
My Forgotten Language: the brain can lose and reclaim an abandoned mother tongue - sukhadatkeereo
http://discovermagazine.com/2017/nov/my-forgotten-language
======
nicolas_t
I still regularly meet expats living in a foreign country who believe that
it's better for their kid not to learn both their father tongue and mother
tongue together with the language from the country they live in so that they
don't get confused. It's sad because it's a richness they could give their
kids but don't because of fear or bad advice.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I feel very bad because I'm having a hard time getting enough Russian in with
my kid. We live in America, and I'm the only Russian speaker at home - I think
once she's a little older, I'm going to have to find a Russian kid-friendly
meetup group.

~~~
manyxcxi
I commented up above. I was in your daughter’s position. She may not know
what’s she’s missing now, but please use it as often as you can!

Even little stuff like “grab the ketchup from the fridge” is enormous. I can’t
do it with my dad’s language, but I can with Spanish and I do things like
pointing at the light:

Me: What’s that

Kid: Light

Me: What’s that in Spanish?

Kid: -shrug-

Me: La luz

It doesn’t have to be a dedicated lesson, just sneak it in. I’ve got three
kids under five, I know there’s 50 billion things going on, but man I wish my
dad would’ve kept it up with us.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _I’ve got three kids under five_

Congratulations and condolences - my single one is pushing me to my limit as a
parent and a person :P

It's a good suggestion. She knew a few words for common, frequent words - like
"give me", and "here, take this". I'm trying to work it back into her
vocabulary again; I need to get my wife to start using those terms as well.

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jogjayr
> That’s why if someone who knows a language never speaks it again after age
> 7, there’s a good chance they’ll forget most of it. But if you yank them
> away around age 12 or older and reintroduce them to it 30 years later,
> there’s a good chance they won’t miss a beat, Hernandez says.

This squares with my experience. I learned Kannada from age 4 to 7, living in
Bangalore. My sister, 4 years older than me, also learned it, and can still
read and understand the language. I, on the other hand, had forgotten Kannada
within 8 months of leaving Bangalore for Mumbai, where it's not commonly
spoken.

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gd2
An older friend had a stroke, in recovery she switched to having better
communication ability in her nearly abandoned native Spanish, and had greater
difficulties communicating in her everyday dominate language for like 70
years- English - of her 75 years.

~~~
toomanybeersies
The same thing has happened to my grandfather. He's been speaking English for
about 60 of his 80 years, and reverted back to Dutch for a while after a major
stroke. Luckily there was a Dutch speaking nurse, because none of his friends
and family speak Dutch.

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wwweston
Back in the 90s I took a linguistics class and wanted my semester paper to be
a review of the literature on this topic. I started my research and found
nothing. I figured it was my research skills falling short and I didn't know
the right terminology and places to look. So I asked my professor. He
suggested talking to other faculty. I did. They gave me some terminology
suggestions buuuut.... also told me that they didn't think there was much out
there on the topic. In fact, one of them told me I almost certainly wouldn't
find anything. And he was right (then, having burned half the semester chasing
down a dead end and facing the choice between doing original research in two
months vs changing topic, I picked human usage of computer language, which got
me a C+ because the prof was adamant computer languages aren't human
languages).

Anyway, I was astounded that this aspect of acquisition wasn't well-studied,
and I'm glad to see it has been since.

Edit: I never meant to contend that computer languages are human languages in
the sense that the former can function in every way the later can -- so I
wasn't suggesting that anyone should say "C is a language just as Spanish is a
language." But I _did_ argue that programming languages come by their name
honestly, are meant to communicate between humans, and most importantly find
their way into language colloquially, and as such deserve attention from
linguists. My prof seemed to have engaged with the paper as if I were making
the "C is like Spanish!" argument, whether that's because (a) I wasn't clear
enough in my writing (b) he wasn't paying close attention or (c) there's
something else that eluded me is left as an exercise for... well, me, and
apparently hacker news participants who want to take it up as a matter of
discussion. :)

~~~
kazinator
> _which got me a C+ because the prof was adamant computer languages aren 't
> human languages_

I'd have argued exactly the same thing, because it's basically true, but given
you a C++.

~~~
wwweston
That would have been beautiful. :)

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Abishek_Muthian
Native Tamil 'speaker' here.

My parents put me in English medium school with Hindi as second language
(Several years of Sanskrit as well) to survive outside south India (they
suffered outside South India, for not knowing Hindi; they trained themselves
in it and gave easier way to me learn other languages).

But since I didn't have formal education in Tamil, a highly sophisticated
language evolved over (2000-3000 years); I can't write or read genuine version
of it (can do some guess work based on familiar characters from common media).
But I can speak in Tamil fluently since my family speaks in Tamil, also at
several times my friends who are into Tamil literature have been amazed by my
choice of vocabulary when speaking in Tamil.

I think,

1\. I compensate for my lack of knowledge in reading/writing Tamil by
listening keenly to the language.

2\. I can say from first hand experience that, the OP is also benefitted by
living in an environment where he gets to listen to Tamil quite regularly;
enough to give him understanding of the language.

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westiseast
Fantastic - this has been on my mind recently.

Moved back from China to the UK with our 3 & 5 year olds whose mother language
was Chinese. I’d assumed there would be some kind of struggle getting them
adjusted to English - exactly the opposite.

Now both kids have 95% lost their Chinese, and I’m having to ‘forcibly’
reintroduce it. Kind of amazed me.

~~~
jason_slack
Interesting this is the case. I am trying to teach my 16 year old Chinese and
she is grasping it really well. Myself, I have to work harder to retain
remembering how to write characters. If I don't write it, I lose it. I do
remember just fine when using pinyin on my phone though. I dont seem to be
losing character recognition, just stroke order when writing manually on
paper.

~~~
westiseast
I think it just wasn't sunk in very well - the kids were both fluent at their
level (a 3/5 year old isn't ultra-proficient in any language, but it was their
primary form of communication), but they just very quickly dropped it because
it wasn't useful anymore.

Not sure what level you're at - the hand writing is hard, takes Chinese people
years and years of repetition and constant exposure. I always thought learning
reading/typing Chinese is an essential part of learning Chinese, but hand-
writing it is an optional (or something you can allow to progress much much
slower). I read and write at an HSK6 level, but I doubt I could hand-write
more than 1000 characters from memory. Meh.

~~~
jason_slack
I read and write at about HSK 5 right now. My oral is not at that level. I
often dont hear the correct tones, nor speak the correct tones. I love
handwriting characters! Every day I try and learn one new character. Every
week I review the characters I learned that week and write over and over as
many sentences as I can think of. Each month I use one Sunday to try and write
the 1500 most commonly used characters to see how many I can remember.
([https://store.mandarinposter.com/shop/1500-character-
mandari...](https://store.mandarinposter.com/shop/1500-character-mandarin-
poster)). My wife thinks I use entirely to much paper. :-)

~~~
westiseast
Haha yeah if you enjoy it, then it's worth doing. It's almost something you
could do independent of actually learning the language.

Have you ever seen those copy books of Tang Poetry? Not sure where you'd buy
them, but they're collections of poems on cheap paper where you can trace the
characters on a grid and then space for you to write them yourself. They're
fun.

~~~
jason_slack
Thanks I will look up the books and see how I can buy them.

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dorfsmay
The concept of needing more energy when speaking a 2dn language really
resonates with my experience:

While learning English as a 2nd language, we noticed that when in a group of
nonnative speaker, the who does the talking had a harder time understanding
the native speakers than the others from the group. This never failed, whoever
spoke had more problem to understand than he listeners.

Maybe an explanation is that the extra cognitive energy uses to speak
prevented as good comprehension as when fully spending the energy/focus on
listening.

------
GuyPostington
When I get drunk enough I'll get a super thick accent and my words will switch
over to ${OTHER_LANG}.

~~~
jmkirby
I can imagine there is benefit to the illusion of perfect mutual understanding
between two men when both are considerably intoxicated. The likely defusing of
circumstances otherwise liable to encourage violence, for example.

But I have never found any satisfying reason for this phenomenon of mutual
understanding at the apparent peak of drunkenness.*

I think the extreme effect of alcohol in this case is actually fairly well
known, despite the thought occurred to a friend who managed to turn his own
experience into a undergraduate study, that the evidence is infrequent due to
the required amount of alcohol exceeding most physical tolerances.

I have been convinced without any evidence, since university days, that the
mind can become exceptionally plastic under extreme effect of alcohol.,
[Edited, I left in a section that added nothing so withdrew it] Obviously
little formal study is probably done, but since I have one nagging fear of
failing to discover something so vital in plain sight but missed for sake of
my narrowness in vision, and in my fear of the damage done that stays with me
despite hangover all forgotten, I dearly should love to hear of science in
answer to the phonomenon. Did the unknown language overflow and get routed to
the disused section of my brain that once awaited regional programming and can
utter or at least gurgle every human sound? That might trigger a familiar and
comfortable and safe feeling, the exciting of brain disused since infancy.

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corpMaverick
Arturo Hernandez teaches this coursera class.

[https://www.coursera.org/learn/bilingual](https://www.coursera.org/learn/bilingual)

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8bitsrule
One of the virtues of being fluent in two or more languages: many times in my
life I've seen some great opportunities for interpreters.

