It takes more effort to tell two language apart when you understand both of them
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That is a genuine new thought for me, I only speak one language but it never occurred to me that if you are fluent in two or more that they might start to merge in your head into a single language, forcing you to work to isolate one as you speak it. All languages are a mix of others but I can't imagine having to differentiate the root of each word before it is used to ensure its applicability.
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It's fun sometimes. We'll talk and then stop "hey wait a minute, which language did you say that in?"
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Depends on the language? I mean, Portuguese and English are wildly different, so it's very easy to tell them apart. Now, if it was Portuguese and Spanish, I think telling the two apart could be harder more often
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I suppose that is what fluency means, that it becomes native to the brain and used instinctively without conscious filtration. A lot of modes of thought become mixed at the point of fluency, at a certain level scientific problems can be difficult to define whether they are chemistry or biology or mathematics.
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It works like a switch in your head. You consciously flip the switch to whatever language you want to use, but then afterwards you don't really think about it. It can lead to situations where you forget to switch the language back to a common language before speaking to someone
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I only speak German and have only ever communicated in any medium in that language so it is difficult for me to place myself in the situation of being unsure which language I had used to say something.
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I have a doubt.
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Something felt wrong about this comment but it took a while to figure out what. It's in English. I guess you meant you only communicate orally in German but it kinda confirms the original post.
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I had been fighting a valiant fight to not make that joke since I first replied to this post and sadly lost.
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I'm fully bilingual (learned both languages at the same time) and that is not my experience at all. For me it is 100% subconscious. I just automatically speak the appropriate language for the situation I'm in without thinking about it.
In fact if I try to consciously speak the "wrong" language for the situation I'm in it feels very weird and it takes a lot of effort to not mix up the pronunciation.
Dreaming/inner thoughts work the same way. The language is always automatic based on context.
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Sorry, it's a stupid joke on the topic of the post.
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If you're really fluent.
I lived in Germany for a few years after graduating college with several years of French study under my belt, and there was a point as I was learning German where I would genuinely struggle remembering the right word for things. I'd reach for the German word, and my brain would give me the French word.
Worse was returning to the US. There would be times when I'd be talking and want to say a common word, like "trash can" and I could not for the life of me remember how to say it in English. All I'd get was the German word. I mean, I spent the first 18 years of my life being mono-lingual, and three years in a foreign country and I started forgetting my native tongue.
But the strangest is that now -- after 20 years back in the US, when I can practically no longer speak German -- it still sometimes happens to me that I'll reach for a word and get the German one, and can't remember the English word.
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The weirdest experience I've had with language mixups so far is that my brain apparently seems to conflate anything not English. English is my first language, and I used to be able to speak German pretty well — not fluent, but good enough to hold a fairly natural conversation, but I have unfortunately let it slip away now. I'm now learning a different language and for some reason whenever I don't know a word for something but I do remember the German one, my brain just picks the German one. It's quite frustrating.
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Same. If somebody speaks to me in Spanish, half the time I react by speaking German.
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Yeah, I have that too. It feels like in my brain there's a big box for my native tongue, and a smaller box for that other language I studied a long time a go. When I started studying yet another language, all of it was stored in that little smaller box. If there's a label on that box, it will probably say something like "Here's all the random foreign language stuff you don't really use very much."
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Yup. My partner's dad speaks Spanish, German and English. As he gets older, he's increasingly unsure which one he's speaking.
I'm a native English speaker, speak ok German, and only a bit of Spanish. Communication is kinda tough.
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I know some Japanese, and I can usually recognize Korean because it sounds kinda like Japanese but I can't understand anything.
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Ja, ich liebe when I'm busy talking in one language aber words von the other language ich know keep sneaking in.
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My native French speaking mom will occasionally address my non-french speaking husband in French without realizing unless I tell her and even then she only knows because I've told her.
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I speak 3 language and as for my case it's only when i speak it's tough to remember the word of that language i want if the code switch isn't quite "right" so sometimes a word or two from another language will seep through. Never get confuse on what language is spoken by others though
