Ever wondered what on earth is going on with your Mother tongue?
You spend your youth in a purely English environment, live & breathe your culture up to being an adult, acquiring all those references that help define your English identity.
You move to a foreign country and start learning a second language intensively, only to see the Mother Tongue take a gradual and then sudden deep dive into the darkness.
You can spend epic moments humming and harring, stuttering, listening to yourself stumble through your sentences in English, much to the delight and amusement of your mates from back home.
You can see grins on their faces, listening to your rather original self-styled version of the Mother Tongue:
“I’ll just nip out to the Vietnamanian and get a take-away”
“I’m not sure the jury can accept that last sentence. Could you please try again!”, came the reply.
“Mum! Did you put the ice-cream in the congelator?”
Mum looks at me, rather confused.
“Sorry, I meant the freezer”.
Word Inversion and Missing words
Word inversion can be highly amusing, but missing words can be rather frustrating. Strangely enough within the family, I freely invert a French word for an English one in mid-sentence (or vice versa).
But it’s the flow of a sentence (or lack thereof), those fits and starts, that are the most irritating.
What happened to my fluency?
Am I the only person suffering (or who has suffered) from this affliction?
Apparently not!
First Language Attrition
First language attrition is a common occurrence when learning a second language (or indeed third, fourth….) in the native country.
It can leave you with that feeling of being disconnected from your first language. You can feel hesitant and sometimes even decide to keep quiet in a conversation, for fear of being unable to start your sentence without stuttering. Or worse still, simply not being able to finish ithe sentence without a smattering of foreign words or the odd
“Crap! What’s the English word for aspirateur?”
I also found myself occasionally speaking English using French constructions. Most of the time, the English person listening gets the gist, but may wonder whether you were actually born in England!
What to do?
So what did I do about it?
Well for years I lived with it and just accepted it. Worse still, I actually went to Germany to work for more than a year each time. Investing time & energy into a third language was even more epic. My German made progress, but my French plunged to even new depths. It’s hard when you’re working in Germany, motivated to learn German, working with both British, German and French colleagues. Swapping from one language to the other at that time was too much for my brain. I went through the acceptance phase that my French would simply wither for a while, my English would become even more confused, but that I would make headway with my German. I went back to France and have been settled here for a while with the love of my life.
And then, came along our three kids.
Saved By My Kids
I started speaking to them in English from day 1.
Can’t say I was disciplined enough never to use French in front of them. We were in France after all and they had French mates and we hung around with 99.9% French people.
Speaking to my kids actually gave me renewed hope in my ability to speak English (I can’t believe I’m actually writing that). It brought me back on track to regaining many “missing” words and sentence constructions.
I used to listen to myself speaking to the kids, thinking,
“Come on! You can do better than that! Now, have another go!”
And so, I would have another go at perfecting my English before my babbling baby, toddler children!
They are completely bilingual now and also bicultural. They often take the mick out of my Manchester accent.
In any case, I still have occasional bouts of language attrition, but I have more regular moments of fluency. Nowadays, attrition is often linked to fatigue. I have simply come to terms that now and again, there will be moments of absence, stuttering, hesitation, but what the heck, who cares!
I suppose the brain can only take in so much in before mental overload sets in.
I listen to podcasts and read a lot of English literature, mainly non-fiction.
Listening to the spoken word is important.
I also write regularly and take great delight with play-on-words in both English and in French. Highly childish, but mentally stimulating.
I can chat regularly with family members and English mates and so it all helps to keep up the level.
In my work, I use both French and English regularly and often speak English with non-native English-speakers. In such circumstances, I find it important to make an effort to articulate, and I’m often surprised at the number of native English-speakers who make close to zero effort to be understood by a foreigner. The same could be said, no doubt, about native speakers of any country who are not used to communicating with foreigners.
In any case, if you’re going through language attrition in any form, don’t be too disheartened. It is more common than you think. It may be part of the price to pay, for integrating into a culture.
I have my kids to thank for bringing my English back to life.
I’d love to hear your feedback on your experience with language attrition. What did you do to counter/combat it?. Or maybe, you’ve been in contact with someone who has experienced this. Either way, feel free to share your thoughts.
Take a look at our other blogposts. Enjoy!
