I have dabbled with 7 languages, and can speak them with greatly varying degrees of proficiency: English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Malay, French, German and Swedish.
1. English is my mother tongue. I use mother tongue in the sense that it is the first language I learnt as a child, and not that is the the native language from where I hail.
2. & 3. Cantonese and Mandarin, I refer to as separate languages. There are many who are of the view that Mandarin is essentially Chinese, and Cantonese is no more than a dialect thereof. However, Mandarin and Cantonese are not mutually intelligible although they share the same written form. For this reason, I subscribe to the opinion that the two are distinguishable languages and that they both fall under the greater umbrella of "Chinese". I freely admit though, that I am no linguist, and I do not know if the powers that be have conclusively made a decision one way or another on this point. In any case, they are for me personally separate languages because I have realised that my brain processes the two separately.
My Cantonese is much better than my Mandarin though. I could understand only very basic conversation in Mandarin, most of which I had to guess at the meaning from the context. I have however recently started taking Mandarin classes, so my vocabulary has increased ever so slightly, as well as my literacy in Chinese.
4. Malay I learnt in school. I would say that I was fluent and used it in my professional life. The use of the past tense here is intentional.
5. The first foreign language I actually learnt is French. It may seem strange for me to say that it the the first foreign language I learnt, considering it appears fifth on my list, but it is true. I do not consider any of the above as foreign. They are all languages which I was exposed to growing up. I learnt French when I was twenty-one, at University. I took lessons for just about a year. I started a course again last year, but that did not go well, and I dropped it after a few weeks. Although I retained much of what I learnt in that one year for many years afterwards, I would today no longer dare to say that I speak French.
6. German is without a doubt my most successful dabble with a foreign language to date. I would definitely not say that I have mastered the language. I hesitate to say that I am fluent. I suppose I associate fluency with never having to search for an elusive word, and never being uncertain as to the exact definition or appropriateness of the words, when used. But if that be the case, i suppose I should also hesitate to say that I am fluent in English. But if I am not fluent in English, then I have a bit of a problem. Anyway, I digress. I hesitate to say that I am fluent in German, but in a pinch, for example when filling in online job applications and having to decide between basic, good, fluent and native speaker, I opted for fluent. Under other circumstances, I would say that my German is good.
7. Swedish is the my latest and ongoing language project, and as you would know from my last entry, I am not altogether convinced that I speak it! Having said that, I did actually pass my Swedish test, so I suppose I do speak Swedish!
From my experience of learning different languages, and communicating and working with these languages, I have made certain observations. These observations are of course personal. As in, they are true only in relation to me. I do not presume to suggest that it must then also be true for every other person learning a third or fourth or fifth language. .... Alright, let´s be honest here. I say that I do not presume, but I do. I am convinced that my theory is right! Am happy to be proven wrong though.
German v French
The first of these observations began when I started with German. As I mentioned earlier, I retained much of the little bit of French I acquired in one year for many years. Many words and certain phrases I could still recall without much effort. Until I started learning German. Shortly after I started with German, which I should add was about nine years after my year of French, I found myself (for some unknown and probably completely trivial reason) trying to form a sentence in French. I wanted to say something in the first person, and I was stumped at the first word! I had no idea how to say "I". My brain kept coming up with "Ich". It took me about two to three hours for my brain to find "je" again. That carried on for a while. Once I discovered that the French words were being replaced by the German words, I made more of an effort to once in a while (still for no reason) to build sentences in French. And more and more, only the German words occurred to me.
My theory at the time was that my brain had only that much space for languages. And as I was filling that limited space with new foreign words, the old foreign words had to go. In the new, out with the old, so to speak. That theory has long since been disproved. If it had been true, it would not have been possible for my German to improve, nor would it have been possible for me to learn Swedish.
The new theory is that my German at that time was probably about as good (or I suppose slightly better) than the little bit of French I retained after all those years. And my brain perhaps could not distinguish between the two as they sat in the same part of the brain.
I am however also convinced, that the brain does not just distinguish between the mother tongue and subsequent languages, rather that it distinguishes between all languages according to the degrees of proficiency.
German v Malay
At some point when my German was already much better, I had a telephone conversation in which I had to speak Malay. For the most part, the conversation went well, or so I thought. At some point towards the end of the conversation, I had only one more question to ask. I found myself saying "ja, und noch eine Frage"!! I thought this was interesting because, I expected to have problems with Malay, having not spoken it for so long. But I did not expect that when the Malay words fail me, that I would fall back on German words. Interesting that it was not English that I resorted to, which would have had a better chance of being understood by the person at the other end of the line. I think that, at that point it time, my German was at good as my Malay once was. And so, the connections to the Malay words not being as intact as they have not been used for so long, my brain reached for the more intact connections to the other language in the same proficiency category.
Swedish v Cantonese
Funnily enough, when I was learning Swedish, I kept thinking in Cantonese. This is conscious thinking. Subconsciously, I still think in English. There never actually were any incidences of me using Cantonese instead of Swedish. Mostly because there never was an occasion when I actually had to speak Swedish. Even so, as I was learning Swedish, I would occasionally tell myself something or say random things and have make believe conversations (all in my head) in Swedish. The theory (in case anyone has not noticed, I am full of them!) was that the more often I make my brain search for the Swedish word, the more likely it is that I will remember it, and that it will be more readily accessible when I need it, say during the test... or maybe in real life. so in these make believe conversations with self, I was constantly coming up with Cantonese words and phrases instead. I have to admit I am a bit stumped for a theory to explain this one. I suppose it must mean that my Swedish was actually than I thought. Or that my brain registered my Swedish as being better than I expected. So at that point in time, I suppose Swedish ranked above French and Mandarin, but below Malay, English and German, exactly where Cantonese ranks!
Swedish v French
On the subject of my Swedish being better than my French, I was recently trying to construct a sentence in French. I was trying to say "but I don´t speak French!". What I came up with was "men je parle inte francais". Men and inte being Swedish!! Again, what strikes me about all this, is that when failing to find the correct French words, I found the Swedish words instead, not English or German or any other language which I am more fluent in. So evidently, the little bit of Swedish which I managed to pick up falls in the same category as French, and perhaps actually surpasses French slightly. Whatever the case, they were obviously in the same category, and that category is not shared by any other language.
Mandarin & Cantonese
I have actually only made one real observation in relation to these two languages, and that is that my Cantonese is much better than Mandarin. And this was particularly obvious when I was preparing for the oral part of my Mandarin test. We were to pair up with someone else from the class and prepare a dialog. We had to speak for about 7 minutes in total, using the vocabulary we learnt in the course. We also had to take turns asking each other questions and making appropriate responses to questions. It was of course a great help that we could choose what we wanted to talk about, and that we could prepare the entire thing in advance. What was a problem for me and my partner, was that our imaginations greatly exceeded our Mandarin vocabulary. We had an elaborate idea of what we wanted to do with our 7 minutes. What we could actually do, was much less. During the preparation, when I thought about what I wanted to say, I ended inserting many Cantonese words to fill the gap. But I don´t think this supports any theory. I think it was merely a case of my Cantonese being so much better than my Mandarin, and the two languages being so closely related, and because I have a circle of friends who speak both languages and use them interchangeably, depending on whether they are speaking to a Cantonese speaker (like me) or a Mandarin speaker, so that I am used to sitting at a table with the group and hearing both languages being spoken around me, that as far as my brain is concerned, the two just go together.
French v Italian
A few years ago, I was in north Italy, where German is widely spoken. At that time however, my German was nowhere good enough for it to make a difference. So I was almost equally lost in German as I was in Italian. And during that time, my brain kept reverting to French! It being the only other foreign language I had only vague knowledge of, being clearly better than my Italian!
And I am not the only one who has experience these mix-ups.
A friend of mine was recently in Germany recently. She had lived in Thailand for some time and picked up some Thai along the way. While in Germany, she found herself responding to the locals in Thai, although she would have had a far better chance of being understood had she spoken in English! It was just that her subconscious realised that it was a foreign language that she encountered, and so reached instinctively for the language that was not her mother tongue nor any other language in which she was more fluent, and found Thai!
Someone else I know found himself coming up with French words and phrases while in Sweden, despite the fact that (a) he is not French (he´s not a Swede either), (b) speaks perfectly good English, and (c) almost everyone else in Sweden speaks perfectly good English. His brain obviously registered that it was not his mother tongue, not a foreign language he knew well and reached for the next language in line and came up with French. This disrupts my theory about the brain reaching for languages in the same category ever so slightly, because his French is miles better than his virtually non-existent Swedish. But perhaps, I rationalize, his brain just reached for his weakest language, which turns out to be French.
Yet another person I know, a Ukrainian, was crossing the border to Poland and was spoken to in Polish by the Polish officials. She responded in German (and maybe a bit of English) although Ukrainian and Polish are similar enough that she would have, more likely than not, been better understood had she just stuck to Ukrainian. She said she just could not. I think that her brain just registered a foreign language and focused on the part of the brain where her foreign languages sit, rendering her mother tongue no longer so easily accessible.
A friend of mine who also speaks Welsh was once in Germany for a visit. She too was speaking Welsh while she was here. But I am not sure if that was her subconscious talking, or whether she just wanted to speak a language people did not understand, as people around her were speaking a language she did not understand. Hm...
That´s it. I am all out of examples for now.
I find it all fascinating, and if I had enough money that I did not have to work and still be able to live a comfortable life (comfortable life meaning still being able to travel, etc. and afford the little luxuries in life), I would, in keeping with my dream to be a professional student, study linguistics and as an ancillary, perhaps the neurology of language.
Loved having a read of this.:-) N.Ng
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