I'm such a spazz

[ph00tbag]

Okay, so I get out of Japanese at 9:50, like any other MWF. I have a Chinese conversation practice (I forgot to put that chair i sat in back in its place. :/ ) in ten minutes, but decide to head over there anyway; if I'm early, I can just wait outside or something. Anyway, that goes well. I'm good enough at Chinese that I could switch into it from

Comments

[instigator_ash]

The third language is always hardest. It's like we develop this gear for "not-native" and then adding something else that doesn't fall into that bucket is extremely difficult. So all foreign languages become one big uber mixed-up foreign language (especially bad if they sound similar or have similar structure) and it can become difficult to switch gears between them, since it's not really switching gears at all but picking a subset.

And that's why I have so much trouble speaking l337, since English is my second language.

[opt513]

It's like that with me and French. I took French through my first year of college, but now whenever I try to say something in French, what I get is Japanese with, if I'm lucky, one or two French words.

[possiblydead]

*pokes* you should learn spanish

[ph00tbag]

(.)_(.)

[aidar2ch]

well, i know this isn't to the same extent you're speaking of, but when i go to translate something in chinese, i automatically start thinking of how to do it in french. granted i haven't taken french in three years, but it's amazing what i can still remember. one of my friends, Jenny, is a french major so whenever we see each other we'll start talking in french (cause i'm the only other one on the hall that knows any) and i find myself saying stuff like "Tu xian zai aller au diner ma?" or something insane like that. so i can only imagine how difficult it is for someone who is so much more profficient in their second language than i am in french. good luck with that.

[acdragonmaster]

Hm, I dunno. I'd already taken a couple years of Spanish by the time I really started learning Japanese, and that never confused me. Made it easier, in fact. Though I'm better with Japanese now than Spanish, but still. I think the trick is to not think in terms of native/non-native languages, but just language a, language b, c, etc. and just not think in terms of whether it's native or not.

...that, or I'm just weird. And this reminds me, I need to get back to working on teaching myself Korean...