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Interference: what is the risk really? | ||
Tags: Language Interference | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5564 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 20 14 January 2012 at 12:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Meet me saying "Japanischbuch auf Tisch in Wohnzimmer legen bitte."
I did intend to say "Bitte leg das Japanischbuch auf den Tisch im Wohnzimmer." (Please put the Japanese textbook on the table in our living room.) Things like that happen to me, frequently. I use grammar, vocabulary or collocations from a different language, usually when I know the other person understands both languages and I forget to shut off the language I'm not currently using and its expression etc. fits better to what I intend to say. Or sometimes my mind seems to want to try out if a certain cool new feature also works in a different language. In German I notice those interference mistakes, although when I'm tired it happens after I already said the sentence in question. In my weaker languages I need to rely on immediate feedback by native or near-native speakers to show me when I make such mistakes or even errors. Which leads me to one conclusion: Interference isn't such a big deal, as long as you socialize with the natives. (And there's no such word as もりる, to die. Nor mamorir, to protect. Please remember, dear Baobrain.) Edited by Bao on 19 January 2012 at 11:43pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5132 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 10 of 20 14 January 2012 at 8:15am | IP Logged | ||
Well, as far as traumatic experiences go, I would say learning Italian after three weeks in Italy due to my knowledge of Spanish and French plus extensive reading before I left, only to realize with a shock that my Spanish had vanished when I came home again, would come pretty high on my list. I had been fluent in Spanish for 16 years, and the thought of losing that had not even crossed my mind until I sat there speaking on the phone with a friend with Chile who spoke Spanish to me, while only Italian words came out of my mouth. She hung up on me in frustration, saying "call me back when you remember your Spanish". That took 6 months, but fortunately I have not had any problems swithcing between French, Italian and Spanish since. I think it was just that my brain was spending all its energy on learning Italian, and there was simply no room for anything else at that point in time. While in Italy, there was a guy who tried to flirt with me in French, and I also remember it as physically painful to try to speak French at that time. That also being a language that I had onsidered myself fluent in for 13 years. And then we of course have all the times that I have taken a word from one Romance language and pronounced it in another language, with an 80% accuracy. The remaining 20% has led to a lot of puzzled faces though. Saying "baiser" in French, for "besar" in Spanish probably being the worst example. Nowadays my main interference is Polish/Russian. I learned a bit of Polish 16 years ago, and then forgot all of it. When I took up Russian, Polish words came flooding in though, and in the beginning I would be unable to say a single sentence without a Polish word inserted, and as late as last week I asked whether a certain word was Russian, only to discover that it was Polish. The frustrating part is that I am still unable to speak any Polish at all. If my Russian studies had woken up my dormant Polish as a language system, I would have been delighted, but it is just random words. If I get stressed, even simple things like "my name is", or "good morning" will come out in Polish. And it does not look particularly smart, when you say to someone" Oh are you Russian - my name is Cristina, and I am learning Russian" and it comes out half in Russian, half in Polish. In the beginning I was so frustrated that I considered taking up Polish again, to force my poor brain to keep them apart, and fight fire with fire, but I was told that it would make things even worse, so I dropped it. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Beginner123 Newbie United Kingdom szkotka.wordpress.coRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4692 days ago 4 posts - 9 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Spanish, Polish | Message 11 of 20 14 January 2012 at 8:37am | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't really noticed much interference so far. If someone came up to me and said "Say something in Spanish!" I might trip over my German or whatever, but when I'm studying a language I don't tend to get massive problems from another one. Though sometimes when stuck for a word my brain will throw up "Generic Foreign Words" until it gets the right one. As if somehow saying it in German is going to help me form a sentence in Spanish. Example: yesterday I was trying to say "with" in Spanish and my train of thought went "mit... avec... cum... those things aren't even Spanish! And I don't even know French!"
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5397 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 12 of 20 14 January 2012 at 12:24pm | IP Logged | ||
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One strange interference I noticed was, when I try to write something in Polish by hand, many cyrillic letters slip in.
There is often p for r b for w g for d It looks weird if you do not know the reason for this, but I don't notice these slips although my main languages are written with the latin alphabet. And it happens only with letters, which have the same written shape, so I would never use a г or a б. I have written so much Russian that similar sounding Polish words evoce certain mechanical handmovements. So instead of Zaręczyliśmy się w zeszłą niedzielę I may write Zapęczyliśmy się b zeszłą niegzielę. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6348 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 13 of 20 14 January 2012 at 3:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Well said. It happens, but it's temporary. The fear of interference is much worse than the actual problem. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 14 of 20 14 January 2012 at 3:58pm | IP Logged | ||
As for my experiences with interference... I signed up for Tadoku with Spanish without thinking, just because I have stuff to read in it but not in other Romance languages. And now if I think of a Portuguese word, the Spanish one comes to my mind along with it if I know it (or if I've seen it recently?). It might not even be a bad thing but I view this as polluting my Portuguese so I've decided I'll do the challenge and then will touch Spanish as little as possible. I'll be getting some Portuguese books soon so hopefully this will help. But it's all due to my attitude. I don't want to be seen as yet another foreigner who's learned Spanish and decided to pick up Portuguese. This was my first Romance language (technically) and it's the most special one for me. Though really, while I recall a certain episode with disgust and tears... the native speaker's reaction in said conversation was just "omglol you're speaking portunhol". Edited by Serpent on 14 January 2012 at 4:01pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Camundonguinho Triglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 4547 days ago 273 posts - 500 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, English, Spanish Studies: Swedish | Message 15 of 20 15 January 2012 at 2:21am | IP Logged | ||
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''Catalan Spanish'' is a new ''dialect'' in the making, it's a result of Catalan influence on the Spanish language in Catalonia, especially Barcelona. Since perfect bilinguals are rare there, there is a lot of interference and language mixing.
Here is a nice article on that: Aspects of Spanish deictic expressions in Barcelona: A quantitative examination http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1& fid=2713808&jid=LVC&volumeId=10&issueId=03&aid=2713800 Edited by Camundonguinho on 15 January 2012 at 2:23am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6395 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 16 of 20 10 April 2012 at 8:37pm | IP Logged | ||
And those few who recognize it as Polish will be geeky enough to find it cool :-) 1 person has voted this message useful |
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