this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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I rarely say that I rememeber what a word is in my native language and ask what it is in english, but the opposite is really common with my native language, so I either don't have vocabular or speak ESL.
Me AF
i try to speak three languages daily and feel i can speak none of them
same here. Making my Tamil more fluent made my English worse. Learning French made both worse. Using English more made my French worse, trying to pick it up again made both worse again 😂
Also, context switswitching is a bit difficult for me. :D
Same. Today I had a conversation which was mostly in English until I unconsciously switched to Spanish to the puzzlement of everyone. Neither is my native.
Trylingual (same here)
I'm barely even unilingual
Time to lean heavily on “I forget the word for it in this language…”
That's what hands are for 🤌
I am in this picture and I don't like it!
It's a seriously sad thing 😭
This is what happens when you mix them. It makes things easier in the moment but it's bad in the long run
Yeah but speaking with someone who speaks both your languages is just so fluid... Sometimes, one language just fits better with what you're trying to convey.
Haha thats true ig. Ive only had it happen to me a few times where both our languages overlapped
"You see, I'm a bilingual. I'm a bilingual illiterate. I can't read in two languages."
I study bronze age languages for fun. Its not that hard, I just read a lot. However I feel insanely silly when I remember a word from a dead language before I remember the word in english, or any of the modern languages im studying. My spanish speaking coworkers I practice with think its hilarious.
Is there anything about dead languages that is different from current languages?
On one hand, there shouldn't be. Anatomy hasn't changed. The language didn't "evolve" to something better, it's just that people stopped speaking it.
OTOH, I know that certain things have changed about languages in living memory. For example, the loss of thee / thou in English, Mexican Spanish dropping "vos", and in French using "tu" more often than the more formal "vous".
Mostly the use of old scripts. So for Akkadian Im learning a bit of old babylonian, sumerian and neo-assyrian cunieform. Hittite predominantly uses Old Hittite cunieform with some Luwian glyph writing. Egyptian had me learning a bit of hieroglyphs and demotic. I want to take a more seriois crack at Greek/Minoan linear alphabets and those new Elamite books from Francois I back burnered. Ive dabbled in some Eblaite, Ugaritic and Hurrian as well.
The biggest difference has just been the fact that Im a native english speaker. A lot of the grammatical concepts and sounds are relatively new to me. Shortly before Akkadian I started learning Arabic, and that was a huge help getting started with the semitic languages. Its been kind of funny coming back to learn indo-european languages better like Spanish and Hittite. I feel better prepared for certain grammar structures I struggled with when I was younger after learning a bit of some semitic languages and its been fun talking language with my native Spanish speaking coworkers who love to trade language lessons.
That’s me! Between ADHD and bipolar and aging, I’m definitely losing vocabulary. I can now be an idiot in two languages!
I volunteer at a language cafe to help people with dutch conversation, while I'm learning french and living in France. I have so many embarrasing moments where I forget the dutch word for something. Even though I still speak dutch daily with my boyfriend/family.
That sounds like a cool job
Ok, this one really made me lol. Well done
Henlo Freundo
What I hate is when I'm searching for a word in another language I speak and it comes to me, but it's just the English word said with a different accent, so I don't trust it, but it's actually right.
Smart less ending anyone?