Sometimes when I am stressed the tv language seems to change to something incomprehensible.
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Never. I am stuck in the U.S. for my whole life probably.
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No. But i would if i moved to the uk or USA. I dream and think in english at times, when i read and chat in english a lot.
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You mean because of some kind of brain trauma?
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If I forget my first language i’m screwed because it’s my only language.
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Yeah kinda biological like that.
But more like forgetting English (my only language) as a result of mental illness/stress
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Mother tongue can’t be forgotten. Sure you can start thinking in a foreign language after a long immersion but once you return to your homeland it all comes back in a flash.
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I’ve never heard of that happening.
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We have a tv drama set in a hospital emergency department.
On that a woman became temporarily blind as the result of stress. I think the term is conversion disorder (but not sure of that)
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English is my primary language but I also speak fluent French and Italian, but I’m out of practice with my secondary languages.
I’m afraid that I’ll forget how to speak French and Italian one day.
But I doubt it.
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I forgot French since I don’t practice it. I still remember basic things but that’s all
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If you forget your home language and cant talk properly. You probably having a stroke.
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I have a relative who recently said she is afraid she won’t have time to learn all the languages on Earth before she dies. She is gifted and will probably learn quite a number of them. Life depends on your perspective.
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When I came home after an exchange program in France, I waited alone in a baggage unloading area just off the tarmac for the rest of my class to join me.
While most of my class had been placed in the same large town and had been meeting up regularly, I was placed in a small coastal village alone, and hadn’t spoken or heard English in about a month before I left for home. I had traded my seat on the airplane to another student who wanted to sit by her best friend, and so was two cabins away from the rest of my class. I had a French look about me, apparently, and so all personnel addressed me solely in French, though they spoke to everyone around me in English. (This happened to me in Montreal, too, when traveling with my family - without fail, people addressed them in English and me in French, even though we were obviously one group).
So I waited for the rest of my class while the airport workers stacked bags around me, chattering to each other happily. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. And even though I had just heard English on the plane, and had even spoken English with classmates on the flight back, I became convinced that I had forgotten English while I was in France.
It was perhaps 10 minutes of terror. Then one of the baggage handlers said something in English, and it became apparent from their conversation that they had actually been speaking Polish to each other up until then, just with very American accents, intonations, and gestures.
When I tell this story, the punchline is how silly I am and how quickly I jump to terrible conclusions in the absence of compelling data. I never manage to convey how frightened I really was. It was one of the scariest moments of my life.
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Haha. Cool story.
I don’t think that’s possible. I’m an English major with a really good vocabulary, I speak one language but I speak it well. Spanish, on the other hand, I have lost gradually since my first couple years of college. I can still understand some of it though, even though I can’t speak it anymore.
how did you learn? i am transliterate in hebrew meaning i can read their alephbet characters but my vocabulary is nonexistant so i would have to look up in dictionary the words… i tried learning russian years ago but didnt get very far…
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My parents speak multiple languages.
I was exposed to other languages since childhood.
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cool. that sounds like the best way to learn!
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