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comment by arguewithatree
arguewithatree  ·  3430 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Does your head use multiple languages?

What is your mother tongue? I wasn't raised bilingual but I've done significant immersion for Arabic and have studied 3 other languages in addition to English, so I totally understand the rewriting things in your head in the "wrong" order. The worst is words or terms or phrases that don't quite translate and when you try and explain it, it's still not quite right.





Hertha  ·  3430 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Native German, learned english (more a learning by doing kind, it's not correct but not bothersome), spanish and now french. Worst are collocations, I tend to mess those up.

arguewithatree  ·  3430 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Totally get that. I have a very close friend who is a native German speaker and I've noticed the same thing. I think it's definitely not as important in speech because people will get what you're saying even if it's not 100% correct. That's been my frustration with coming back to formal, academic language training. When I lived abroad and spoke to locals, I didn't have to be 100% correct 100% of the time to communicate.