To all who speak more than one language...?

Question

Did you find that you drew on your first language to master the second one? For example, that you tried to apply familiar structures or vocabulary to the new language?

Answer 1

I guess this may happen at your beginnings with the second (or third) language but once you're fluent enough to stop translating from the grasped language into the new one and you start thinking in the language you're using at that moment, then you'll be not mixing up any longer one languge's structure with the other one. I don't know if this is true in absolute but that's what has happened to me.

Answer 2

Yes, but only when I start learning a new language and only if the language has similarities with my mother tongue... For example, my first language is Italian and it was a great basis to learn Spanish and Portuguese; on the contrary, if I tried to apply the grammatical structure of the Italian language to English, or vice-versa, the outcome would be an awful translation :-) However, as you go on learning, you will feel less and less the need to rely on your first language.
Sometimes it's impossible to draw on another language, for instance in the case of Japanese... nevertheless, many people manage to master it all the same.

Answer 3

It's a great help if you master the grammatic of your own language, apply it to the one you're learning. So you can be aware of the difference and similitude.
The third language you learn is the most difficult, for it is likely to confuse the words with those of the second, but after you master three languages, the next and the next are more and more easy.
The age matters

Answer 4

yes - without a question yes I did. I know 4 languages (3 fluently and 1 still in the works) and everything - EVERYthing in my life and each subsequent language drew on my knowledge of my native one. English was the hardest to learn, then the rest came easier. Practice makes perfect =)

Answer 5

yes, if one studies a second language at home; the best way being to study it at the foreign country, where one cannot be thinking in mother language first, for he will be inflowing relentlessly the new language's phrases and ending up by assimilating meanings and syntaxe of it!
ciao....john-john.-

Answer 6

I think that everybody does. It is quite overwhelmingly difficult to tackle a language where everything is different from one's own.

Answer 7

for me not really, my first language was italian because of my parents, then I learned french because of my friends and school, then watching english tv taught me english

Answer 8

Of course i grew up speaking french then i learned English since those two are Latin based it wasn't that hard