What are the features of your interlanguage?

[nooj]

In case this term does not ring a bell, interlanguage is the particular grammar of the language we are learning that we have in our head.

It is different from our native language(s), and it is different from the language of native speakers of the language we are studying. Most of us, I suppose, are trying to approach that native language level, but meanwhile, we have a language that is not one nor the either, but something 'in between'.

To give a concrete example, in Madrid I had a friend who was French, and who spoke Spanish, but her Spanish was very interestingly different from the ones of native speakers. There would be at times interference from French, using the future tense when the present subjunctive was called for, and even more interestingly, she would make mistakes with the subjunctive that couldn't be explained by interference, because both French and Spanish require the subjunctive in that scenario. So the IL is not just a mix of the L1 and the L2.

But an interlanguage doesn't have to be just about mistakes.

When I speak Spanish, I'm well aware that I have a different capacity for understanding and production. I understand everything in a specific dialect to which I'm used to, but I often am unable to immediately recall words and use them in a way that a native speaker would. For I prefer to describe things rather than to name them. A window cleaner is a limpiacristales, but I am much more likely to say una persona encargada de limpar cristales. This is obviously due to lack of familiarity with these lexical terms, but that's typical I suppose of many people's IL.

[BalancingAct]

Sometimes when I need to say "yes" or "si", I say "oui". That's all.

[Jar-Ptitsa]

How can you know your own interlangauge?

Sorry if this is a stupid or obvious question for the other people, I truly don't know how to know this in my own foreign languages.

When I write or speak my foreign langauges I try to do this like the true language, I mean like the native speakers. but of course I make mistakes, but then I don't know what and if i knew then I would not make this mistakes.

[aaleks]

...but of course I make mistakes, but then I don't know what and if i knew then I would not make this mistakes.

I make this kind of mistakes. The more recent one that I remember - I've written "good on" when it's supposed to be "good at". I know the collocation, and I don't know why I've used it in the wrong way. In my native tongue it would be "good IN" not "ON".

[Jar-Ptitsa]

...but of course I make mistakes, but then I don't know what and if i knew then I would not make this mistakes.

I make this kind of mistakes. The more recent one that I remember - I've written "good on" when it's supposed to be "good at". I know the collocation, and I don't know why I've used it in the wrong way. In my native tongue it would be "good IN" not "ON".

I find prepositions really difficult too.

[Iversen]

Sometimes when I need to say "yes" or "si", I say "oui". That's all.

I remember I once came to a polyglot gathering in Berlin directly from a holiday in Italy, and I kept saying "si" instead of "jes" when I tried to speak Esperanto.

[Stelle]

I have issues with "a", "en" and "de" in Spanish. It's a direct and obvious interference from French. No matter how many times I'm corrected, I still make the same mistakes.

[garyb]

I have issues with "a", "en" and "de" in Spanish. It's a direct and obvious interference from French. No matter how many times I'm corrected, I still make the same mistakes.

Same for me, especially "a" and "en". Even though Spanish works more like my native English in this respect (ir a, estar en), I still find myself incorrectly using them like in French and Italian (ir and estar "en" a country and "a" a city) and it's a mistake I really struggle to avoid. I suppose it's because Spanish is otherwise much more similar to these languages and I've come to see that as "the Romance language way".