How has your native language been affected since you started learning languages?

[solocricket]

When I'm trying really hard to immerse, I do find my English to feel clunky, though I'm sure the actual effects are pretty minimal. I find myself searching for words more.... But right now for instance, I've been reading and writing a bit more in English so that clunkiness has pretty much gone!

[tarvos]

Because I'm a bilingual speaker, my Dutch hasn't really been affected by the overdose of other languages that I use, especially given that I still teach it though I do not live in the Netherlands. Neither has my English. Rather they have been influenced by a lot of foreign vocabulary and been enriched. What does happen to my Dutch is a sort of code-switching with my friends when I am back home where I will insert a lot of English words into my Dutch. I think this is becoming a fairly normal process for many Dutch speakers, though. The thing is that I am very much used to switching languages in a manner that other people are simply not, because I have been triggering the language switch since I was a little boy.

What I have noticed is that when I speak different languages, it influences my Esperanto for example; if I have spoken Spanish all day but then revert to Esperanto, suddenly my d's and g's weaken a lot and ĝis la revido sounds like ĝis la revitho, multege sounds like multeghe and so on.

The real problem here is that because I travel a lot, the way I pronounce things is so dependent on where I am that it really is weird for me to pinpoint a language in which I am fully 100% myself, because most of the time I am not staying in a place where either of my native tongues is the standard. So what happens is that I am never entirely sure what language I should be thinking or expressing myself in, because I've had to do it in many languages. The language I speak is thus slightly arbitrary and it's fully possible my thoughts are in Spanish, Esperanto or Mandarin or even something silly like Portuguese or Greek, whereas none of those are my native tongue and I'm not even that good at some of them.

[tangleweeds]

As a beginner with Irish, and my French much decayed, I have a new respect for people who can communicate interesting material with minimal vocabulary. I'm terrible at this, because I was trained from childhood to have the largest possible vocabulary and write lots using it, for the benefit of a nonexistent career in academia, publishing or les belles lettres .

Hadn't questioned this indoctrination deeply enough until I've had to search for simple but interesting reading materials. Now I want to practice writing stories and articles in Simple/Basic/Special English.

[caam_imt]

I have been living around 6 years in Finland, with just about zero Spanish speaking contacts. I usually speak Spanish once a week with my parents via skype. I have noticed that I sometimes struggle to find certain words or hesitate. However, other languages don't interfere with my Spanish (almost never), it's just like idle time where I can't come up with anything. Sometimes though I've had long conversations in Spanish and I notice very rapid improvement, so it's not something that really worries me.

[sjintje]

Me speak still good.

[rdearman]

Once you talk good english like me, can't nobody change it.

[pir]

My L1 has atrophied, but that's not due to any fault of other languages, but because first I wanted it to, and then I let it happen.

In general I experience some very minor attrition in any language I speak fluently if I don't speak it for several months in a row while completely immersed in another language. It's pretty easy to revive though, but the time does go up some if I don't speak it for several years. Speech is the first to go, reading the last (which makes sense since my reading skills tend to be better than my speaking skills, and because I tend to continue reading a language occasionally even when I no longer speak it).

Otherwise, the languages I learn affect each other positively -- cognates, deeper insight into etymologies, more thought on individual points of grammar in comparison.

I don't experience a lot of typos, "speakos", or "thinkos". It happens once in a while, but for the most part I am not in code switching situations, and it feels more like my languages are in solidly separate databases, and I don't get confused -- I shift straight from practicing French on Memrise to Spanish without problems. But I'm kinda looking forward to my French becoming good enough to see whether I might acquire code-switching ability. I admire my friends in Montréal who can seamlessly glide from French to English back to French, all within the same sentence at times. I've always been able to pull individual expressions from languages that simply have the better word for what I am feeling at the time, but I curtail it a lot because it would really be obnoxious to throw foreign words into a conversation with people who couldn't understand them (except here, *heh*, where some people would enjoy it).

I had a speako today though -- I was talking about getting my bicycle ready for carrying more stuff with me, and suddenly stumbled over using "panier" instead of "pannier"; for a moment I wasn't entirely sure how to pronounce the English word. I think it happened because "pannier" wasn't actually in my active vocabulary, but "panier" was because I just learned it. My partner thinks that's forgivable in Canada.

[Expugnator]

or even something silly like Portuguese or Greek.

Don't get it.

[tarvos]

or even something silly like Portuguese or Greek.

Don't get it.

Silly in the sense that I don't use these languages on a daily basis or live in a country where they are spoken. In Greek I guess you could make the case that I used to live in Crete. Spanish or Mandarin, however, are much more useful for me because I've spent extensive time in China and am well aware of that culture and use that language. Same for Spanish (I live in Spain).

[Brian]

I'm a native English speaker who has always lived in the UK so I reckon my English is hardwired into me. However, I often travel to Germany where I speak exclusively German. My next trip will be over the Christmas and New Year period and I'll be doing lots of socialising with various in-laws, operating in full German mode. When I return home after such trips, I find that German words often pop into my head and sometimes they slip out in speech, but this wears off after a week or so.

What interests me more, is what would happen to my English if I actually moved to Germany (something we are considering) and had to use German every single day. Would my English become a little rusty around the edges? I'd still obviously talk to my family on the phone regularly and would probably continue reading a lot of English material, so I don't think it would be affected to any great degree.