Has your ability to write/spell in your native language declined as you have learned more languages?

[Skynet]

I have noticed a precipitous decline in my ability to spell correctly the first time round. I spell Latin-influenced words in a French way, and non-Latin-influenced words phonetically (ie, German). The main culprit is how I have been learning to spell in my new languages: I vocalise the word as I spell it, a phenomenon that never occurred with English and Shona prior to French and especially German. I find this particularly unusual since I spend less than half of my daily writing time on French and German combined.

I created this poll to seek validation that I am not having an 'idiosyncratic moment' see if others have seen this as they have continued on their language-learning endeavours. I wonder if this is a brief incursion, or the start of a Pyrrhic War.

To those who answered YES, please qualify your response with the following feedback:

a) Your native language(s).
b) Which L2/L3/LX do you see influencing your native language(s)? In which way?
c) Can you pinpoint a culprit in your learning of L2/L3/LX?
d) How have you tried to remedy it?
e) How many hours a day do you spend writing in your native language(s) and L2/L3/LX?

[Axon]

My ability to write has gotten better consistently (it's a job and a hobby of mine), but my ability to spell the first time around has suffered in pretty much exactly the same way that you've mentioned.

a) American English.
b) Most of them. Not Russian or Chinese as the different alphabets provide less room for interference.
c) I don't really understand? I think the culprit is learning more languages in general, perhaps learning of phonetics and also perhaps Indonesian as it has even more consistent sound-letter correspondence than Spanish. Still, I noticed this effect happening before I started learning Indonesian.
d) I have not tried consciously at all. If the price I have to pay for learning many languages is slightly slower writing in English, so be it.
e) I spend about 1-2 hours a day on average writing in English and negligible time writing other languages.

I notice actually that I tend to write all languages as if they were phonetic. One example from quite recently - I wrote about a Vietnamese textbook by a man called Binh Ngu Ngo. His name is pronounced "bing." Every single time I write his name, I write "Bing" first and then correct it. I also tend to want to write German final b/d/g as p/t/k because that's how they're pronounced.

I am an extremely good speller, and I'm constantly reviewing whatever I write as I type. So errors very rarely appear in my work, but they most certainly make it past the brain-keyboard interface until I self-correct.

[MamaPata]

Disclaimer: My ability to pronounce and spell things have never been amazing

a) Your native language(s).
British English.

b) Which L2/L3/LX do you see influencing your native language(s)? In which way?
Russian has 100% f***ed up my ability to use punctuation. Spelling and pronounciation, I think it's not really one language that has messed me up, but that I have even less conception of English rules (the few that there are). So I try and imput the rules I now recognise from other languages onto English. My mother has also noted that my stress and where I pause in sentences has become increasingly messed up. Again, I don't think that's one language, but just getting used to other patterns and then being thrown when I go back to English.

c) Can you pinpoint a culprit in your learning of L2/L3/LX?
Commas. Stupid Russian commas.

d) How have you tried to remedy it?
I haven't really. I do want to go on to do more writing, so I think I will probably have to do some punctuation study. But in terms of the spelling and pronounciation, I kind of assume that spellcheck and my family's amusement at my terrible speech will correct it as it goes.

e) How many hours a day do you spend writing in your native language(s) and L2/L3/LX?
I write a bit in English - work e-mails, and I have had some larger writing projects but it ebbs and flows a lot. I spend virtually no time writing in my TLs.

[rdearman]

A) native American English.
B) L2 British English
C) crazy French spelling carried over into British English.
D) I have given up all hope of spelling correctly and rely on the spell checker. When the spell checker reverts randomly back to US English I don't notice it and happily send out misspellings.
E) No, a man who cam only spell a word one way lacks originality.
F) 8 or 10

[aaleks]

I answered NO but there's one exception - commas. Like MamaPata wrote but the other way around. In Russian we use commas more often than in English, and at some point I noticed that I started forgetting to put them in the places when I'm writing in Russian.

[golyplot]

I think my English is too deeply ingrained to be affected, and besides, I still use it far more than any of the foreign languages I've studied (much to my dismay), so I'm not worried. I have observed interference between the various foreign languages I have studied though.

I have occasionally drawn a blank on an English word in conversation, but it's hard to tell if there is any relation. And in those cases, I don't suddenly remember a foreign word instead, so I think it's just a normal memory lapse.


I think the closest I've come is that if I'm rushing through exercises on Duolingo, I might sometimes mix up the various spellings of TL cognates/loanwords, but that's just a consequence of rapidly switching between the two and not something I'd ever do in ordinary life.

[Serpent]

How about "errr not sure, I've always been great at it so any minor decline is hardly noticeable"?
I do see some difference compared to when I was in high school but I'd attribute it to less exposure to academic/literary Russian.
As for commas, I don't always bother to use them in informal writing but I know where they should be Especially the German/Slavic style ones before "that".

[devilyoudont]

My spelling was always terrible so I don't think it has gotten any worse.

There is a weird thing that has happened with Esperanto. A lot basic words in Esperanto are cognate to a ten dollar word in English. Those words have entered my English vocabulary in a more meaningful way now. And I cannot spell them. Best guesses based on Esperanto spelling draws a blank from spell checkers.

a) Your native language(s).
American English

b) Which L2/L3/LX do you see influencing your native language(s)? In which way?
Esperanto. This may eventually also occur with Spanish.

c) Can you pinpoint a culprit in your learning of L2/L3/LX?
This has happened a bunch of times, but the only one that comes to mind right now is ŝoforo and chauffeur (I had to google how to spell this lol), even tho ŝoforo is not really that common a word in Esperanto.

d) How have you tried to remedy it?
I haven't successfully remedied my baseline broken spelling so I don't even know where to start. I just use a spell check for literally anything that will be posted publicly.

e) How many hours a day do you spend writing in your native language(s) and L2/L3/LX?
I can't estimate, it's highly variable. It's probably a Zipf's law scenario, where I write X amount in English, and then half that much in esperanto, a third that much in Japanese, and a fourth that much in Spanish.

[SGP]

My spelling was always terrible so I don't think it has gotten any worse.

There is a weird thing that has happened with Esperanto. A lot basic words in Esperanto are cognate to a ten dollar word in English.

"Ten dollar word", just looked that one up. But still, what would be an example of what you mean?

[Querneus]

My spelling ability in Spanish is very good, but I feel that my ability to remember individual words in international Spanish that are different from my dialect's has been waning due to life circumstances. I use English most of the day at both work and social situations, and so my written Spanish is limited to the conlanging documentation I write as a hobby. I conlang a lot so it works out just fine as practice, but there's many words I never touch.

This has gotten into embarrassing territory now that I'm dating someone who is learning Spanish, as I get asked how to say things and oftentimes I can only remember dialectal words. For example, the other day I was outside with my girlfriend and she asked me how to say "kite", and I could only remember la piscucha (used in El Salvador) and el barrilete (used in Argentina, and sometimes El Salvador), so I had to pull out my phone and open an English-Spanish dictionary to find the international word I was looking for: la cometa. This would not have happened if I still lived in a Spanish-speaking country.

I sometimes read books and websites (especially blogs) in Spanish to keep my standard Spanish in good shape, but I have the problem that I dislike fiction, and the topics I read about (linguistics and programming) limit the vocabulary I get exposed to. I know how to say "to c-command" and "a while-loop", but not necessarily the word for "kite", or "a big splash", "hearse (i.e. a funeral car)", "bra", "to summon [someone to your presence]", "door knocker"... to mention the latest words in my search history.