me in Spanish and the nannies spoke to me in
Spanish. Only my father spoke to me in English (and my brother, but he was much older
and hardly at home).
In fact, since both my parents worked, the nannies were surrogate parents, in a way. So
Spanish was my dominant language until I was 7. Then, I started going to public school
(this is in Northern Virginia, by the way), and since there was no need for nannies
anymore, I stopped speaking Spanish...although I have no clue why my mother stopped
speaking to me in Spanish.
So for the past 12 years, I haven't spoken Spanish...ever. I lost it totally. Except
that I could always read it and understand the gist of what I was reading. I learned
French and lived in France, and so now I speak fluent French(between C1 and C2, I
guess). After moving to Portugal and learning Portuguese (which was absurdly easy,
probably because of my passive Spanish knowledge), I decided to relearn Spanish. So now
I can speak Spanish, but it comes out stilted sometimes, I make stupid mistakes, and I
can't understand when natives are carrying on a lively conversation among themselves.
I kind of feel betrayed...like I lost my native language. But I guess English is my
native language now haha, oh well!
Edited by jhwheeler on 25 May 2011 at 1:22am
1 person has voted this message useful
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