Duolingo German

[redbird]

I am putting Duolingo French aside for now, and (re)starting German. I'd forgotten how much shorter the early units of Duolingo are (in terms of both the length and the number of lessons, not just "this lesson is easier").

Also, I found myself using French instead of German forms earlier, specifically "est" instead of "ist." This on top of my fingers sometimes producing Spanish or sort-of-Spanish instead of French ("porque" instead of "pourquoi").

Sometimes it's seemed that I have one mental slot for "language other than English." Several years ago, I noticed that I was thinking of Spanish rather than French words when I'd just gotten to Montreal, and then needed a few days to switch back when I returned to New York. I didn't need Spanish in New York, but it's on signs and billboards and posters about subway service changes, and I will read words that are in front of me, useful or interesting or not.

Comments

[pameladean]

I've had that same experience with the single slot for any non-English language. I took two semesters of French in college and then went off on a London program, and one weekend I went to Paris and met my boyfriend, who was studying in Florence at the same time and was having a semester break.

I took Spanish from seventh through twelfth grade and then abandoned it (foolishly), but the moment I got on the train for Paris, huge swathes of it came back to me.

It was very odd.

P.

[thistleingrey]

I think the single slot besides one's earliest language is fairly common--so many anecdotal self-reports. I'm weird and have two first languages, then a bucket for everything else, which is the same phenomenon aside from doubling up on "earliest." That bucket covers both contemporary conversational stuff and dead-lang-in-grad-school exposure, for me, so it's not a function of method IMO.

[pameladean]

Oh, yes, I've got some ancient Greek in the non-English bucket. I didn't really learn conversational ancient Greek, but lines from plays or Homer will sometimes float up when I just want to remember how to say something simple in Spanish.

In another interesting anecdotal tidbit, he professor I took beginning Greek from said that he could usually tell which language, if any, a student had studied already, from how they pronounced their Greek.

P.

[redbird]

Yes, the years of Spanish, both in high school and then living for 25 years in northern Manhattan) do not help at all with pronouncing French. They were useful for figuring out written French, on menus and signs, because written French and Spanish are significantly closer than the spoken languages.

High school was mostly Castilian Spanish, because that's the prestige dialect, and my neighbors and the local Spanish-language newspaper gave me a mix of Nuyorican and Dominican.

[pameladean]

Oh, yes. To this day, I look at an unfamiliar French word and try to pronounce it as if it were Spanish.

My high school Spanish teacher had learned Castillian Spanish, but the high school wanted her to teach us Mexican Spanish, she told us.

[sine_nomine]

When I returned to NY/NJ after five weeks in France my Spanish had a French accent! It took a bit of time to shift away from that.

I totally understand your language switching stuff.

[kiya]

Ahh, Duolingo German, the land of kartoffeln and insekten.

[green_knight]

It's parsnips in Welsh, all the way down.

[tarasacon]

I took French from grade school through my freshman or sophomore year of high school. I switched to Spanish as a junior and spent the first few weeks answering the teachers Spanish questions in French before I convinced my brain to switch. Both are faded, but I still sometimes end up with a weird mashup if I try to say the alphabet or count.

[lcohen]

this is exactly why i went so easy on learning german at the point where i was dating someone from germany--i felt like i had one slot for not english, and until i knew that german was going to be important, i didn't want to muddy up my french. i think i have forgotten almost all the german i picked up over those four years--german words i had before, i still have (which are often sort of not german words--often they're really yiddish).

[kaberett]

this is a known linguistic phenomenon! want me to try to look up info for you?

[redbird]

Sure, if you have the time.

[green_knight]

Oooh. (I have the same - two first languages, and a 'foreign' bucket.

This was pretty embarrassing when my Welsh (and Welsh 'll') wanted to come out to play in Spain.

[kaberett]

MUCH SYMPATHY.

Having now shaken the internet, terms you both are likely to be interested in include language transfer (and similar); discussion of language-switching effects in bi- and multi-lingual speakers, and in particular the concept of "intrusion errors"; and "language selection errors" :)

[ofearthandstars]

I'll chime in with so many others and say I have a similar struggle - I've tried learning French, Italian, German, and am currently learning Spanish. My brain can seemingly recall *nothing* of the prior three languages (and I spent 2 years in French!), to the point I feel like a lightning bolt just came down and zapped it out of my brain and left the gap there for the Spanish.

However, I feel like Spanish is likely of the most practical use to me, so I'm (begrudgingly) okay with this frightening erasure of years of my life at this time.

[redbird]

That sounds scary.

[kaberett]

(Are you aware of the distinction between "passive" and "active" vocabulary? Explanation in case the answer is no: the idea is that there are words you will understand the meaning of when you encounter them, but you wouldn't be able to produce them. Active vocabulary generally decays much faster than passive, but is quicker to regain than it was to acquire in the first place!)

[ofearthandstars]

I was NOT familiar with that distinction, so thank you for sharing! It makes sense. (Oddly, when I went through my period of "deep rest" over the holidays, I had a lot of old memories from periods of life that I hadn't thought of in decades resurface, so it makes sense to me that it's all still in there, just packed up and possibly bubble-taped and stuffed underneath some other things, hanging around in need of someone to come in and tidy up.