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Search engine addiction and other maladies | ||
Tags: Loss of confidence | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5422 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes  Speaks: Japanese | Message 1 of 16 28 March 2010 at 9:51am | IP Logged | ||
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I was raised bilingual in English and European Portuguese and am fairly competent in Japanese as well. However, recently I've been experiencing intense, persistent difficulty in verbalizing my thoughts in any of the aforementioned languages, especially English and Portuguese.
I feel like I've become some kind of solipsist, not unlike Roquentin in Jean-P. Sartre's "Nausea" when he talks about how solitude makes people forget "what it is like to tell something." Maybe I've been studying too much...all I know is that now I can't go without searching each and every single one of my sentences, each and every single expression I use, on Yahoo! to see if I get any hits, out of fear of making mistakes. It's really, really distressing. Edited by Sayumi on 28 March 2010 at 10:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5842 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 16 28 March 2010 at 11:09am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't understand why you search for every sentence you write. It's just a forum, not a letter to the king or a doctoral thesis. It doesn't matter if you make a mistake.
Watch out for the strange social phenomoenons that happen to people in the pressurised social conditions that exist in Japan. Hikikomori etc. You wouldn't be the first Westerner who moved there and became a bit strange. Be careful. If you feel you are not sufficiently social at the moment, make a concious effort - if nothing else works, go to one of the expat clubs. What you are describing seems a bit concerning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sayumi Groupie Japan Joined 5422 days ago 51 posts - 75 votes Speaks: Japanese | Message 3 of 16 28 March 2010 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
I actually have lots of people I know and can talk to, but because I'm so afraid of making mistakes and sounding awkward, I end up avoiding all forms of social contact and staying at home instead. See? This paragraph I just wrote, it just sounds strange. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5842 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 16 28 March 2010 at 11:56am | IP Logged | ||
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Gosh, you need to drop this idea! I make minor grammatical mistakes in English all the time - who cares? Not the English people I speak with, and not me.
Neither should you about Japanese, English or any other languuage! Congrats to you if you are near trilingual Go out have some sake with your friends and speak some pidgin English! Who in Japan other than an English teacher would even notice, let alone care? Be very careful and do not let yourself develop some kind of weird psychosis. What you are describing is NOT normal - stop it before it goes any further. Like I said, a lot of Western people go "crazy" when they move to Japan, for a complicated series of reasons. It was a bit of a joke when my dad lived there. My brother got some VERY weird obsessions while at school there. And look at our banned friend Siomott[...]. It's a real pressure cooker environment, I think, although London is not that different. My advice: Take some positive action, you KNOW this is weird, so stop your strange behaviour and learn to cope with life in Japan, or leave before it's too late! (coming from someone who's BARELY surviving the crazy life in London.... ) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5589 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 6 of 16 28 March 2010 at 4:24pm | IP Logged | ||
If I were in your position I would literally DIVE at native speakers. I did yesterday, I heard an older man speaking Spanish on the phone in a store. AS soon as I heard it, I was like a dog. I perked up and looked at the man and smiled. After he said "OK bye" (spanglish :D) I asked if he could talk to me for a couple minutes just so I could practice. He was absolutely delighted, and excited that an American teenager was interested in other cultures (it's rare I know lol) There are a couple of German speakers at the retirement home where I work, and even though I "bumble" along in German (I know the basics) and still try to converse as best I can, and they politely correct me and giggle. I always write down the huge words I see in books or magazines and ask them to pronounce them for me (I'm talking about words that are 20+ letters long lol) and I try to repeat. After about the third try, I get it :) Never be afraid of making mistakes, you have an EXCELLENT opportunity in front of you. Nothing is going to happen if you make a mistake. Laugh it off and try harder to improve! I've never met a mean native that was angry with my attempts at speaking their language. They were always impressed, helpful, and excited. GO FOR IT. :) If I didn't have languages, half the things in my day wouldn't even happen. Jordan 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 7 of 16 28 March 2010 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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Are you by any chance an English teacher?
When you start teaching a language you've never consciously studied, it can be very disconcerting. Suddenly you have to consciously monitor what you're saying in the classroom in order to "grade" yourself to the students' level. It's hard to switch this off, so you go around thinking about what you want to say -- listening to it in your head to check it's OK to say it. Then it hits you, you want to say something, but you're not sure whether it's right or not. You start thinking about the rules you teach in class, and none of them says that this is acceptable English. But it is acceptable English, you say it all the time. The thing to remember is that those classroom rules are a simplified subset of English that makes it easier to teach -- there's plenty of stuff out there that you won't see in the classroom. Or maybe I'm wrong and your not a teacher, but as a learner of Japanese you'll be thinking a lot before you speak and carrying that habit over into English. But don't -- just relax and speak. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6038 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 8 of 16 28 March 2010 at 6:25pm | IP Logged | ||
I've never heard of Westerners Hikkikomori, do they really exist? Incidentally, I was reading on the subject recently, here's a link (a bit dated). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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