Languages you have forgotten

[arthaey]

Oh that's sad Okay then I guess it is possible, if there is no contact. My biggest worry is moving far away from my family and forgetting Bulgarian.

It won't be the same as living there, certainly. But nowadays with computers and the internet, you'll have lots of opportunities for long-distance contact and also just passively watching/listening/reading. You'll be fine if you make it a priority.

[Meera]

I have forgotten so many

Turkish- Studied it really hard and then started to get into other languages and forgot about it.

Indonesian-Studied it consistently and finished a coursebook in it. I could make pretty okay paragraphs in it but after I started Uni I lost time to do it.

Bengali- Same problem with Indonesian, uni took over.

[July]

My grandfather spent about a year in Spain as a young man and learned to speak Spanish to quite a good level. I remember hearing stories that around seventeen years later he returned for the first time and could still speak with decent fluency. Still, he kept it up to some extent by speaking it to his bewildered monolingual family and singing them the Spanish songs he had learned there.

So perhaps it's possible not to forget, even without outside input.

Saying that, I have forgotten most of my Latin and French, but that's pure laziness, sadly.

[zenmonkey]

Elias Canetti talks about losing his childhood Bulgarian but remembering the stories.

[Elexi]

I did the old blue and yellow TY Welsh book in my summer holiday when I was 16. I can quite frankly say that I had forgotten all of it by the time I actually met a Welsh speaker, even if I understood the pronunciation section properly (which is doubtful).

[Seneca]

My Pig Latin did not last much past me making it to double digits in age.

[FyrsteSumarenINoreg]

German.

[Kazumi]

I’m interested in studies related to your question. In short, the loss of a first language (L1) or a portion of that language is called language attrition. The loss can be basically structured into two main categories: lexical and “grammatical” (morphology, phonology, syntactic, semantic etc). This is not an abnormal phenomenon. In fact, it is common among migrants. Some of the patterns that play an important role in the process of language attrition are the age, frequency of use and motivation. There are other primary and secondary items, though each case should be analyzed separately.

Without more details of the Italian person, it would be difficult to give you some insights. Some assumptions can be made because he barely spoke Italian for decades, which falls into the “frequency of use” category. The input he received was probably little to almost none over such a long period. Even if he has received some input, without output, it is likely he gradually shifted to another language (i.e. English). It could have started with some words mixed with Italian until his current language replaced Italian.

That said another key reason is perhaps the lack of motivation to use his mother tongue. Since he immigrated, probably English (but perhaps French also) started to play an important role in everyday life. This is common to migrants, especially when they don’t live among those who speak their mother tongues. When their descendants are born, they might face the “identity problem” issues, sticking with the most important language (language of school) and other languages used in the business or other spheres of their daily routines.

It is important to note that the theoretical cutoff for learning a language natively as a child is the end of the so-called Critical Period, which ends by later childhood; different studies have claimed different years for the end of the Critical Period, however. Some claims 5; other studies will claim by 10 or even 15 for some more on some specific morphology, syntactic, phonological and semantic elements. For instance, some researches show that most native speakers acquire Korean honorifics as one of the last features of the language, after they turn into 15 years old (average).

The “Use it or lose it” works for those who have learned a language as second language (L2).

Just for the sake to answer the question of your thread. I’ve forgotten many languages. If I don’t get enough practice, I will probably forget Finnish, Estonian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Mongolian, Icelandic and Burmese sooner or later, just to mention some. If I will regret or not, I don’t know. Only in the future I will know. However, as for now, I can say that I won’t regret as life goals changes over time. Perhaps, not necessarily goals, but the priorities at each time changes; therefore, I’m not into languages as I were for the past decade. Having learned some languages to B2 level, at least, some folks have told me that it is a pity I’m no longer actively using them anymore. In fact, I think I completely lost them. I’m looking for some non-language related certificates for my field and focusing on other projects such as cooking. I don’t want to be a mere amateur cooker, but someone who can cook decent recipes using techniques and creating new dishes, for instance. I’m also into physical activities and many other things. Time should be used wisely all the time and it is the key factor I had to drop some languages.

I’m currently quite happy with German, Russian, Mandarin and Korean. I’m never short of fiction and non-fiction books to read, TV programs to watch, music to listen to, recipes in the aforementioned languages – and all of these things I would enjoy because of the quality of resources I’ve been through. Except for German which I probably won’t be travelling to German speaking regions (Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein etc), I can get regular opportunities to visit South Korea, Mainland China, Taiwan, Russia and Central Asian countries where Russian plays an important role in the business sphere. That is, if I want, since I have plans to visit again some Southeast Asian countries in the near future.

We, as adults, achieve different levels of success in a L2 thanks to a combination of hard conscious work; that is, the usage of a combination of resources (courses aimed for your goals), techniques, not to mention your motivation, L1-L2 linguistic distance. In short, it is your determination that will influence a lot later on.

Story 1
When I was in Lithuania, I met a Japanese man who has immigrated by the age of 15 years old. By his time, there were no Japanese people surrounding him. His parents apparently abandoned him, leaving him alone with Lithuanians and Russian Lithuanians. Therefore, he learned both Lithuanian and Russian as secondary native languages. According to the Lithuanians and Russians I’ve met there, he could pass by as Lithuanian. They have told me that this Japanese person doesn’t have any foreign accent and neither could I find a Japanese accent in his secondary native languages. His German was C1 or perhaps C2-ish; his Mandarin was more Northern-ish.
When I made some comments in Japanese, he could understand it, but he said he has completely forgotten how to speak it. He said because his parents left him, he associates the language with certain negativity. He can understands spoken language and he could still read some notes I made on my smartphone. For the first time in few decades, he said he felt neutral or positive with the language per se, when I spoke to him in Japanese. I asked if he wanted me to switch to Russian, German or Mandarin, but he said that he wanted me to keep speaking in Japanese while he would answer me in German, Lithuanian or Russian. I felt that he found nostalgic and obviously, since he had no contact for decades, he could not understand the neologisms, slangs and some expressions people from my generation use nowadays.

[Soclydeza]

My first (somewhat successful) language learning attempt was when I started learning Italian when I was about 19. I worked through book courses, mined vocab and whatnot, on and off for a few years. Then I took 2 semesters of Italian at my local community college. I was unaware of all the language practicing resources available today (they were probably available at the time but I knew nothing of them) like italki, chat apps, etc. With no way to practice it, I never used it so it just atrophied and I hardly remember anything at this point. Had I found HTLAL at the time, I'd probably be fluent in Italian right now; I didn't find HTLAL until after I started learning German in my late 20's, which I greatly credit for my discipline to keep up with and improve my German (as well as starting French).

I don't know if "regret" is the right word for letting Italian my go, simply because I was unaware of resources for using it at the time; it's not like I had all these opportunities to practice it and just got lazy. I do plan to return to it eventually and am confident that it will come back quickly, plus the knowledge of French that I have since acquired would only help it further. Just one thing about Italian bothers me though: I still can't do the damn alveolar trill!

[amadeus1991]

Hi,
recently I'm thinking a lot about keeping languages alive and I'm interested in your story how you have forgotten a certain language and if you regret it. What could you have done better?

Today I met an Italian who went with 16 to Canada. However he barly spoke Italian for some decades and can't speak fluently anymore.

Thank you in advance

That is rare. There is no way you can forget the language you grew up with. You can loose some accent, but not the language