How Do You Keep Your Languages Straight When You Speak More Than One?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name is Destiny Howell, and I’m calling from Huntington Beach, California.

Hi, Destiny. Welcome to the show.

Hi.

What’s up?

So I speak pretty good German and a little bit of Spanish.

And I recently started learning Russian, and something kind of interesting happened.

So when I was learning Spanish, I already knew German pretty well.

And if I didn’t know a word, my brain would automatically put in the German word.

And then when I started learning Russian, my German is significantly better than my Spanish.

But my brain started putting in the Spanish words instead.

So I was curious if there’s some kind of similarity between those two languages that would make that a more optimal choice for my brain

Rather than using the language that I’m more proficient in.

I’m so glad you asked about this because you’re describing a really cool phenomenon.

I don’t think it has to do with similarities between the languages

So much as something that’s called faulty language selection.

Have you heard about that?

No.

Yeah, this is something that polyglots experience

Where they learn one language and then they learn another language

And if they’re learning another one,

Then they tend to substitute words just like you’re talking about. And a lot of people report

This phenomenon. And we’re not really sure why it happens. Does it happen to you more when you’re

Speaking rather than writing? Yes, significantly more. Yeah, that’s what a lot of people report.

And it also doesn’t seem to be as common with people who grew up bilingual, but it’s people

Who acquire languages later in life.

And it’s a really cool thing, right?

Because sometimes you just cannot think of the word in the other language,

But you know you know it, right?

But the question at large is,

Do Spanish and Russian have some kind of similarity

That would make her more likely to call on the Spanish

Rather than the German, which she knows much better?

Yeah, no, I don’t think so.

I mean, ultimately, they go back to the same Indo-European language,

But I don’t think it’s a similarity issue

So much as this phenomenon of faulty language selection.

Destiny, did you learn German and Spanish in different ways?

For example, did you learn German in school or in Germany and Spanish, say, from an app or a class?

I learned them both in classroom settings, but I did learn…

My teacher with German was a very different style, so we didn’t translate anything.

You would use hand signals.

And so that made it a little bit, it seemed anyway more natural because you’re associating the word with whatever the action is instead of a different word in another language.

And how are you learning Russian?

I started with an app and then went to a tutor.

And so that was kind of like a private one-on-one session.

You’re committed.

But the reason I’m asking these questions is sometimes what Martha is talking about, one idea is that it might come from difficulty in context switching.

For example, if you learn two languages in very much the same way, say even the same school and the same kind of textbooks or the same app, then it’s hard to separate them out in your mind.

You need much broader context differences.

So, for example, if I had learned German in Germany but Spanish in class, no confusion,

But I’ve learned German in Germany, Spanish in class, and Russian in another class,

The context between the Spanish and the Russian might be so similar that I need more than just the language to tell me that I need to use the second language.

I need the mood, the feeling, the room, the air, the weather, the people, the attitudes, the trappings of the society around me in order to give me the context.

Oh, now I need to switch to that other language.

And a lot of that is unconscious.

Yeah, we heard from a woman who grew up speaking Chinese, and then she learned English,

And then she was studying Japanese in college, and she was having the same kinds of problems that you have.

And she said that one of the things that helped her when she was speaking was to physically embody the way that she spoke in different languages,

Because she would physically be different depending on which language she was talking about.

You know, use different gestures or a different stance, and that seemed to help if she would embody the language that was the target language she was trying to speak in.

That’s a really cool idea.

Right, taking on different personalities or characters, almost roles.

Right.

This is how I am in German, and this is how I am in Russian.

Yeah, kind of exaggerated, yeah.

So you might try that.

Very cool.

Yeah, I think I will.

Yeah, but you’re not alone.

So go to our website, waywordradio.org, and you’ll find lots of information.

If you search for faulty language selection.

Okay, I’ll definitely do that.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Destiny.

Call us again sometime, all right?

Thank you.

Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

We’d love to hear about your experiences

With faulty language selection

Or any other stories you have to share about language.

Call us 877-929-9673

Or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.