3 ms·

I think what copperx is talking about, and certainly what I was talking about is not your ability to speak and communicate at a native level in the languages yo

I think what copperx is talking about, and certainly what I was talking about is not your ability to speak and communicate at a native level in the languages you speak, but your inability to achieve a very high level of competency i.e. talk with the clarity of a Steven Pinker or Noam Chomsky or generally anyone you consider to be highly articulate. IMHO this is largely due to actively speaking multiple languages on a daily basis. Its wierd because I can't really explain the types of mistakes but its things that second language learners won't ever do, like starting a sentence in one language and finishing in another, or adopting a verb from one of the languages you know, for instance in DE/EN, "gimme den ball" or "er hat gesagt he's sold.". It requires active concentration to not do this and can often lead to slight pauses where you are searching in your head for the X language equivalent of the term in language Y (only then to realize you should have started the sentence in a completely different way to articulate the same sentiment). Given there aren't many people in general that attain a high level (Novel Authors, Great Lecturers, Debaters, etc.) of linguistic competency, still the few that do attain this, seem to almost always be monolingual or do whatever they are best at in only one language. For me, with one side of my family everything is german/polish, with another english/spanish, and its very easy to casually speak in whatever language for daily tasks because if you are with family you can just use whichever word comes to mind regardless of what language it is in, and if not the vocab is so common and easy there is no difficulty just saying everything in the one language (even though your grammar is at times influenced by your other languages like copperx says - ahh). But once you go to writing an essay, giving a lecture or presentation, especially in one of the languages you don't usually do that in - you immediately realize how segmented your vocabulary is (or at least that happens to me :). Not to mention that in informal settings with family, you are constantly mixing stuff up because your mother in law is speaking polish your wife is answering in german and you're asking you're wife something in spanish.

Natanael_L 11y ago
Well I for one seems to have learned my languages as two independent things as compared to what you describe. When I'm writing here now I'm thinking in English uninterrupted, not in Swedish (my native language), although I am capable of switching at will without trouble. Maybe it is because I was simultaneously exposed to both languages heavily when growing up but almost always from separate contexts (as in reading in English and listening to Swedish or vice versa, also including other media like TV and games, and music - our radio maybe plays 70% English / 30% Swedish). Since mixing up the languages would be noticed quickly, perhaps that's how I learned to keep them separately better than most? Far from everybody I know was as interested as I was in actually communicating in English. And I wasn't much around groups with individuals talking both languages informally in a way that could get them mixed up. It was typically one language or the other in any given context. When in English speaking crowds, I've been mistaken for American more than once. Don't know the nationality of all those people however, perhaps they too had English as their second language. But I've never had anybody point out flaws like those you mention in my speech. I would like to note that I do seem to have an intermittent "speaker mode" when I become a whole lot more fluent and eloquent, usually while I'm very focused and have something that I know I want said, and it happens in both languages (it's quite weird, both I and listeners notice the difference), and I think this state of mind is related to these concepts; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) > But once you go to writing an essay, giving a lecture or presentation, especially in one of the languages you don't usually do that in - you immediately realize how segmented your vocabulary is Annoyingly true - 99% of my tech vocabulary is English only, 99% of my day-to-day vocabulary is Swedish only (stuff like names of kitchen tools and such that don't come up if you don't live in a country speaking the language). I would like to note that when I said "casual" I meant "not formal", as in dealing with somebody in some authority or business people, not simply informal with the family. Haven't had acquaintances notice such things either. (And regarding formal conversations, I simply spend too much time thinking it through in advance for linguistic bleedthrough to become relevant.)
openfuture 11y ago
If you go away and everyone in your environment only speaks one of your languages you will get better at all of your languages. Languages are ways of communicating, if you can use more than one then your mind will start creating connections where they "shouldn't" exist, i.e. "everyone speaks english and spanish so I can use them interchangeably so it must be one language" and you'll start talking a hybrid language. Regarding cognitive advantages of being multi lingual I'd say they are mostly related to abstractions and thinking patterns. You learn how to express yourself through different patterns and have new abstraction to understand the world around you. The same is true for learning any way of expressing yourself (not just languages but also math, programming, dancing, music, whatever...) For example: Some people speak math+english as one language but most people don't know the abstractions that they use even if they know 'the language' (english) and therefore sometimes have a hard time understanding their way of thinking. Sry english third language not prefect

Natanael_L 11y ago

Well I for one seems to have learned my languages as two independent things as compared to what you describe. When I'm writing here now I'm thinking in English uninterrupted, not in Swedish (my native language), although I am capable of switching at will without trouble. Maybe it is because I was simultaneously exposed to both languages heavily when growing up but almost always from separate contexts (as in reading in English and listening to Swedish or vice versa, also including other media like TV and games, and music - our radio maybe plays 70% English / 30% Swedish). Since mixing up the languages would be noticed quickly, perhaps that's how I learned to keep them separately better than most? Far from everybody I know was as interested as I was in actually communicating in English. And I wasn't much around groups with individuals talking both languages informally in a way that could get them mixed up. It was typically one language or the other in any given context. When in English speaking crowds, I've been mistaken for American more than once. Don't know the nationality of all those people however, perhaps they too had English as their second language. But I've never had anybody point out flaws like those you mention in my speech. I would like to note that I do seem to have an intermittent "speaker mode" when I become a whole lot more fluent and eloquent, usually while I'm very focused and have something that I know I want said, and it happens in both languages (it's quite weird, both I and listeners notice the difference), and I think this state of mind is related to these concepts; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Context-dependent_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) > But once you go to writing an essay, giving a lecture or presentation, especially in one of the languages you don't usually do that in - you immediately realize how segmented your vocabulary is Annoyingly true - 99% of my tech vocabulary is English only, 99% of my day-to-day vocabulary is Swedish only (stuff like names of kitchen tools and such that don't come up if you don't live in a country speaking the language). I would like to note that when I said "casual" I meant "not formal", as in dealing with somebody in some authority or business people, not simply informal with the family. Haven't had acquaintances notice such things either. (And regarding formal conversations, I simply spend too much time thinking it through in advance for linguistic bleedthrough to become relevant.)

openfuture 11y ago

If you go away and everyone in your environment only speaks one of your languages you will get better at all of your languages. Languages are ways of communicating, if you can use more than one then your mind will start creating connections where they "shouldn't" exist, i.e. "everyone speaks english and spanish so I can use them interchangeably so it must be one language" and you'll start talking a hybrid language. Regarding cognitive advantages of being multi lingual I'd say they are mostly related to abstractions and thinking patterns. You learn how to express yourself through different patterns and have new abstraction to understand the world around you. The same is true for learning any way of expressing yourself (not just languages but also math, programming, dancing, music, whatever...) For example: Some people speak math+english as one language but most people don't know the abstractions that they use even if they know 'the language' (english) and therefore sometimes have a hard time understanding their way of thinking. Sry english third language not prefect