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I showed this video to my husband. Afterwards, I was surprised that seemed less impressed than I had. Then I realized, I'd said "schaud das mal an!" and not "check this out". His brain was in German mode and he was unable to connect the pictures to the words, because he wasn't watching in English. I found this incredible.
I've had the experience of language disorientation. On several occasions when conversing in one language, a person has interrupted me in English, my native tongue. It is not unusual for me to hear it as gibberish, and to have to replay what was said before I could understand it. The delay can be confusing to the people around me.
I had a similar experience when studying for my German language exam in graduate school. I was translating a scientific paper from German to English and came across the word "Ar" at the end of a sentence. I studied my German-English dictionary and the Ar I found there did not make any sense. After stewing over it for a good length of time, I realized that the Ar was not German but Chemistry; Argon made perfect sense in the sentence.
Emmett
I'm fairly adept in Spanish and somewhat conversational in French, but I'm fluent in neither. One of my aunts went back to university after her five children left the nest and got a degree in Spanish (she already had a degree in History, but she didn't do anything with it since raising five children is surely a more-than-full-time job). Anyway, she said there was some revelatory point during her studies abroad in Peru at which she realized that she was no longer translating Spanish to English in her mind, but rather just understanding Spanish as its own language; and that was what she called fluency. That fluency seems so far away to me — I also carry baggage from my pedantic worry that I might say the wrong thing in English, and, therefore, I speak less in other languages than I might. To you fluent speakers of multiple languages, is there truly an epiphany that let's you know you're actually fluent?
(I ask this because I never experience the "disorientation" you speak of, and think that's because I hear other languages I'm familiar with as "other" languages, and so prepare myself for internal translation.)
I find that the hardest part of learning a different language is the absolute fact that one will make a fool of onesself. It's completely humbling. I once approached a Deaf Priest, to ask "where is the coffee", not realizing that the sign for coffee is incredibly similar to the one for...."the physicals" (if you will). The priest kindly corrected me.
In German I told a friend "I grew up at 7 am". The friend looked concerned. "What happened?!" he asked. "Well, I got out of bed and had a shower."
EmmettRedd said:
I had a similar experience when studying for my German language exam in graduate school. I was translating a scientific paper from German to English and came across the word "Ar" at the end of a sentence. I studied my German-English dictionary and the Ar I found there did not make any sense. After stewing over it for a good length of time, I realized that the Ar was not German but Chemistry; Argon made perfect sense in the sentence.
Emmett
"Ar," gassed the noble pirate.
Peter
tunawrites said:
To you fluent speakers of multiple languages, is there truly an epiphany that let's you know you're actually fluent?
I recall my German instructor telling us "When you start to dream in German, you'll know you've really learned the language." With only 2 semesters of German, I never got to that point.
Heimhenge said:
tunawrites said:
To you fluent speakers of multiple languages, is there truly an epiphany that let's you know you're actually fluent?
I recall my German instructor telling us "When you start to dream in German, you'll know you've really learned the language." With only 2 semesters of German, I never got to that point.
When I was in high school, I lived in France for a year. Early each evening, I would find myself exhausted, often with a headache, from translating everything I heard and everything I said. Then one morning I woke up thinking I had had a very strange dream. But upon recalling the dream, it seemed quite ordinary. It took me a while of musing about the dream to figure out that the conversation in the dream took place in French. From that day forward, I didn't have a problem with headaches or exhaustion. I had ceased translating, and had begun simply to hear and speak the language. It was as if a switch had been flipped.
In college, when I began to study other languages, I got to the dreaming stage much more quickly, even without an immersion experience (baptism?).
Glenn said:
I've had the experience of language disorientation. On several occasions when conversing in one language, a person has interrupted me in English, my native tongue. It is not unusual for me to hear it as gibberish, and to have to replay what was said before I could understand it. The delay can be confusing to the people around me.
Once when I was in Italy, my friend, who spoke pretty good text book Italian, could not understand what someone was trying to say to him. I heard right away that the Italian man was speaking English! My friend could not hear the English. I had to interpret for him! We got a good chuckle out that!
Martha Barnette
Grant Barrett
Grant Barrett
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