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As an ESL who grew up in Slovenia, did most of his work in English, and now lives in USA with full immersion[1] – the memory language barrier is very noticeable
by Swizec 5y ago
As an ESL who grew up in Slovenia, did most of his work in English, and now lives in USA with full immersion[1] – the memory language barrier is very noticeable.
Talking to my mom and sister about things that happened in Slovenia is easy and fluent. Talking about things that happened in USA is … hard. I have to translate, I can’t find words, the concepts make no sense, everything is awkward.
Make me talk about software engineering in Slovenian and I sound like a bumbling fool. It just doesn’t work. Every 3rd word is English. Entire sentences sometimes.
[1] I speak Slovenian maybe a couple times per month nowadays
- salawat 5y agoThis is likely because language uptake is most successful when "unrooted" to a pre-existing language framework. You're utilizing distinct memory/knowledge graphs. You sound like a bumbling fool because you're having to forge novel connections between the two recall graphs. It's why I look on awe on people like my high school Spanish teacher who fluently spoke 11 languages. When she got upset, you never knew which was going to come out!
- bsd44 5y agoI think that's fairly normal. When you learn a concept in a language it's difficult to convey it in a foreign language if you don't have the vocabulary, even if you're a native speaker. That happens to me all the time.