Yup. My wife learned her first word of English at 43, I've had plenty of time to see how one's mother tongue has a permanent effect on language. My interpreta

Yup. My wife learned her first word of English at 43, I've had plenty of time to see how one's mother tongue has a permanent effect on language. My interpretation of what I see: She has internal word concepts. When the English words fit cleanly into her existing concepts it's easy. When two English words map into one word concept it's considerably harder, it took her a long time to correctly separate turn on from open (and turn off from close), but at least any given thing always goes the same way. In situations where that doesn't even work she will make frequent errors even to this day--do not trust her use of gender words.