how are languages stored in your memory?

[manuD]

There is surprisingly no interference between the languages that I know well. I find this surprising, because some of them, English, Swedish, German, have rather similar words. I believe that they are stored in zones of the memory that have no overlap, that are well insulated from one another. This is perhaps why I sometimes don't immediately understand when somebody switches from one language to another in the course of the conversation. I have to make an effort to find which language he/she is now speaking.

Many years ago, when I was a student at the University of Toronto, I answered an ad asking for bilingual students for a test. I had to read a story by Albert Camus, which was written in a mixture of French and English. Afterwards, I had to read excerpts from that story and tell if it belonged to the text that I had read. I just couldn't tell, presumably because, while reading, I had not paid attention to the words, but immediately converted them to concepts. So, words are not just stored as words, but with a link to the corresponding concept, and I find it easy to go from a concept to the corresponding word in several languages. This seems to contradict the fact that languages are stored in separate zones, or maybe there is no effort involved in moving between zones?

On the other hand, there is often interference between the languages that I don't know well, despite the fact that they are very different. When a word doesn't come up in Spanish, sometimes it pops up in Russian or even Arabic.

I would look forward to comments, criticisms, alternate explanations for the way we store and retrieve words in different languages.

[Speakeasy]

What an interesting story! While I cannot speak to the question of how languages are stored in the brain, I can report experiencing a somewhat similar sensation. Even a few moments after having read or heard something in either French or English, I may be unable to recall in which language the information was received. As for you, the message and its meaning are simply absorbed. I am often caught off guard by such occurrences, find them rather amusing, and attribute them to inattention on my part.

[Mista]

I also find this topic very interesting, and I share your experiences with languages I know well, in my case Norwegian and English.

On the other hand, there is often interference between the languages that I don't know well, despite the fact that they are very different. When a word doesn't come up in Spanish, sometimes it pops up in Russian or even Arabic.

One observation I have made through years of language study, is that I tend to get the most interference from the last language I studied previous to the current one. So, when I studied German, I would have words popping up in Italian, but when I switched to French, it was the German words that started to interfere. I've talked to others who share this experience, but I would be very interested to hear if people in here recognize this phenomenon.

My knowledge of psycholinguistics is very basic, but in the usual models for vocabulary in your brain, the links between them are the essential aspect, and these will be built or strengthened every time you do an association. These links are found between words and concepts, and between different words and concepts, and I assume they can also be found between different languages, either directly (if you have translated between the two a lot), or because you have links to different words in different languages from the same concept. And somehow, I imagine that languages newly learned must be "closer to the surface" and more accessible when you are learning the next one.

[manuD]

It is indeed my experience that I often cannot remember in which language I recently said, read or heard something, but not even remembering a string of written words is really striking.

languages newly learned must be "closer to the surface" and more accessible when you are learning the next one.

Let me point out that I started learning Spanish about ten years ago, but only spoke Arabic between 1965 and 1970, out of necessity, and never really studied it, so "newly" is perhaps not the word in my case. Maybe it is rather a question of how well engraved (and linked as you mention) in your brain a language is before it becomes autonomous.

[Glossy]

I read English and Russian at a native level. Sometimes three or four seconds after I’ve read a tweet I catch myself being unable to remember in which of those two languages it was. I remember the meaning though.

I read French and Spanish about half as fast as Russian and English. I don’t recall experiencing that kind of confusion between French, let’s say, and English. I guess the extra effort needed for me to read something in French distinguishes it from something I could have read in Russian and English.

Reading German and Italian requires still more effort, and Chinese is simply very difficult. It doesn’t even feel like the same kind of activity as reading things in other languages. That makes the information I acquired in Chinese feel very distinct.

I do get interference between languages. Sometimes I realize that I’ve just translated an English idiomatic expression into Russian literally. You can’t do that. Other times an English word comes to me first and I have to search for the Russian equivalent.

My passive knowledge of Russian and English is equally good, but active knowledge is asymmetrical. I have a slight accent in English. None in Russian. But I’m a little more likely to search for words in Russian.

[golyplot]

Whenever I'm watching TV in a foreign language and the characters switch to a different foreign language that I also speak, it's very confusing. Usually, these moments are subtitled, so whenever subtitles popup I always play "guess what language they're speaking now". It often takes me a couple seconds to catch on.

One time, I was watching a Flemish show (Hotel Beau Séjour), where one scene is in German instead. I didn't even notice they had switched languages until I rewatched the episode with English subtitles on.

[Glossy]

Sometimes I space out at a meeting at work, and then somebody asks my opinion on what’s being discussed. I play back the sound of the last sentence or two in my mind. And only after this playback do I register the meaning. Until then those words only exist in my mind as sounds. I’m sure something like that has happened to everyone.

This seems to contradict the twitter experiences that I talked about in my last comment. There my mind seemed to register words as meaning, not as sound. Their sound is tied to a particular language. The meaning isn’t.

This is like my own clueless and confused equivalent of the old controversy in physics on the nature of light - particles or waves? Do we store words as sound or meaning?

[aokoye]

If you want to read more about this, I suggest looking for psycholinguistics texts. An intro to psycholinguistics book would be a good start. This isn't so much a dismissal of the topic so much as knowing where my interests and strengths with regards to linguistics lie.

[manuD]

I find it more interesting to share experiments like the above ones, rather than reading theoretical manuals.This forum is certainly unique, with members speaking 5 or 10 languages.

The comment about newly learned languages "closer to the surface", or Chinese being distinct, or playback of sounds to get the meaning do give me food for thoughts, and I hope that there will be more of them.

On the topic of watching movies, sometimes the actors change language unexpectedly, I remember watching a Tarkovsky movie in Russian, with a scene in Spanish. I did not become aware of the change right away, I understood what was said, so it didn't matter in which language it was. In a different context, it has happened that I understood something that was said in a crowd of tourists or foreigners, but had to think twice to identify which language it was. So I automatically linked the sound to a concept, without having to first identify the language. This is in contradiction with a comment I made in my first post, but perhaps then I was "wired" to a language by the cultural context.

There is also the question of what language we dream in. Or do we dream in concepts? I think both cases can occur.

[Glossy]

There is also the question of what language we dream in. Or do we dream in concepts? I think both cases can occur.

Like most (all?) people I forget most of the content of my dreams soon after waking up. So I actually don’t know what language I dream in. Maybe there are no words there, just things happening. And yes, I’m curious how other multilingual people would answer that question.