Thank god you started a Deutsch thread! I wanted one to practice my reading and comprehension, but there is no way I am going to reply in Deutsch as my head is utterly fucked over trying to learn the Norsk, and any time I try and speak Deutsch, the first 3 words come out fine and then it turns into Norwegian. It is mortifying. I'm hoping to go back to Deutsch one day, if I can conquer the Norsk (so a long way off realistically.)
Thank god! I'm glad(?) it's not just me! Thankfully French is too weird from the Nordic-Germanics for me to get confused, but I'd be fearful of tackling another latin language.
Oh, I agree! I blame Hanseatic era linguistic borrowing on the German/Norwegian usage. It's easy to switch back and forth between the two without realising it.
I took a class on Second-language acquisition and we learned the theory that the languages you learn are stored in layers in your head, so at the surface you have your L1, then L2 under it, then L3, and so forth... So if you're composing a sentence in your L5 and you blank on a word, your brain will immediately fill it with the closest equivalent it can find, so it will search your L4 "log" before even going to languages you're fluent in. And this is how I end up with weird Irish-Spanish hybrids when doing Duolingo XD
I find that I switch languages on cognates in German and Norwegian, which is why I blame the Hanseatic era. I remember an early Norwegian professor opening class one day with the thought that you can't say a sentence in Norwegian without at least one word borrowed from German.
That's why I'm doing Italian from Spanish on Duo. I did the tree once from English and it was ridiculously easy (French + Spanish makes learning Italian instinctual), so I switched to Spanish as base language to hopefully force my brain to differentiate. Because right now even if I try to do anything in Italian, everything happens in Spanish.
I have a weird situation with Deutsch and Français: I used to be able to communicate simple things in French, but then I took German at uni-gained reading and writing fluency, though speaking and listening were never advanced.. But the German just SUPPLANTED the French in my head! Like, I went into my brain to retrieve L2, and L2 was now German. I had a horribly embarrassing situation where I tried to talk to some French-speakers in French-I was confident I could at least say, “Let me find a person who speaks good French”-and what came out of my mouth was perfect GERMAN! I realized in horror what was happening WHILE I was speaking...so embarrassing.
I never was fluent in French, though, so I suspect that is what the issue is. I did my master’s degree in applied linguistics/second lang acquisition, and I never found another person nor a satisfying explanation related to my situation!
Yeah I'd vaguely started learning Finnish at some point, so that was the one getting filled by Spanish all the time. But then on Duo I started Irish, and stopped Finnish, so eventually Finnish dropped completely out of my brain and Irish is firmly ensconced in its former L4 position ^^
oh that's happened to me. I have studied/study german and italian (Italian first, german second) and for a long time when I went to speak german, it would be italian and when i went for italian it was german. Totally weird. It all went to hell when i tried to add french - I spoke german and wrote italian for an entire semester.
Now I live in germany, and my german is stronger than my italian. I have many fewer problems, but when I go to an italian restaurant with italian servers and italian menus my brain has no idea what language to speak.
Genau das gleiche Problem hab ich mit Italienisch - ich verstehe es zwar zu einem großen Teil, habs aber nie gelernt, und immer, wenn ich versuche, zu sprechen, kommt neben den paar Sätzen, die ich beherrsche, immer Französisch mit pseudo-italienischer Aussprache heraus... Zumindest in meinen Gedanken, meistens sag ich's dann zum Glück einfach doch nicht.
Das darf natürlich nicht fehlen :) Ich lebe im tiefsten Süden Deutschlands und eröffne hiermit die germanische Ecke dieses Cafes :D
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I'm hoping to go back to Deutsch one day, if I can conquer the Norsk (so a long way off realistically.)
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I find that I switch languages on cognates in German and Norwegian, which is why I blame the Hanseatic era. I remember an early Norwegian professor opening class one day with the thought that you can't say a sentence in Norwegian without at least one word borrowed from German.
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I never was fluent in French, though, so I suspect that is what the issue is. I did my master’s degree in applied linguistics/second lang acquisition, and I never found another person nor a satisfying explanation related to my situation!
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Yeah I'd vaguely started learning Finnish at some point, so that was the one getting filled by Spanish all the time. But then on Duo I started Irish, and stopped Finnish, so eventually Finnish dropped completely out of my brain and Irish is firmly ensconced in its former L4 position ^^
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Now I live in germany, and my german is stronger than my italian. I have many fewer problems, but when I go to an italian restaurant with italian servers and italian menus my brain has no idea what language to speak.
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(Im Englisch sagt wir, “has been” zu lange. Wie sagt man auf Deutsch?)
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