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Linguaholic

Do you find it hard to keep in touch?


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When you can't speak with another person in a particular language, do you find it slowly slips away from you? That's what happened to me with Hindi. It was my third language, but after moving countries, I had no one to speak to, and now I find myself constantly stumbling.

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I feel this way towards my knowledge of Mandarin. I studied it for years, and even got pretty fluent at it at some point, and I even was able to write essays in Chinese effortlessly because of learning it for so long. After a while of not being able to practice either speaking or writing it, however, I've come to realize that I've forgotten so many of the words already and can't even manage to complete one sentence of Chinese today without having to think hard on it. I could still probably pick it up relatively easily, though, if I took a refresher course, so I'm not too beat up about it.

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I think this happens with everyone. It has happened with me with German, Russian and French and also I have the feeling that when I was studying a new language the old one was being erased and I was confusing some structures...  :confused:

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Well if a language is one you haven't been taught since childhood then you do end up forgetting bits of it. Don't use it for too long and it's pretty much all gone. That's why teachers put so much emphasis on keeping in touch with the language.

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  • 1 month later...

I totally agree that a lack of practice can bring down one's level of proficiency in a given language. The fact is that even hyperpolyglots or people who speak a large number of languages need to practise constantly to maintain their fluency.

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