Losing a Language

This week I FINALLY went to French group. First, I'll start with What's French group?

The French group I am talking about is a local meetup group in my area where people can get together and just speak French! It's really great. The people are very relaxed, and super encouraging for anyone still working on their skills. There are usually some jokes and laughs, and at times, there are some serious moments and a feeling of support. There's also quite a few people in the group who are learning or working on multiple languages as well. I started going to the group last summer and have had some interesting revelations about language learning. Unfortunately, with my new work schedule, I can't make it to French group every week, but I try to go whenever I do get the opportunity.

So one of these "revelations" I had when I started attending this group is that languages do fade. When you first realize you're losing a language, it can be very disheartening. My first time attending the group was about 7 years after finishing college and consequently, the finishing of my French studies, with almost NO use of French after this, sadly. At this point last summer, I had been doing a lot of studying with Spanish, so as soon as I opened my mouth, my mind thought Hola and I had to think No, not Spanish. We're doing French... "uhhh Bonjour." This happened over and over again throughout the meetup. I even listened to some French podcasts on the way there to try and prime my mind, but man, it was still so hard. In the middle of speaking, I would just stop, think, and I could only think of the word in Spanish, or maybe English too, and you see me with this face... 😦...

This is called language attrition when talking about losing your native language when learning a second language and losing contact with your first language. This happens to a lot of people when they move to a new country and use only the new language. I'm not sure if you can use this term when talking about losing a second language that you have learned. If anyone has any insight on this, please let me know.

But, here's where the light at the end of the tunnel comes in. Week after week, I went to French group and week after week, more vocabulary kept re-surfacing from the far reaches of my brain. There were words I didn't even know I knew before! It's amazing how the brain can keep all of this information deep in the trenches of your brain and then pull it back out when you need it again. I've learned that sometimes if I can't think of the word, I will just talk about it and talk about things related to the word and BAM! it's back! It's amazing. This reminds me of how sometimes people with aphasia use semantic feature analysis to help with anomia, or word-finding difficulties. (Hello Speechies!) I wonder if there's a similar neurological process going on. This would be an interesting thing to research.

So, my biggest revelation from going to French group is that the brain is amazing! And you CAN get a language back that you've learned in the past. You just need practice and review. No worries! So keep going to those meetup groups, or go find a conversation partner. Send me a message if you're speaking one of the languages I'm working on too. Maybe we can have a chat!

À Bientôt!