September 04, 2004

• My similar foreign languages are Swedish and Norwegian. Too much time with Swedish leads to a regression of my Norwegian. Funnily enough, I have the same trouble with my English (I live in Norway). I have to slow down a lot to make sure I'm not speaking nonsense. Even so, once in a while a Norwegian idiom slips out, ikke sant?
• Oh, I forgot to mention, the languages coexist, as long as I take a few days to get into the one I need.
• I had the same experience with French and Russian - when I started learning Russian, I kept thinking of French words or expressions and not being able to come up with the Russian equivalent; then, after a couple years in Russia I went to France and found my French was newly immobilized. I freed my tongue from its carbonite coffin soon enough, however, by the Jedi mind trick of only speaking and listening to French, and then after a month I could keep tabs on two semi simultaneous conversations in French and Russian without blowing a gasket. So, the moral is, it was still there, still whole, just buried. Though I suppose the languages don't overlap so much as an Iberian or Scandanavian pair might.
• pmdoi. Your problem can be overcome if you practice both languages giving them equal time. It's not different from learning to speak british and american. With practice you will unconciously speak in the correct language when interacting with brazilian or spanish speaking people and you won't notice the difference. Besides, don't worry too much. Portuguese speaking people and spanish speaking people can understand the other without translation most of the time.
• Me three, but Spanish and French, not terribly similar. I spoke Spanish as a child, and learned French as an adolescent, the Spanish (apparently) long gone. But when I established a French vocabulary base, I would continually conjugate with Spanish word endings and occasionally utilize Spanish word-orderings that were inappropriate in French. So, in response to your initial question, "Could I be experiencing a linguistic buffer overflow?," I say; "Yes!" I don't know if I ever conquered it, actually, and now that I have Spanish-as-a-first-language in-laws, I find myself using French to construct Spanish-esque words that are often comedically incorrect.
• A similar problem happened to me when I took Italian in college after taking Latin in high school. The two languages were similar enough to cause confusion, but not similar enough to really help me. After a while and enough experience my brain calmed down and I can keep them straight, but the first few months were definitely problematic. Keep at it and things should settle down as your long term memory librarian catalogues things for you.
• When I was studying German most intensely, which was the last two years of high school and my first year of uni, I'd frequently write "und" instead of "and". And then I learned Spanish in the US and had a great deal of trouble remembering to say "Si" instead of "Ja". The languages are nothing alike but I still found that whatever I learned most recently would partially overwrite the other.
• I'll second tracicle's experience with German and Spanish. When I first learned Spanish it was like my brain searched through a store of "foreign words" and grabbed the first one it found. The results were often very funny, but after a few days of immersion I switched over entirely to the correct language. Oddly enough it got better after studying French, I think my brain may have finally learned how to properely compartmentalize.
• I took Spanish for years and when I hit college I took Italian too. For a couple years there I had Spanish class right before or after Italian class and I would go to one speaking in the other language. Eventually after a few months of classes, I learned to switch into Spanish-mode or Italian-mode on cue without *too* many mistakes. Part of that, I found, is even though the words are similar, the accent is different, and once you train your tongue and ear to the accent's rhythms, you will mess up less.
• Had the experience once on a French test where I couldn't think of anything except Latin. Usually it's the total reverse, though. And to think, I have no need for Latin anyway. Bah.
• I used to have a rudimentary knowledge of French and could get by with regular day-to-day things. After learning Japanese all the French I knew seems to have gone out the window. The two languages have almost nothing in common except that neither of them are English and it seems I've only got space to two language groups in my head - English and Not-English. I'm sure this problem could be overcome with practice, but who wants to speak a silly language like French anyway.
• but who wants to speak a silly language like French anyway. And who wants to read idiots like Flaubert and Baudelaire in the original anyway?
• Not me. Nevermind I did study some french
• I've had exactly the same experience, with the same languages- I was fluent in Spanish first, then lived in Brazil for a year, and found that the best solution was to maintain both, separately, at the same time. And Zemat is exactly right also- people will still understand you. After about six months in Brazil, I went backpacking around the northeast with a fellow student- she was Puerto Rican, had studied in the US and had come to Brazil on the same program. Because we each spoke the other's native tongue fluently, and we both spoke Portuguese, we developed this weird patois of the three, coming up with sentences like "Bueno, não adianta mucho anyway." I don't recommend doing that.
• 1.) I have too, especially when another language tries to surpass another in skill. I had this happen with japanese and finnish. Now when I try to speak Japanese, finnish sneaks itself in. 3.) Like everyone else says, there is hope for peaceful coexistance. I am pretty much fine with finnish and english, and finnish and french, and finnish and my beginnings of italian. I havent slipped finnish in to the italian unless i purposefully try for humour. But, these are all pretty distant languages, perhaps I keep them compartmentalized easily. On the other hand, I have some Karelian to deal with. Karelian has about the same relationship to finnish as portuguese does to spanish. Karelian has more russian influence on it, which makes it easier for me since I studied russian for 4 years in school (though not long enough to you know, be good at-- it was high school). So, now when speaking finnish on and off, i guess my brain "sees" a bunch of cognates, and throws in a karelian word to finnish, which may be recognizable to a finnish speaker, but comes off as a bit odd. Heh. Since karelian has russian influence in pronunciation as well, i manage to keep the two separate phonetically. However, odd vocabulary pops in from time to time. i.e., I want to say muamo (karel.) instead of äiti (finn.) for 'mother', or miän for meidän. sometimes, kümmend'ä (karel.) pops out before kymmentä (finn.) 'ten'. So yeah. Sometimes when I'm tired, I dont even know what's coming out in my thoughts. I guess what is important in it all though, is that i'm understanding myself. I guess so long as all parties are understanding, the language is doing its trick and you're getting across and communicating, right? :P Then, does it really matter what language you're using? This is getting ranty/wanky, but yeah. My Russian teacher interpreted for this old woman once who spoke a combonation of three languages, but it wasnt so beneficial to her. Fortunately, my russian teacher was able to understand something that my Russian teacher was never taught: she described it to be a mix of I think russian, czech or polish, and ukrainian. On Livejournal, I have this aquaintance who speaks votic (another language related to karelian), and Russian. My russian isnt good enough to communicate, and he doesnt prefer to use english, or the finnish he knows (I think he said it wasnt up to par for communicating), so, we get across to eachother speaking something that can end up being far from standard at pertains to my karelian-- it seems to be that sometimes it ends up being somewhere in the middle. It's odd. Sorry this isnt formatted in a nice smoothly read way. After 24 oz. of caffinated beverages, I am slightly "nervous". ;)
• oops, that miän (karel.) and meidän (finn.) is 'our' incase you feel its needed, the ä is pronounced pretty much like the 'a' in cat, and the rest of the vowels are pretty much like spanish, the exception being that y is the 'u' in the french 'tu', i guess. okay, end ranting! :P