Forgetting English words after studying another language?

[@Mehki227]

This is real. My husband is Deaf. I'm fluent in sign language. We got married and we went on our honeymoon in Jamaica. There were actually a few people there that were interpreters and there was one woman who was deaf married to a hearing man. Although we didn't really socialize with them, my husband and I only used sign language the entire time, which is kind of a rarity for us. As we tend to use our voices and sign at the same time. Anyway, I was walking from our room to the restaurant and someone behind me spoke to me. I turned around, puzzled, because I didn't understand and I looked at the person's hands waiting for them to move them so I would understand what they were talking about. And then I remembered I understood English. So not only did I not understand the English spoken to me but I forgot that I know how to speak it. I had to ask the person to repeat themselves. That was wild to me cuz my dad speaks a patois of French. And I remembered him saying that when he went back to visit his folks, it would take him a few days to get back into the language and I thought that was so strange - how do you forget your native language? Well you can. I like to teach myself several languages and yes I have mangled sentences just putting in whichever word I can remember from whichever language into any sentence. it all entirely makes sense to me 😆

[@thiagoelav633]

sorry, i just imagined you talking to your husband, using your voice and sign language, and the multitasking making you mixup languages without you or your husband noticing, and after a long time talking only with him you end up creating your own language. this could be a comedy movie 😂😂

[@O.Reagano]

Why would you look at their hands lol?

[@eoyenh]

@@thiagoelav633 couples can create a microdialect over time, thats a real thing

[@anagromydal]

LOL that story reminds me of that one time while i was struggling to learn italian - listening to that song by Eros Ramazotti and Tina Turner. He would sing his part in italian and i was so happy to understand everything, then Tina Turner sang and it thought : the heck? that is some really strange german there i can not understand what she is singing about... It took me all of the second verse to realize that she was singing in english not german :D sometimes being mulitlingual really does mess with your head :D

[@RisingRose]

@@O.Reagano did you skip past the first few sentences and miss what they were talking about or do you not know what sign language is?

[@anagromydal]

I am german and also fluent in english and italian. My husband on the other hand is monolingual. We quite often have those moments, where he looks at me puzzled because I intertwine the languages. One particular example of that was: I was telling him in german: "Wir müssen noch shoeshine kaufen, es ist keine schwarze mehr da!" I did not even realize i mixed the english word "shoeshine" in there, substituting the (in the "tip of the tongue moment") lost german word "Schuhcreme" without missing a beat or even thinking about the fact that i could not remember the german word. And it got worse since i got fluent in italian. I now would mix italian words into my german and english as well. Also all my friends are very used to me talking like a lunatic because i would start a sentence in one language and half way through decide the concept would be better expressed in the other and finish the sentence in the other language. Now i am waiting to see what is going to happen once I get my japanese (which I have been studying for 3 years now) up to speed. At some point I might not be making sense in any language anymore if I can`t get it under control. (And yes i do have ADHD - and I am adamant to learn at least 3 more languages to a proficient level before my brain gives out in this livespan)

[@t_ylr]

This used to happen to me all the time when I was in college studying Spanish and speaking it at work and with friends all the time. The worst thing was when I would be speaking English and my brain would want to use the word "ganas", but there's no equivalent for it in English lol. If I had to translate it I would say ganas = the capacity to feel like doing something. It would totally trip me up and I'd have rephrase whatever I was saying.

[@GrizikYugno-ku2zs]

It seems impossible for me to mix anything up with English. I can relate, though. The first foreign language I learned was French. Didn't learn that much, but so many years later I still cannot remember certain Spanish words because my brain has a French word in there and that's that. Manejar/conduir is something I mess up 100% of the time, still.

[@nathanlonghair]

Yeah I do this constantly. I got real lazy with it. My first language is Danish, but my active vocabulary is larger in English, so I just speak whichever words come to mind when constructing a sentence and hope people get it 😅 Luckily my girlfriend is very good at English so it’s rarely an issue. But I do sometimes sound like an idiot in Danish in professional settings because of it.

[@Teraku1503]

To me Japanese is very far away from German and English, so it only really happens to me for phrases (like 例えば) or very Japanese words (like コンビニ) when talking.

[@noelleggett5368]

I studied German at university, and we often had small social gatherings with ‘Kaffee und Kuchen’ to practise conversation after class. In order to keep conversation flowing, if we didn’t know a word, we’d simply use the English word. I sometimes got a little creative. Once, I couldn’t remember the word for ‘frog’ (Frosch) and possibly confused it with ‘toad’ (Kröte), so I instead came up with ‘der Krokenhopper’. Everyone smiled and knew what I meant.

[@kaseykaskas]

thank you for making a video on the biggest curse that comes with being a hyper-polyglot gigachad!

[@ashleyjeffs4433]

did you forget the English for nerd?

[@LiberalLenny-zn8sd]

Wrong channel lol

[@harrytruman9567]

that's attractive to every man... and woman on the planet.

[@heheboi639]

@@ashleyjeffs4433it’s a meme

[@cameronschyuder9034]

@@ashleyjeffs4433they’re not synonyms? /half-sarcastic

[@ToniAnneWong]

I once had a job where almost everyone else spoke Spanish. I had to learn Spanish in a relatively short time, but got proficient enough to be invited to participate in conferences and meetings all in Spanish. It was a surreal feeling when I finished up with those meetings, only to give a call to my English-only BF right afterwards and have my brain short-circuit itself for a moment.

[@anorganism8725]

My native language is English, but I grew up mostly in a German-speaking country. It was a common occurrence that a classmate would ask me what the English translation for a word was (as a native English speaker, I should know after all, or so the thinking went). Say for example they'd ask me what "Tasche" was in English. I would stare blankly, trying to remember the word for that cloth thing that holds stuff, only for someone else to shout out "bag". I always felt like my German peers, who learned vocabulary with direct mapping of English words to German words and vice versa, were much much better at translating individual words than me. On a similar note, the word for ginger (the plant) in German is "Ingwer". When I was around 16/17 or so, I knew both the words "ginger" and "Ingwer", but didn't associate them with each other. Someone said that "Ingwer" was "ginger" in English, and my first reaction was, that can't be right, no it's not. Only to then realize, they referred to the same plant. What happened, I think, is that I associate "ginger" primarily with ginger ale and ginger gummies (and only to a much lesser extent with the plant or tea), I associate "Ingwer" first and foremost with ginger tea (and to a lesser extent with the plant). So the words, despite meaning the same thing, "feel" different.

[@Аль-бадахшани]

The same thing happens to me as a native speaker of one of Tajikistan's minority languages who grew up in Russia.

[@andyarken7906]

I always felt bad when a friend asked me "how do you say this in German", and then I was stumped. And then sometimes I would reply "well, I would not say that at all", but I might still have problems finding a suitable replacement. Because sometimes, translating words just does not cut it, you need to change everything around it, too. (Also, the problem with ginger ale is that it only contains trace amounts of ginger, and is not an ale. It's just a disappointment in a bottle.)

[@barbstephenson8045]

Such a perfect example of different mapping methods. Thanks.

[@rainghostly]

I'm a native german speaker and I agree that it was a lot easier to translate when I was actually worse in english. Now I just flip a switch in my brain and the two languages don't overlap at all. The worst part is that I just use words of different languages when the concept is easier to get across without bothering to translate. Every word of every language I know has become an individual building block and my speech looks like a messy lego tower. Looking for pieces of the same colour takes a lot longer than just building it up with whichever is closest.

[@cupidok2768]

Evryone wants him to meet and practice English

[@natlewvt]

I studied French for years and am reasonably proficient for practical purposes. In the 90s I was studying at the Russian School at Middlebury. I took the language pledge very seriously and didn't even speak English with my roommate. Then after about a month, we had a long weekend off, so a couple of friends and I headed up to Montreal. Neither of the two knew French, so when we got there they relied on me to communicate ... except that the Russian was so forward in my mind that I could barely construct a single sentence. When I finally managed to partially "reinstall the French module," I discovered that I could *ask* questions but not *answer* them. The funniest thing was that no matter what I did or thought, I simply could not pronounce the word "oui." My brain and mouth could only produce "da."

[@tabby7189]

Happened to me in Italy. I'm L1 English L2 French and studied Italian while there. Thereafter for weeks or months, every time I tried to speak French, Italian would come out

[@HotelPapa100]

L2's obstructing each other is way more persistent in my experience as well. I used to be reasonably fluent in French after school, but after a lifetime of mostly using English as an L2 I have almost completely lost my active French. I think a large part of it is the overlap in lexicon between the two languages.

[@lisaharvey7768]

This happened to me after a few months of intensive German learning and living in Germany. We took a trip to France. I’d done French at school for 4yrs and practiced a bit before our trip. But every single time I went to say something in French, even things I was confident in saying, out came German. It was so hard to override this.

[@beckyc104]

Does this work the other direction, I wonder? What I mean is often when searching for a word in Spanish L3 I find it in Russian L2 before either Spanish or English L1 (although the construction of this sentence begs the question. Really? English is your mother tongue?)

[@sandytimewell]

I'm English L1. I learned French at school for 5 years and was reasonably proficient in it. Then I moved to China and lived there for 8 years. I have the same problem now when searching for French words - my brain and mouth will only produce the Chinese word. I can get back some of the French if I focus on speaking it for several days, like on a short trip to France. But I'm totally incapable of translating from Chinese to French or vice versa.

[@eliannameyerson5608]

This isn't quite the mixup that you were discussing in the video, but I'm sharing my favorite false friend moment. Background: My husband and I are native English speakers, but live in Zurich, Switzerland and mostly speak German to salespeople, etc. We were shopping for a sofa, and having the conversation about the models in German, but when it came time to make a decision, we spoke to each other in English. Even though we switched back to German to communicate to the saleswoman, she of course heard us, and continued in English, telling us that "we'll become the sofa in April". I think that this is one of my favorite German false friends, because it instantly got me picturing my husband and I as sofas!

[@CourtneySchwartz]

Finally I know why my magpie language interest is gradually turning me into a birdbrain.

[@ratoh1710]

My most embarrassing (?) memory is as a native Danish speaker, having to bring an English-to-Danish dictionary to my Danish exams. At this point in my life, I would consider myself better at English than I am at Danish. My inner monologue has been primarily English for over a decade now. Especially academic English vs academic Danish. I have had nearly no exposure to Danish research papers but I have had quite a bit of exposure to it in English, so if I have the option I always write my papers in English.

[@choucreamsundae]

In lycée, I had to actually make an effort and remember the lists of vocabulary and their translations if I wanted to pass tests. I knew the words in both languages but they have no connection to each other in my mind. It was so annoying! XD

[@cactus2260]

As a spanish native speaker with fluent english, i relate a lot, my english is just really good for more intelectual tasks because i listen to a lot of academic english and a little academic spanish

[@mother3man]

I'm a Classics PhD student and when I was playing Wordle back in 2022 I kept trying to type in Latin words on the English one, and then when I found a Latin Wordle, I started thinking of words in Ancient Greek

[@Doug.Giroux]

Years ago a Québécoise teaching colleague of mine was recounting a story where she was making some small talk with a nun (this was a Catholic school). They had just come across the topic of birthdays, and discovered they shared being born in September. My colleague then proclaimed in her thick but delightful accent, « ah so den I guess that mean you are virgin, right? ». (For those that don’t speak French, Virgo = vierge, which also means virgin in English)

[@elijahberegovsky8957]

I’m an L1 Russian, L2 English. When you mentioned the markers and stamps thing it took me a hot second to realise what they have in common even *after* you literally said марка. It is not a connection that has *ever* entered my brain before 😁 But yes, I am constantly having tip-of the-tongue moments in both my primary langs. And a constant stream of short bouts of dabbling in language after language after language… doesn’t help matters at all 😅

[@SO-ym3zs]

Interesting point about supression. I've always encountered the same phenomenon: as fun as language learning is, it's quite literally mentally exhausting to read/listen/speak another language, and it requires adequate breaks to give the brain a rest.

[@Quitobito]

You can get to a point where it becomes completely natural and comfortable. All you need is more familiarity, more exposure. Or, at least, that's my experience.

[@jessicapeyton5444]

Especially when trying to read Mandarin! That'll wear you out for sure 😅

[@harrytruman9567]

I speak Spanish as a third language, and regularly with my coworker who doesn't speak English well. Sometimes I have to tell him that in the morning when I'm tired, it's difficult for me to speak and understand Spanish because I'm just not all there mentally.

[@johndog1967]

I`m a native English speaker teaching in a university here in Japan. My fields of research are Pragmatics, Conversation Analysis and Cognitive Linguistics. In addition to my content courses I also teach English. One common feature of Japanese speakers of English is the tendency of speakers to carry out specific interaction management functions in L1, even if they have fairly good proficiency. The three areas that almost always default to L1 are discourse marking, repair initiation and backchannel. It is really ingrained behaviour and, although not fatal to any interaction in terms of understanding, it definitely impairs progressivity. To demonstrate to students how it works, I get a conversation going in Japanese and I deliver all of my content in Japanese, but instead of using common Japanese markers such as 'etoh', 'nanka', 'maa' など, I liberally sprinkle 'I mean,' 'you know' 'like' and 'stuff like that' (and stuff like that) throughout my turns at talk and produce typical English backchannel utterances, (yeah, right, I know) instead of Japanese aizuchi そうですね、たしかに、ね. Even lower level students wince to hear Japanese suffused spoken with English markers and listener response tokens. It takes a lot of time and constant focus, but gradually I can develop their interactional competence in terms of using L2 for these management functions.

[@languagejones6784]

YES! I absolutely do the same, especially the "I mean"s and "you know"s!

[@alenaadler8242]

My native-level L2 is Esperanto and even among other C1 and C2 level American speakers, the "y'know" discourse marker, and the filler-words "um" and especially "uh" are very prevelent. Many Esperanto speakers generally prefer to speak with a standard international accent if possible in order to obfuscate country of origin (perhaps with the exception of the Brits, who like to speak 'like good Brits'). But some of these tells are hard for Americans to shake.

[@Mimiheart9]

I was brought up speaking both Hebrew and English, and in high school I taught Hebrew class for second graders. During study hall in regular school, I would regularly plan my Hebrew lessons. My English class was right after my study hall. One day I was writing an essay. My English teacher was a preacher. I could not for the life of me remember the word "dad". I remember raising my hand and asking my teacher what the English word for אבא was. Thankfully, he knew enough Hebrew to understand that one. Also, my kids do not speak Hebrew, but sometimes after I've been reading something in Hebrew or I've been listening to Hebrew, I don't realize I'm speaking it, and I'll ask them something or tell them something and they'll gently remind me that I'm not speaking English. Or they'll understand just enough to answer me in English and I'll flip over.

[@Rilows]

Similar topic: Start learning a new language and have your other second language come up all the time. As a Spanish speaker who studied English, then Portuguese and then French, I have had English come up everytime I tried speaking Portuguese, and then had Portuguese come up when trying to speak French. So annoying

[@harrytruman9567]

I speak Krio as a second language and Spanish as a third, and when my Spanish improved to a conversational level, my brain kept wanting to speak Spanish everytime I tried speaking Krio. Funnily enough, there's a dialect of Krio spoken in Equatorial Guinea that has heavy Spanish influences. To me, it sounds like a Latino trying to speak Krio

[@gcewing]

This phenomenon needs to be known as an "astuce of the tongue" moment from now on.

[@ThaiIsland]

I thought I was super dumb but now I’m relieved to know it’s not just me. Also, astuce sounds like a fancy English word; maybe it should be English as well. 😂 Thanks! 👍🏽👏

[@drummerofawe]

That checks out, a lot of fancy English words are French words

[@cameronschyuder9034]

The most similar word is astute lol, which is relatively fancy I think

[@ThaiIsland]

@@cameronschyuder9034 that would be confusing if both words are used. 😂

[@Zombie-lx3sh]

In Quebec astuce exists but isn't used. We use truc instead.

[@l.olliffe7364]

Is no one going the mention the cameo of LanguageSimp as "a regular old monolingual"? Could not stop laughing. Fantastic video as always!

[@sherrijennings9309]

here's an anecdote that might amuse you........ our linguistics teacher told the class that on the end of year exam, someone labeled the uvula as "vulva". We were all terrified that it was ourselves, but thankfully when I got my exam back, it wasn't me!!!

[@pianoman47]

I'm an anglophone living in a French environment. I find the "forgetting words in English" thing happens more often when I'm speaking English to my francophone friends and colleagues. It's as if my brain is trying to tell me I should be speaking French right now.

[@aiocafea]

i 100% empathise, like my anglophone friends would sometimes ask me something about my native language of romanian and in that moment i truly feel my mental dashboard light up with warnings like 'woah wrong language buddy' in that pause, i like to imagine them thinking that english has fully taken over my brain or perhaps that changing languages causes me physical pain (i am not sure they'd be wrong) side-note: i noticed you used the term anglophone and i can't help wonder if this is the romance influence, as i anecdotally feel like most native anglophones would reach for its germanic version, 'english-speaker'

[@flylogan2954]

Are you from Québec?

[@gusinfante]

This is so true! I'm a Portuguese native speaker and teaching Portuguese abroad for 20 years now. Even in a context in which I speak m y language everyday, because I teach it, I sometimes forget words that I don't use everyday and I would remember them in English.

[@pimjikens]

That's so cool! I'm considering joining a post grad program for Portuguese as a second language teaching, sounds like an interesting career path

[@yatoxic1213]

The bit at the end actually resonates with me. My parents spoke in Amazigh to each other, with my mother speaking in Amazigh to me and my father in Dutch. As I turned five years old, my primary school insisted my parents to speak in Dutch to me because I would often confuse the words at school. This left me with a language deficit on one end. I couldn't communicate with foreign family members and all I could do was listen and make out what they were saying based on previous knowledge and context. As someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood and who has also shown all of the signs as a kid, these listening experiences were the only moments I properly sat down and listened to the conversation. I wouldn't be surprised if this inhibited my somewhat hyperactive tendencies. As an adult, I have been trying to 'reactivate' the language by speaking with my mother. Lots of memories from those times have actually surfaced again and it's an interesting trip down memory lane. You could argue that this is a textbook example of priming. I can't wait to have this language be the fifth one under my belt! :)

[@eawig]

I've been actively learning French for a few years, and my version of this is that I sometimes "forget" to prononce a word correctly in English if it has a close French cognate. A recent example was in the middle of an English sentence I automatically said the word "discrimination" à la française. It seems likely for the very same reason you mentioned at the end. Because it's something I've been concentrating so hard on doing, I can't always prevent it from bleeding into English a little. Great videos. I very much enjoy them.

[@Jason_wojnar_ukraine]

Have there been studies that explore whether it's possible to forget one's first language or replace it? I live in Ukraine and have a lot of friends from russian-speaking areas who have sworn off the language entirely, some for 10 years by now. I knew another guy from Belarus who worked in IT and always hung out with foreigners so he essentially never used russian in everyday life, had a perfect accent, and said most of the time he thought in English as well. Love this video and can relate to it fully.

[@fodonogue3]

Gotta love language! I’ve got conversational Japanese fluency and work as an ASL/English interpreter. My roommate is Hard of Hearing so we’re constantly back and forth between sign and English and I do the same with work every day. Constantly ‘forgetting’ vocab, mixing up how to express a concept, having to rely on sign to clarify something I’m saying in English, the list goes on. 🎉

[@vjunaperoh]

Wow! Dude! Are you a psychic!? I slept on this thought yesterday and have been suffering from since I speak 6 languages. 😢

[@resourceress7]

I have ADHD and fatigue that sometimes mess with word-finding, especially people's names, even though I know exactly who/what I'm talking about. Often when I'm speaking English (L1) aloud, I can use my non-native ASL to bridge the gap between thought and getting the word out in English. I get stuck during my utterance, then physically make the ASL sign, which seems to tell my English brain and mouth what to do.

[@uamsnof]

I was born and raised bilingually in Germany. Ever since I studied in the US and brought back an American spouse, I mostly only speak German at work. During lockdown/home office, my casual contact with my colleagues almost disappeared. Now I often have a hard time recalling words in German… doesn’t help that I spend my free time learning other languages. I really need to spend more time speaking German… which shouldn’t be so hard. I live here!

[@Speechbound]

Wow, this was super insightful! 🤯 I totally relate to those 'tip of the tongue' moments-especially when I’m trying to juggle multiple languages! Thanks for breaking it down so well, Dr. Taylor! Keep the awesome content coming!

[@J4Julz]

I've had this happen when learning a few Asian languages at the same time, and coming up with German instead, or when I came back to the US, using Korean syntax to order a beer... "beers two give me" :) I had it explained as a gloss that we pick from, all the "new languages" on one side, and fluent languages on the other... we keep trying to pick from the new list until that language becomes part of the fluent list. It helped, even if it might not be accurate. Interesting video, love watching and learning from you.

[@uamsnof]

I had French in school for five years. Then studied Japanese and Chinese and went abroad there for a semester in college. Last time I was in Paris, I had the hardest time not just blurting out Chinese when I meant to speak French. Funnily I never have that problem between Chinese and Japanese.

[@J4Julz]

@@uamsnof When I was studying Chinese and Japanese, my classes were back to back, with a quick quiz at the start of the second one... shifting gears was hard in that situation. Numbers between Chinese, Japanese and Korean was tricky!

[@batya7]

I loved these explanations and the tie-into ADHD was so intriguing. This phenomenon is something I have experienced in French and Hebrew switching - the English disappears! Strangely, sometimes a Spanish or Yiddish word will appear even though my ability in those languages is basic. 🧠🤯😅

[@NekonataVirino]

I am so delighted to hear you say that it is hard work suppressing your native language, that it is in fact exhausting. Because for me I can go to a one-day conference and listen/speak/ read my L2 continuously and 3/4 of the way through the day I am absolutely shattered. I simply can’t do it anymore and it’s like my entire brain goes on strike in any language at all - (and I also have ADHD so expending energy avoiding a mini-melt down is definitely on the cards)

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

One area I find these moments of target language intrusion happening a lot are with Latin gerunds/gerundives (I always get them confused so just say both lol, I didn't learn the technical terms as I acquired it). Basically the '-ndus' suffix. I've heard it described as 'future passivity', basically meaning 'things which must be X-ed'. So, the verb 'to do/act' is 'agere', and a thing needing to be done is an 'agendum'. In the plural, it's an agenda. This comes in super useful in so many situations. Bunch of raw ingredients sitting on the counter? They're 'coquenda'. Bunch of dirty dishes in the sink? 'Lavenda'. A woman in need of love? Amanda. So sometimes - especially in domestic situations - I find my brain constructing Latin words and slotting them in. Like I'm going to be moving house soon and on the list of cleaning tasks to be done I can't help but count things like wiping the counters, wiping down the windows, wiping the floor etc as 'stergenda'.

[@languagejones6784]

That is awesome. I want to add this to my repertoire! OMG IT'S AN ADDENDUM

[@evanhylland2481]

I’m a native English speaker and I’ve studied Swedish and Spanish. My problem is always inserting Swedish words while speaking Spanish and vice versa. There have also been plenty of times when I’ll forget an English word and usually it’s a Swedish word I’ll remember instead. Also, I feel lucky having ADHD and being pretty skilled with language learning! Great video as always!

[@zacharytipton1801]

I think it’s fun too when your L2 has a word for something or is easier to say than your L1. Specifically, the Chinese concept of 关系 just doesn’t have the same impact in English. I also really like how easy 没有 is as a response, and my brain tends to navigate to that first before English.

[@andrejbogdanov2816]

This was your most interesting video so far for me. Made my brian hurt. A grew up bilingual with German and Russian in Germany. Then learned French from age 6-9 and 11-17. Barely been speaking since. English from 10-19 and practiced and got very fluent later in life. Learned a little Italian and Spanish in my early twenties. As I practiced my Russian less over the years I went from very fluent with no accent to lacking tons of active vocabulary while still understanding it on a high level. A little more than a year ago I moved to Brazil with no further knowledge of the language and have since become quite fluent just by speaking, listening, reading, writing messages and looking up grammar and translations. After juat a few months here whenever I tried to speak French or Spanish, I automatically switched to Portuguese with very little control over that. By now it's almost impossible for me to speak French, although I can still read at a basic level. The craziest thing now is, that when I speak Russian, I subconsciously mix in Portugese words. Btw I never think consciously in a different language than I'm sneaking at the time and am still able to switch mid sentence between Portuguese, English and German. If anybody read this far: I'm understanind a lot more about my own brain now. Thank you!❤

[@harrytruman9567]

7:10 This makes so much sense actually. I speak English (native) Krio (semi-native?) and Spanish as a third language. I would only use Spanish occassionally, but I started working with a Spanish speaker who doesn't speak English well, thereby essentially forcing me to speak Spanish on an almost daily basis. My Spanish speaking has improved rapidly as a result, but I got the feeling like my Spanish was suppressing my Krio, because after I tried speaking Krio after speaking Spanish for about a week straight, my Krio came out as a jumbled mash of Spanish and Krio, and I kept getting the strong urge to use Spanish grammatical practices in my Krio, such as using "de" for possession (de doesn't indicate possession in Krio, it means "to be"). After a while of me speaking Krio more, the effect wore off a bit, but it was super weird and still crops up from time to time. My theory is that because for a long time I was only conversational in two languages (English and Krio), but less competent in Krio than in English, my brain defaulted to two language varieties- English, my L1, and "not English" my L2, which would be Krio. But since I now speak a third language, my brain had to adjust to the fact that "not English" could be either Krio, OR Spanish, and as a result I had some weird mixups. Super interesting!

[@lindajordan8161]

Thanks -- very interesting topic. I grew up as a monolingual English speaker and have learned several other languages in adulthood. It seems that I have a single "current L2" slot in my brain, and the other L2s go dormant...it's hard to switch. My funniest examples of spacing out & not knowing what I was saying have to do with interference from competing L2s instead of tip-of-the-tongue moments with my L1. In one case, I rattled something off in Amharic (the most recent L2 at the time) to a Brazilian friend when I was actively trying to learn Portuguese. She felt bad because she couldn't understand a thing...she thought her English was better than that. 😆

[@LVRugger]

I learned French in high school and Ukrainian in college. I would find myself translating English to French to Ukrainian and back all the time. Then I moved to Mexico and started learning Spanish. I promptly ended up being unable to speak much in either French or Ukrainian, but I understand and can read somewhat still in them. Now, I'm back in the US and quite a few of my employees are primarily English speaking. I find myself reflexively replying to English questions in Spanish, even when not at work. I think I've suppressed the English so much that the Spanish is just an automatic start.

[@wombatpandaa9774]

That bit ahout learning languages helping people with ADHD makes so much sense to me. I either have ADD or undiagnosed ADHD, and I've found it so much easier to "turn on" my focus since I learned Korean as a second language in my late teens. As usual, your channel blows my mind and makes me want to go back to school for a linguistics degree.

[@jldisme]

The medical term for persistent difficulty finding words is anomia however, it wouldn't be used when you're only having occasional tip of your tongue moments. I have anomia because of my multiple sclerosis. I totally blank out on a noun, and the best I can do is point at it. I'm not even able to come up with a description for it or for what it does.

[@koibubbles3302]

Sometimes as well when I am learning a language I find it easier to remember the translation for a word as another word in one of my other learned languages rather than in my native language. Like I was learning ASL and for a time I would remember the sign for “name” as “heißen” (to be called) instead of… you know, name. Though I think it was because it could be used as a verb which there isn’t a verb form of name like that in English so the German one felt closer to me.

[@Mehki227]

A couple of more comments. So I was also an interpreter for a while and because it's an unspoken language it's basically simultaneous interpretation unlike spoken languages will you listen to what the person saying and then you speak because you can't speak over them. Although I'm sure people at the UN for example who are talking into a mic from another room or probably hustlin to get the language out anyway. So I'm interpreting and the person says something and for the life of me I cannot remember how to say it in sign language. So I switched the sentence around and literally in my mind I'm in a huge dark room with file after file cabinet after file cabinet of all the words that I know and I'm running down this aisle and I'm frantically opening up drawers looking for that word in a file, and I found it just in time to insert it in the interpretation. Fun times! The other fun thing was I was interpreting for a kid in high school who was deaf who decided to take French. I've been trying to learn French since high school never paid attention to class needless to say I learned nothing. Well surprise surprise surprise. The teacher starts speaking in French by the second week and I understood her completely not only did I understand her but I was able to go from French to sign bypassing English. I would tell you that I don't know but a few rudimentary words in French certainly not entire lessons taught in it. When he got to level two I was hustling to stay ahead because whatever French was in my head like marinara, was some pretty basic stuff. I was still shocked though that I could do that. No idea.

[@scottstevens5481]

This is a GREAT topic! The tie-in of ADHD and Executive function is fascinating! Thank you for the video !!!🙏🏻👍🏻

[@NoRygBu]

That's one benefit of being a Hyperpolyglot Stutterer. 😅 I stutter most of the time (or at least have trouble expressing myself due to my autism) but that prevents and help me though to concentrate better and remember every word in every language I know. 😊😅🤓🤓🤓😀😀

[@nathanlonghair]

This sort of touches on something I experienced after coming back to Denmark after 6 years in England. Coworkers would listen to me talk to international contacts and be like “Wow you sound exactly like an English person!” (I didn’t, but close enough) “You should do more of our translation work!” And I tried to explain that speaking a language fluently and translating professionally are NOT the same skill sets 😬 For one, my English vocabulary was much larger than my Danish one, because I’d spent most of my adult life at the time in England. There were so many situations where I just had no clue what the Danish word or equivalent concept would be.

[@adnanilyas6368]

I am a native English speaker but I also speak very flawed versions of Urdu (picked up from family) and Spanish (a few years of formal study in high school and college). However, I’ve found that I’ve been able to use both languages in a pinch while at work. But I’ve noticed that, when I use one language a lot, the other one gets A LOT harder. My English stays pretty consistent, but the other non-native language I’m not using starts getting problems with tip of the tongue and mixed up words.

[@DominoPivot]

Fascinating! I have ADHD and I find myself code switching all the time when speaking French because I'm exposed to a lot of English every day. That is to say, I keep mixing in English in my French, despite it being my first language.

[@pedrova8058]

Code-switching is quite common among NDs (mainly ASD and ADHD (non-verbal cues, masking and all that jazz), that's why some people incorporates foreign accents, slang, mannerisms so easily, almost unconsciously)

[@NotanEmpire]

'technical term' is 'tip of the tongue moment'. 'Tip of the tongue' is to me also just 'a manner of speaking'

[@afuyeas9914]

BTW, "astuce" doesn't really mean "tip", it means "trick". "Tip" in English translates better to "conseil" or (more colloquially) "tuyau".

[@languagejones6784]

I see it used in exactly the same scenarios as “tip” and sometimes translated that way in bilingual content, so I’m going with “you know a word by the company it keeps” and that’s my story and I’m sticking to it 😂

[@afuyeas9914]

@@languagejones6784 In French dictionaries "astuce" is defined with a meaning of smth witty or devious. While I can see how you go from "trick" to "tip", I think "astuce" keeps its connotation too much to be a good translation for "tip".

[@airmat9]

Quoi! The ‘tip’ of the tongue ce n’est pas ‘conseil’ il est le *bout* de la langue, no?

[@AlexisMTE]

@@afuyeas9914 Not so simple… (French guy speaking English and Spanish here) In all language one word doesn’t translate always exactly in an other. That is true for tip that can get the trick or advice in French. There is a strong bond between the meaning of trick in English and “astuce” in french, as well as between advice and “conseil” (Most of the time not always as well). but “tip” doesn’t translate directly (except for the bill tip). The case is also in English since you can use tip in place of advice or trick sometimes, and sometimes not. Ie : How did you win? What trick did you use ? (Here definitely “astuce” since you won’t use tip or advice instead) “Easy to give advice, less to follow them” (Here definitely “Conseil”) But not so easy to choose with tip… If you say “Do you have any tip for me before my job interview” “I have one advice and one trick” “Listen carefully the questions and come with clean clothes” If you know witch one is an advice and witch one is a trick you know witch one is to be used in translation… (I mean you can’t 😊)

[@craigludington5827]

Language suppression -- that explains why it's so hard to speak my L1 after studying another language in another country for a while. I thought it was just because speaking had felt like such hard work recently that speaking in general felt like hard work, even in my own language. YAGV! (yet another great video!)

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you!

[@MarcoZamora]

I grew up bilingual in a bilingual school and home (American School in Mexico City). I totally agree with the conjecture that bilingualism supports executive function. Growing up, my friends, siblings and myself could context switch with no lag or hesitation between full English, full Spanish, and (arguably several dialects of) Spanglish, in consecutive sentences or within the same sentence if it would suit our purpose, which frequently was just wanting to show off. Our parents and teachers would expect and enforce full expressive fluency in a single language at a time, while the informal default between ourselves was a more expressive, fluid, and versatile Spanglish that had its particular grammar and style. Most everybody in that crowd were much more introspective than the monolingual or even the not-as-bilingually-fluent. The general consensus we arrived at was that the skills developed to support that directed, voluntary code switching lean on self-awareness, and were a constant exercise in it. There's a _lot_ of thinking ahead involved in planning and constructing those switches with an as small as possible lag, and much of that is about intentionality: "what is it that I want to say, and how does that fit into the constraints of the current context?" *That's* what rang a bell when you mentioned in your video that it's about *inhibiting* Lx. Working within the context constraints is about inhibition, and the way we did it wasn't in blocks of a whole language, but in smaller more conceptual/functional[?] blocks. Anyway, back on the track of intentionality, smooth code switching ends up being a great path to knowing your way around your executive function. Fun fact: I've relatively recently been diagnosed with ADHD, a few years ago at 50-something. My therapists say that in hindsigh it's obvious, but some time ago when they tested for it it wasn't, because they were looking for certain secondary effects on executive function that presented in a manner that doesn't quite match what's going on at the other end. And now that I'm older and less cognitively limber, those effects increasingly show up in the usual ways, which ended up prompting me to retry the diagnosis. And yes, my ability to smoothly code switch is one of the main ways I track my general cognitive health. Great content, I love your segues into language and neuroscience. Thanks!

[@CoreyGilShusterAskProject]

Thank you for wearing a better kipa. I was planning an intervention on this. Love your channel!

[@wednesdaygreenleaf9578]

I always find the asymmetrical switching cost findings so fascinating (Christoffels et al., 2007 is a cool EEG study on the topic for anyone interested, I always have my undergrads read it in language courses.) It's like you're so experienced suppressing your L1, and unexperienced in suppressing your L2, that you get unwanted L2 words flooding in when speaking your L1😂

[@jepomer]

Still after over 50 years since I was a one-year high school exchange student to Germany, I do get those mind blocks/tip of my tongue moments. Not infrequently the German word or phrase describes my thought better. I probably capitalize nouns and add commas more frequently than I should in my American English. Fascinating discussion. Thank you.

[@mep6302]

As a native Spanish speaker, it happens to me when I'm speaking a foreign language. I speak and listen to both Spanish and English every day. That's why when I'm speaking one language, it often happens that the other language tries to interfere with the language I'm using at the moment. My Spanish definitely wins because it's my native language. And now that I'm trying to revive my French, I notice both Spanish and English try to interfere with my French. It's something unintentional. Also, when I read a formal word in English which comes from French, my brain automatically assumes I'm reading French and I end up reading the word with a French pronunciation. About forgetting words this happened to me yesterday when I was speaking to my mom. I wanted to say something was scary but I couldn't remember the translation of scary in Spanish so I had to change my words.

[@daneisner4465]

In grad school, where we all were studying Hebrew, I was having lunch with a classmate who was a former Spanish teacher, speaking Spanish about what we were studying in Hebrew class, as one does. It was completely in Spanish except my brain consistently made me say "בhebreo". Several years before, in my senior year of high school, I was in university level Italian 1 at the same time I was about to take the French and Spanish AP exams. French was well-engrained, having started in 6th grade, but I only started Spanish in 10th grade. All semester, after the very beginning, every time I attempted Spanish, it came out Italian, and I was worried for the spoken portion of the exam. It magically fixed itself about a week before the exam. A+ in Italian, and 5s in French and Spanish.

[@chanapua]

"as one does"! ❤

[@k.c1126]

Happens with dialects, too, at least for some people... When I was a kid I'd go to my grandparents' house for the summer and come back to the city talking like country folk from their part of the country 😂 .... Very interesting conversation to be had about this....

[@williamhearn7365]

I love this topic. At the end of the cold war I worked as a Russian linguist in the Army. After my service I continued with my studies, and at the height of my Russian abilities I had an active vocabulary of maybe 6000 words. A nice comfortable B2 playing around in the C1 range. Moving back to Ohio my Russian got pretty rusty. After a motorcycle accident and a month long coma, I woke up with English and Russian trying to occupy the same space. It took me at least 5 years to master the English equivalent to холодильник. Many other words were problematic, but холодильник felt like more of a concept issue. Basing the word on холодный made sense. In English the word cold isn't even part of the new word. We had to come up with refrigerate. Two decades later the Russian word still wants to join the conversation. Thank you for the video.

[@Vimyis]

I think this is my favorite video on the channel yet, really interesting explanations and research! I do feel like studying languages has improved my executive function skills, but that might just be the self-discipline of sitting down to study every day in my case. I've also noticed once or twice almost forgetting an English word that I've recently had difficulty learning an equivalent of, like my brain really is just focused on cementing that new bit of vocabulary.

[@chelseahelsinki]

A funny one for me is when I (consciously or subconsciously) think one of the words in an L2 is just a better word for the concept, it's like my brain decides to fully replace the English word with the better one. Case in point: I was once trying to tell a friend about something in my life that I'd improved. The Swedish word for improve is "förbättra", which literally means "to better", which my brain likes better so it yeeted "improve" out the window. I was left scrambling for a concept in English and the best I could come up with was "I've bumped up my life stats", which honestly is probably also a superior term

[@ashcraft555]

My second language is American Sign and I experience this all the time. I'm curious about the specific research about this phenomenon between spoken and nonspoken languages. I'll often find myself stuck in the middle of a sentence repeatedly signing a word trying to remember English. I've also dropped words in sentences because I'm using the nonverbal ASL markers. For example, I once told a romantic partner "I'm mad" and then went about my business unbothered, much to my partner's confusion. In ASL, the signs would be "I" and "mad" while shaking your head and using corresponding facial expression. I used those nonverbal signals when I was speaking and my brain didn't connect the language difference in the words coming out. What resulted was the most confusing fight of my life. Neither of us had any idea what was going on!

[@theskintexpat-themightygreegor]

Pamploma, and yes, they do.

[@eeee69]

for me, the biggest problems arose when I was first learning russian, having spent several years already on spanish. I never really found myself accidentally going back to english when speaking russian (I believe I learned to suppress english, as you call it, during my spanish education), but instead found myself accidentally using small bits of spanish, which I did not learn to suppress! some examples (all from very early on in learning): -saying "de la..." or a similar phrase as a stall tactic when pausing for a noun in spanish, then accidentally saying it when speaking russian and pausing for a noun. neither of those are russian words-I learned to fix that basically immediately -accidentally putting the adjective after the noun (this one was less easy to notice when speaking, so it took marginally longer to fix) finally, a third example in spanish: -when going back to speaking spanish, I kept forgetting words and remembering the russian equivalents. to me, this indicates I also had to learn to suppress russian. for me, even though russian and spanish aren't really similar at all, speaking either of them feels rather similar: not like "speaking russian" or "speaking spanish" but "speaking the other language." I had one last thought, but I forgot it, unfortunately. I would like to stress the above examples went away very quickly and with not much effort, and all occurred only in the first few weeks of learning.

[@noelleggett5368]

I studied Italian between the ages of 9 and 14, and became fluent, but moved interstate to a town without an Italian community, so I soon fell out of practice. At the age of 18, at university, in a German class, my teacher showed slides of his recent trip to Europe to stimulate German conversation for the class. He went around the class asking questions about what we saw in the pictures. When it came to my turn, he switched to a picture of Florence and asked me a question in German. I immediately answered him in Italian. 😂 Also, after a morning studying German at university, I quickly wrote a note for my mother (who was tutoring psychology students in the same building) and pinned it to a notice board so she could find it. Her colleagues refused to believe it was a note from her son, because I had absent-mindedly (mis)spelled her name according to German spelling rules, not English. 😂

[@aiocafea]

as a romanian, there are some subtle politics in all people my age code-switching with english when our parents usually don't know a word of the language, and when about one in four romanians are overseas, so i always kind of tried my best to be mindful of whether i use chiefly 'native' words when speaking in any case, i can vouch for the fact that some concepts or similar terms would sometimes activate my english-brain, and i would have to concentrate to make sure i don't cross wires that's not to say it's all just language inertia, because i definitely felt like words are all linked to their translations in my other languages, to similar words in the same language, all with different weights on a case-by-case basis normally, i am fluent in my native language of romanian and then in my stronger L2 english, with some freak appeaeances from french but for the word for this: 🍓 the recall is almost exclusively 'fraise', pause 'something-berry, strawberry!' and a very long pause until i remember the native word of 'căpșună' i am not big on them in real life, so it makes sense my strongest recent memories are of learning flashcards for 'words you 100% will use in your day-to-day life' rather than in real life it reminds me of how we learn language through experience but also language is its own form of experience i know the experience of just not knowing words in a language at all is a bit more banal, but it feels somewhat related, like how i never knew the word magnétophone because by the time i learnt french tape recorders were antiquated technology what i just realised is if i ever see a tape recorder, my most recent memory of the image of one may be musing about the term magnétophone, so it may take primacy to 'tape recorder' anyway, wonderful video as always!

[@aiocafea]

pseudo-edit: sorry for the terrible quality of the comment, on the mobile browser it's kind of cumbersome to write, i can only see four short rows of text behind, and i cannot edit comments

[@betsyw4943]

Re: 🍓 In English it is "strawberry" because you have to put straw (or newspaper, or other ground covering) under it to keep the fruit from touching the ground and rotting. Similarly, in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi it is ʻōhelo papa (berry ground). (ʻŌhelo ʻai is a native berry on a tree that glosses I guess to "berry food" -- I'm not sure if there are other berries named in a similar fashion or if ʻōhelo is ever used on its own.)

[@JAMC-q1c]

I’m a native Spanish speaker who was enrolled since I was a toddler in a British school. I’m fully bilingual in English Spanish, but I mostly think in Spanish. Since ten years ago I work in Brazil for an American company, and have also reached bilingual proficiency in Portuguese. Because my American colleagues are monolingual, and my Brazilian colleagues English is not great, many times I have to help translate between the two groups, L2 to L2. And I’ve lost count of the times, after carefully listening to whatever is said in one language, no matter if Portuguese or English, I start (or so I think) translating, but I unconsciously simply repeat the same thing, in my own words, in the language it was heard, English to English or Portuguese to Portuguese, to my great embarrassment. I assume that paying extra attention to what is being said in one language just simply pushes back the second language to a point where I don’t even notice I haven’t switched languages. I don’t recall that happening when Spanish, my L1, is one of the two languages,

[@basicallyfluent]

My Korean professor mentioned that foreign students tend to mix up 선생 (teacher) and 생선(fish) quite commonly. Along with 멋지다 (cool/suave) and 맛있다 (delicious). So instead of their students telling them 'teacher you're cool (선생님 멋지다)" they're often told "Mr.Fish you're tasty (생선님 맛있다)". Personally I always confuse 선수(athlete) and 순서 (order). Even now I had to double check to make sure I didn't swap the English definitions. Love your videos!

[@cyberherbalist]

I speak German fairly fluently, and this happens to me. I'm talking about something, and suddenly I can't come up with the English, but the German is there loud and proud. It sometimes happens that the word in German is closer to what I mean than the equivalent English. Sometimes I will unexpectedly hear someone speaking in German and instantly I code switch. I'm trying to learn Spanish now, and I'm looking forward to that happening in that language, too. Fun times!

[@analogueghostmusic]

I remember when I was finally getting over the intermediate plateau in Spanish, when I'd go back to speaking English, I'd find myself doing direct translations of things that didn't really make sense back in English. For example, after being in Colombia speaking nothing but Spanish for 3 months, someone asked me about the Chinese food in Medellín, and I immediately answered "it's very normal" without hesitation. And then like 5 seconds later, I was just like "wtf? who says that?" and came to the realization it was because people always described bad food like "esta comida es muy normal." So many other examples of that happening to me if I don't speak English for awhile.

[@keyleeeeeee]

i once forgot the word "rhinoceros" yet remembered the dutch word "neushoorn" and i was asking my friends questions like "whats that dinosaur looking thing with a horn on its nose" for about five minutes

[@vonVersova]

Pss, just today on a call I had fully in German (a recently acquired language), I was looking to end the call with a nice "i'll pass on the advice" in german, i.e. "ich werde den Hinweis weiterleiten", but stood blank after werde like Wile E Coyote paused mid-air after racing off a hill. Then I just replaced Hinweis with the rhyming Advice, and thankfully germans these days know enough english to make sense of that.

[@inconspicuous-nobody]

This has helped make so much sense of what is going on with my brain, thank you!

[@gerriebell2128]

I am fluent in English and ASL, conversationally fluent in Spanish and speak some German. When I worked as an interpreter for the deaf I found myself forgetting words in English. sometimes I could think of the word in sign or in Spanish but the English was only on the tip of my tongue. Sometimes I had to interpret between the deaf counselor I worked for and the Spanish speaking parents of the deaf high school student that was the client. Sometimes it was a meeting with other English speakers involved, too. I found out later that I do have ADD and yet I found I could “hyper focus” while interpreting. My brother married a German woman 40 years ago, and I could speak a little German to her, but my brain had to go through Spanish words to find the German ones I knew. Later I taught ASL at a high school for ten years. I’m retired now so rarely use sign but speak Spanish as much as I can because I don’t want to lose it, and we have new people marrying into the family who are native Spanish speakers still learning English. I think my mind gets a wee bit less distractable when I’m speaking L2, 3, or 4. Somehow after I got fluent I have just been able to start speaking Spanish or signing ASL without having to translate in my head from English. When I was young, learning languages was easy and I loved it. Not so much now in my 70’s, but at least I’m not losing things too much. I’ve had ADD all my life- did not realize it until I was 52 and my teaching mentor brought it up. Looking back I’ve seen the signs of it even back in childhood. This is all very interesting to hear you discuss these things.

[@burlapknapsack]

I haven't really felt like I end up forgetting English words. What I do experience plenty of is firstly, that I can't get myself to easily remember how to pronounce foreign words conventionally that I have learned how to pronounce correctly. A lot of words become unintelligible to English monolinguals. Sometimes people think I'm being pretentious if they don't know me but that's on them for making snap judgements. Secondly, especially while in the thick of studying another language, I forget my native speaker sense of what sounds correct, grammatical, or possibly acceptable in English. The language that I've studied directly that was furthest from English in every way possible was Korean and it really threw my sense of English off for a while.

[@tobiathon]

Fascinating! Thank you!

[@Horhne]

Thank you for this video. I am a native English speaker living in Portugal. I have French as a second language but my level of Portuguese is beginning to usurp this. Here in Portugal I run a small guest house and we have a lot of guests from France. One day I was studying (quite intensely) my Portuguese when a French couple returned from their day out and tried to initiate conversation with me in French. Whilst I understood them with little difficulty, every time I tried to respond, only Portuguese would come out. To make the switch to French was just too difficult and I actually felt quite stupid, so thank you for telling me this is something normal. On another note, my husband is of Portuguese descent but was born and grew up in South Africa. English is his first language, Afrikaans his second and he used to say Portuguese was his third as he only spoke it in the family (but obviously since moving to Portugal his Portuguese has developed in leaps and bounds). However, I could never understand why he and his family (with similar SA ties) would mix English Portuguese and Afrikaans all in the one sentence. I guess I get it now!!

[@MTimWeaver]

Native language suppression is a thing. I was on a business trip to South America, about 3-4 days into the trip, speaking Spanish 95% of the time. I called back to the U.S. to speak to a friend about some stuff (I may or may not have been drinking...), and we chatted for a few minutes when she said, "This sounds interesting, but could you please speak English?" I'd been speaking Spanish the whole time, but in my mind, it was (or seemed like) English.

[@chanapua]

That reminds me of the time my housemate decided to walk the few blocks to the grocery store so he could carry more stuff, then rode his bicycle there without noticing he hadn't walked... until he came out with too many groceries

[@pierreabbat6157]

Years ago I took a trip to Brazil. Portuguese has a different word for "customs" (border crossing) than other Romance languages. Talking about the trip in Spanish, I said "tuve que alfandegar mis malas" and things like that.

[@sprachschlampe353]

I'm from the US, majored in French in college, and studied a year in France. I spent as much time as possible with French or French speaking friends and even picked up a bit of the local accent. A couple of weeks after I returned home, one evening I decided my car needed servicing so I turned to my step-father and asked if he knew a good "garagiste" (in my American accent) in the area. At first he gave me a puzzled look but figured it out and started listing some mechanics that he knew. When I figured out later what I had I done, substituted French "garagiste" for "mechanic" I was soooooo embarrassed and apologized!!! He got a good-natured chuckle out of it, though.

[@andrewhalyburton5990]

Really enjoy the videos! I’m (probably) about B2 Spanish (need to develop my vocab a little bit more before I’d be confident saying that) and I’ve just started German this month. Thought it would be interesting to be able to speak two languages that don’t have lots of grammar in common.

[@69jeroni]

When intoxicated It seems I forget the English word or i slip into and out of Spanish a little more, especially if I’ve been using the language a lot in the hours &/or days prior to. Sometimes and To some degree it is not an accident i feel an urge to say it in Spanish so it happens. There was that time several months ago i said something on the lines of I terminated my drink by accident cause of some linguistic interference

[@gusinfante]

Language mix-ups: I've been learning Welsh for 2 years now and sometimes, when I'm making an effort to have a conversation in Welsh, words in either Basque or Mandarin (languages I studied in the past) come out from my mouth or come up into my brain.

[@TomRNZ]

This is really interesting. I was just talking about this last night with someone. I'm a native English speaker with Spanish as L2. Recently I forgot the word "keyboard" and said to someone at work, "Could you pass me the... uh... uh... teclado". The person had no idea what I was talking about, but I genuinely couldn't remember the word "keyboard". Being a native English speaker who lives in an English-speaking country where Spanish isn't spoken, obviously I use English most of the time, but I listen to and read Spanish every day, so it's always sitting there waiting to be used. In fact, my internal monologue switches between English and Spanish several times a day without me realising it.

[@zoec8796]

I'm British, studied French and German in school, and lived in Norway for 3 years where I learned Norwegian to about B2 level on the European framework. About 7 years ago we moved to the Netherlands, and at first I didn't think we would stay for long, so just muddled through with my hotchpotch of other Germanic languages, and actually understood quite a bit. When it became clear that we were staying here indefinitely, I threw myself into learning Dutch, and took every opportunity to speak it. In those early days, I had several conversations in shops that went like this: Sales assistant: nog iets anders, mevrouw? Me: nei, det var alt, takk Assistant: 🤨??? Me: oh shit, sorry - nee, dat was alles, bedankt More recently I asked a waiter if we could order food (having already ordered drinks) by saying "kunnen we ook mat bestellen, alstu", and only realising I'd used the Norwegian word for food when everyone I was with looked at me blankly 😬

[@tommyhuffman7499]

Great topic!

[@l.u.c.a.s.]

I gotta say this is an awesome channel. Keep up the good work

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you!

[@whatyouexpect2650]

I think what should be added to this topic is the relative DISTANCE between the L1 and L2. I am a native English speaker studying Japanese for the third year, and - - - that was what first came to my brain. "For the third year" is not natural for a number of reasons, but I can think of a couple of reasons why I wrote that having to do with interference. English and Japanese are like opposites, so when speaking JP I don't just have to suppress English but sometimes entire concepts that don't translate well. For example the English "Hey, what's new" is actually interesting in that it functions as both a casual greeting and gathering inquiry of news from the listener. Japanese has no real equivalent, so the suppression of English is multifaceted. I can imagine the "suppression fatigue" may be even larger than other language pairs due to factors like this (also because English is way more detailed oriented in a lot of ways).

[@theagrome4592]

I learned German in High School and taught myself Spanish post grad. I was traveling in Mexico and struck up a conversation with some people from Austria. I tried to speak German but some words would come out in Spanish. We ended up speaking English.

[@josterha]

Very interesting! I was hoping to hear what happens when you have three or more languages in the mix. English is my L1, and German is my L2, but French is my L3 and weakest language. I find it nearly impossible when speaking French to not slip German words in at an embarrassing frequency. I guess one has more practice at suppressing their L1 as opposed to their L1 AND L2 and the L2 seems to slip by the censors more often.

[@SurprisedPika666]

It happens to me all the time now that I've learning French. I have forgotten how to spell so many words in English. And I have this annoying thing now where I noticed every dropped relative pronoun in English because they are mandatory in French

[@mrtriathlondude]

An interesting anecdote about L1/L2 suppresion: My first language is English, but I learned Spanish as a young adult while living in Spain for a few years. I achieved a high defree of proficiency in the language, and could often pass for an Andalus for 20-30 minutes of conversation before I'd make a mistake. These days I'm studying German and recently had the opportunity to go visit the Bavarian city where my mom grew up. I had been practicing German regularly for the last year (combined with a couple of years of formal study back in high school), so I had the basics and the grammar, but I really atruggled with the vocabulary. I would often forget words in basic sentances, but instead of stammering and having to suppress English, Spanish words would just come out uninvited. I dont know if my brain just decided German=foreign=spanish or what, but it was a highly amusing situation that happened regularly during my trip and made it more difficult to communicate since most Germans have some level of proficiency in English, but not in Spanish.

[@justpiper0916]

I always love when you upload!

[@SO-ym3zs]

I do this in multiple ways: * Reflexively substituting words or phrases from my primary hobby language, German, into my native English sentences (probabably connected to the fact that I'm well beyond the point where I started dreaming in German) * Doing the above, realizing what I've done, and then also briefly blanking on the proper English word or construction * Subbing or intermingling bits of German grammar or vocabularly with my other foreign tongues, like French or Spanish. I find the latter case particularly interesting: my brain seems to lump all foreign languages together in some regard, and since my command of German is far more advanced than the other languages, when I reach a conscious or subconscious impasse, my brain often reverts to German to fill in the blanks before it reaches for my native English.

[@onewhoisanonymous]

I grew up in a home where English is the main language but we use vocabulary in other languages to substitute some English words. I also speak Mandarin. My brain turns off when i speak to some English speakers because I can't remember words. I moved to the west coast, and forgot how to describe high tide during a storm. I just said "you know when the waves look angry??" My mom speaks 5 languages and her go to word when she forgets things in English is "oh you know that thingy" or goes finds my dad because he understands her round-about-wording.

[@iloveicespeed]

J'aime beaucoup vos vidéos! Petite question: quand on apprend une 3e langue, mais que la source principale d'apprentissage est dans notre 2e langue, est-ce que ça a un effet sur l'apprentissage ? J'apprends le russe pour discuter avec ma belle famille, mais j'utilise duo lingo à partir de l'anglais et j'écoute des podcasts anglais russe. Au plaisir d'en apprendre plus !

[@oakstrong1]

My mother didn't seem to have any problems of switching between Danish and Finnish in daily life, but it became more obvious when she had to act as a simultaneous interpreter for 18 hours a day without any real breaks, and sometimes a bit more. The further the week went, the more cracks appeared as her physical and mental stamina was put to test. Like her, I'm somewhat bilingual since young adult but I couldn't accomplish anywhere near what she did! But now I have an explanation: I have adhd. Talking to people who are functioning in another language on daily basis, the most common code switching seems to be using numbers in L2 when doing calculations. This is also true for me when doing primary level, basic calculations (+, -, ×,÷). But my L1 is also frequently interfering with my English when it comes to compound words, and certain grammar points when I'm tired) even though I haven't used it for 30 years apart from a few brief spurts. Code switching between currencies (€, $, £, riel) is perhaps the hardest. It was the last thing I managed to switch back to L1 after speaking exclusively English for 12 months. Apparently, I also spoke L1 with an accent for a couple of months after living in England for 5 years.

[@caeliachapin5317]

I spent seven years as an English teacher in Japan (during the 90s). One day I was at some kind of English teachers' conference, and I heard somebody say "language attrition," which triggered the realization that I hadn't used, or thought of, the word "unless" for 3 or 4 years. I think EFL instructors may be particularly vulnerable to forgetting native language words, because they spend a lot of time communicating in a subset of English tailored to the needs of their students.

[@Joyce-t2f]

Yes, mixing up languages happens to me and it is normal. Too many words are stored in my brain from studying at least 6 foreign languages. The other day when writing in Italian I couldn't recall the word for ''same''. At first, I thought ''mismo'' but knew that it wasn't right. It's Spanish but I haven't been studying that for a while. I had to look up Italian and it was ''stesso''. Duh! I knew that but somehow I ''temporarily forgot'' it. Interesting topic!

[@hglundahl]

Pamplona and some neighbouring cities or towns for the San Sernín. On the albergue they were against the practise, so I didn't participate. Some on the Camino are really into "Spanish bull-practises are animal mistreatment" (the primary one of course the corrida) + bull running is dangerous too. I checked, the Albergue was actually arguably the one in Los Arcos or Viana, and this means they were bull shitting me about an encierro which was already past. I was there 21 of August and in nearby Tafalla the encierro is 15th to 20th of August.