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Which languages do you mix up? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5115 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 17 of 24 06 December 2010 at 11:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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My initial reaction to that question was: All of them! But that is actually not quite true - though at different times in the learning process I have mixed up most of them.
When I went to Spain when I was 11 I spoke English, but I wouldn't go as far as saying I was fluent. Nevertheless I did put some English words in my Spanish, whenever I had heard a Spanish word that was close to an English one. In any event,there was a villager who used to ride into the village on his donkey once in a while, and who had been to the United States. In the beginning I was overjoyed to speak English with him, as he was the only one in the village I could communicate with. After a couple of months this was reversed, as Spanish took over, and in the end I would run and hide whenever I heard the sound of his donkey. He was a bit hurt, because he was very happy to practise his English, but I was so confused and embarrassed to have forgotten most of my English that I did not want to see him. When I was 13 I started with German and French, and I (and the rest of my class) used to mix English and German up a lot. I was alone in mixing French and Spanish, but I think a few of the others mixed up French and English. When I was 14 and moved to France my French was still so weak that I mixed Spanish into my French, but when I was 18 and moved to Spain my French was great and my Spanish was almost forgotten, so this time I mixed French into Spanish. Then things went relatively smoothely until I was 27 and started to learn Italian. At this point interference from other languages was actually a blessing, as what I did was to take the few Italian words I knew, fill in the gaps with Spanish, and just smile my most winning smile. It worked like a charm, and I spoke Italian after three weeks. The only catch being that it pushed my Spanish out of the way for 6 months. Once I had gotten my head around all three Romance languages I was fine, and for many years I could switch between them without any effort. At this point my Italian is however getting so rusty that I am not even sure I could speak it without effort, let alone switch between all three languages without effort. When I started Russian, my almost extinct notions of Polish came up and bit me in my ... Whenever I attempted to say a sentence in Russian, at least one Polish word would sneak into each sentence. It drove me up the wall. It got to the point where I called up a professor of Slavic languages at the University of Oslo and asked whether I should perhaps try to learn both languages at the same time, so that perhaps my poor brain would be able to keep them apart. (That was not recommended). Fortunately this is less of a problem now. I am usually able to keep the Polish out unless I am stressed, in which case I revert to Polish (within my active vocabulary of 20 words...:-) Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 06 December 2010 at 11:56pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| niemia Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 5462 days ago 19 posts - 36 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian, French Studies: Polish, Georgian, Welsh, Arabic (Written), Japanese, Finnish | Message 18 of 24 07 December 2010 at 1:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I find that I make the most mistakes with expressions I've just learned. I pound them so much into my brain that
they pop up everywhere. For example, when I learned the expression "рядом с" (next to) in Russian, I began to think of that expression first in ALL of my other languages, even French, which I usually can keep straight, when I wanted to express the idea of "next to." Frustrating. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5547 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 19 of 24 07 December 2010 at 11:41am | IP Logged | ||
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When I read this question, my immediate reaction to this was "Russian and Slovene" - with specific reference to numbers. I also remember playing the word association game in Russian with some friends once and I said the Slovene word "jezero" instead of the Russian озеро/ozero.
Not sure if this would also count as the same thing, but I also get mixed up between two different "dialects" of the same language. I learnt standard French in school and ever since moving in with a native of Belgian French, I have been using Belgicisms in conversations with natives from France. So I'd now sooner say "septante" and "nonante" for seventy and ninety than the standard French "soixante-dix" and "quatre-vingt-dix" which seems to get an odd reaction from my French friends - looking it up now, the use of the two former numbers died out in the 16th century in France, apparently. I'm not sure whether this is automatic to me now because I am speaking French every day with as little English as possible (which some days will be none at all) or whether it's because septante and nonante are just so much more logical to me. Also I've slipped into the habit of using savoir in the sense of ability to do something - je ne savais pas dormir la nuit dérnière - instead of the normal je ne pouvais pas dormir la nuit dérnière. Incidentally I'm not sure whether I've used the correct tense of savoir/pouvoir; the imperfect just seems to flow better... Also, when saying "I like it" in terms of food or so, my girlfriend would much sooner say "ça me goûte" instead of "ça me plait". This reminds me of German, which would use "schmecken", to taste, in this case - which is the literal equivalent of "goûter" here. I assume this is the influence of Dutch creeping in. There are a fair few more differences in the way my girlfriend speaks French to the way I learnt it at school, but since I´ve not adopted those into the way I speak yet (because knowing me, I will) I shan´t include them in this answer. Also, I often get my spelling mixed up between Spanish and Italian, and sometimes conjugate Spanish verbs as they would be conjugated in Italian - because my Italian is stronger. Or rather, it is in theory. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6053 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 20 of 24 07 December 2010 at 12:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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I was talking to a Bulgarian a few days ago. I do not know Bulgarian, and the Bulgarian's English was limited. She spoke Russian quite well, so that was our lingua franca.
However, I use Turkish a lot these days, and Turkish words were becoming interspersed in my Russian, unbidden. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Icaria909 Senior Member United States Joined 5372 days ago 201 posts - 346 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 21 of 24 07 December 2010 at 10:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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My biggest problem is keeping my catalan and Spanish seperate. Many times I'll switch up close words like Catalan's ciutat and Spanish ciudad. Little things like that. Many times Spanish speakers just think I'm a wierd american who picked up a strange accent or something. Oh well, I usually get my meaning across anyways =)
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Impiegato Triglot Senior Member Sweden bsntranslation. Joined 5214 days ago 100 posts - 145 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, Italian Studies: Spanish, French, Russian | Message 22 of 24 08 December 2010 at 12:31am | IP Logged | ||
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I have sometimes mixed up Spanish and Italian, but the more Italian I learn, the fewer are the examples of interference. When I studied French and Spanish many years ago, there were no interference problems at all. Even though Italian and French are closer as to vocabulary, they are much easier to keep separate. Edited by Impiegato on 09 December 2010 at 11:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Fasulye Heptaglot Winner TAC 2012 Moderator Germany fasulyespolyglotblog Joined 5628 days ago 5460 posts - 6006 votes 1 sounds Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish Personal Language Map | Message 23 of 24 08 December 2010 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | ||
I have exactly the same experience with these three Romance languages. Fasulye 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cetacea Bilingual Tetraglot Groupie United States booh.com Joined 5105 days ago 80 posts - 163 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Arabic (Yemeni), Arabic (Written) Studies: French | Message 24 of 24 08 December 2010 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I read this analogy years ago somewhere on the internet (can’t remember where) and I wholeheartedly agree. The way our brain stores and processes languages is like a filing system:
1. When we acquire our first language, everything from that language is neatly filed into its own drawer. 2. When we acquire a second language, the new information is first thrown into a place like a kitchen junk drawer until we sort things out. No mixing up here because our native language is already stored away, far from the junk drawer. 3. When we learn a third language is when we start to mix things up. The degree of mayhem depends on how much unfiled junk you still have left from your second language. In other words, if you start a third language before you master the second one, you will have a hard time keeping them separate. 4. You may have several languages in your junk drawer if you dabbled in several languages without mastering any of them, or you may have none if you are at an advanced level for all the languages you’ve learned. A language junk drawer is very much like an overflowing junk drawer in real life. You can’t find an item when you are looking for it, and when you don’t need it, it pops up and gets in your way. My own experience pretty much mirrors the analogy. I’m bilingual in English and Chinese, so I have no problem keep them separate. I took some French classes in college but have forgotten most of it since. When I started learning Arabic, I was using French words in random places, and most of the time didn’t even realize it. My classmates gave me funny looks thinking I was showing off. The frustrating thing was that when I really wanted to speak French, I couldn’t, but when I didn’t want it, it kept popping up! This went on for about a month until my Arabic got better, i.e. got sorted into its own drawer. I’m doing some French L-R now and hoping that I can empty out my junk drawer soon to get it ready for my next language. :) 4 persons have voted this message useful |
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