Question on languages?

Question

When you learn a language later in life, that is it not being yoru first language, do you translate it back to your first language each time you hear the words ? Or do the words automatically make sense as they would in your native language? Is it possible ever to forget your native language?

Answer 1

I know exactly what you mean. English is my native language. Several years ago I began learning my second language, Esperanto (at the age of 40). I struggled the same way you described above. My local Esperanto club had an immersion weekend (we all got together and spoke only Esperanto for 48 hours). By the end of the weekend I was thinking in the language, the first time it had ever happened.

I'm not sure you can ever forget your native language, but I do know that through non-use you can find it difficult to remember certain words that you don't use everyday.

I found it amazing sometimes that I was speaking English to someone, and I couldn't come up with the English word I was looking for, but the Esperanto word came without any problem. Weird, huh?

Answer 2

I think you're always going to be most comfortable in your native language, unless you learned your second language at a very young age and continued to be exposed to it throughout your life. As far as always translating back to your first language, that is something that goes away in time. At first, it's generally necessary, but once you become more comfortable in a language, the need to do that becomes less and less. You'll also find that often enough, direct translation isn't really all that helpful. For instance, French is my second language and many expressions that are used in French have no real equivalent in English. So translating to my first language wouldn't be very helpful.

Answer 3

I know 3 languages fluently.
Translating from one language to another (as if somebody asked you) is significantly harder than just speaking a language, in the beginning when learning a language you'd have to translate everything in your head, after a while (1+ year), it will be natural to think in that other language. If you stopped socializing in your native language before you're 10 years old, you're likely to forget it by age of 30.

Answer 4

I learned German at the age of 16. After about 1 year I didn't have to translate in my head anymore. I "automatically" understood everything. I now think in both languages though and that can often be confusing because I don't realize sometimes that I use an English word when speaking German and the other way around. It can be very amusing though. And yes, you do tend to forget a LOT of your mothertongue if you don't use it as regularly.

Answer 5

I don't know about forgetting my native language, but I know my Migi from my Hidori but not my right from my left and I'm an english speaker. When it came to French nothing stuck. Spanish I found out that I could easily guess and so nothing stuck for long. But with Japanese, it just works and at times I find that I think of the Japanese word before the English one. When reading Japanese Hiragana, Katakana and some Kanji I automatically translate into English, skipping the Japanese entirely, as if the writing was in English and not Japanese.

Answer 6

At first, that's what you would be tempted to do, but it's the wrong way to do it, and the longer you persist in doing an automatic translation in your head, the less chances you have of becoming fluent in that language. You have to persevere in trying to understand the concepts and the ideas behind the words, and not just of translating them. This becomes a most useful skill when you meet structures/words/concepts that do not exist in your first language. Eventually, things kick in, and you can think in that language, though not necessarily as easily as your first.

I think it is possible to forget your first language, at least big chunks of it, if you stop using it completely.

Answer 7

Well!!! A classical language, is a language with a literature that's classical— i.e., it must be historic, it must be an unbiased culture that arose often on its possess, no longer as an offshoot of yet another culture, and it need to have a tremendous and totally wealthy frame of historic literature. How Tamil is classical? Claims related to the "Primary Classicality of Tamil": a million. Lemurian starting place two. Phonological simplicity three. Catholicity . four. Tamulic substratum of the Aryan household of languages. five. Morphological purity and primitiveness . 6. The presence of the phrases ‘amma’ and ‘appa’ in virtually all excellent languages in a few type or different. 7. Absence of Nominative case-termination . eight. Separability and importance of all affixes . nine. Absence of morphological gender 10. Absence of arbitrary phrases eleven. Traceability of Tamil to its very starting place. 12. Logical and typical order of phrases . thirteen. Absence of twin quantity . 14. Originality and typical progress . 15. Highest order of the classicality . Classical Languages in India: a million. Tamil two. Sanskrit three. Kannada four . Telugu Classical Languages on the earth (rather then Indian): a million. Sumerian two. Egyptian three. Babylonian four. Hebrew five. Chinese 6. Greek 7. Latin * Though the primary 3 languages exitsed along side all 7, simplest the latter four along side Tamil and Sanskrit are known as as Worlds Classical languages

Answer 8

Read this lovely excerpt from a book about Anna, a German girl of about 11 who had to move to France, and spent months and months struggling to learn French, and becoming more and more unhappy and almost despairing :-

And then, one day, her whole world changed. It was a Monday morning, and Colette met Anna at the school gates. "What did you do on Sunday?" she called - and instead of mentally translating the question into German, deciding on an answer, and then translating that back into French, Anna called back "We went to see our friends." The words just seemed to arrive from nowhere, in perfect French, without her having to think at all. She was so astonished . . . it was like a miracle . . . it was as though she had suddenly found she could fly.

And the book tells us that after that, most of the time Anna was able to speak French just as she spoke German - automatically and without thinking.

Answer 9

Yes, you have to think back to your first language and translate. Eventually, it happens naturally and quickly. It is tedious in the beginning.