Do you feel bilingual fluency leaves you with gaps in your native vocabulary?

[thekernel]

A friend I knew just recently returned after an elongated stay in France, where she says she began thinking in French. I know that's a common occurrence when you become fluent, but what she told me next was pretty surprising; she had a lot of gaps in English where her brain would substitute the French word and she'd find herself temporarily unable to speak the correct English term. She is a native English speaker, which left me surprised that spending about 6 months immersed away from your home tongue could affect it so profoundly.

Do you feel you are affected similarly when you are immersed in another language?

[pcgamer]

I would say, it's pretty normal occurrence. When you live in a different culture with a totally different language for an extended period of time, your brain starts adapting to it and as you learn more and get involved, you will start thinking in that particular language more often.

[Gregor]

As an English speaker I have a very competent range of child birth vocabulary in French because I had to learn it when my first child was expected in France. But when my second child was arriving in Ireland I realized I had big gaps in my English ability to discuss things obstetrical.

[tulosai]

Yes, this has also happened to me, though I can't claim true fluency in any language but English.  After living in France, I would occasionally have these 'gaps' when talking to people in America. Now that I've been back for several years, though, I no longer have this issue.  I also occasionally would pronounce words incorrectly, particularly words that were new to me, based on French sounds instead of English sounds.

[deyvion]

YES!

I believe I explained this in another thread. In Sweden, many, if not most, young people use English daily for different reasons. This sometimes lead to us using the English word if it comes to us faster, even if the conversation is in Swedish.

[mareebaybay]

I don't think learning another language, does not affect your native language. I think after learning another language would maybe mess you up every now and then, but you have to learn to differentiate.

[azathoth]

Definitely! I speak Spanish as my native tongue and I catch myself accidentally substituting words for their English equivalent all the time.  Not to mention, I almost feel like the better my English gets, the worse my Spanish becomes.  It's a little annoying. 

[viciosomundial]

Oh gawd, I move from an English speaking school to a Spanish one and you have no idea how much these guys make fun of me because I often end up speaking "Spanglish" because I just can't remember the right word in Spanish. It does influence in daily life and native vocabulary.

Once you get used to it it becomes a part of you. You will find yourself expressing your thoughts in both languages, or at least, that happens to me quite a lot  :shy:

[DiesIrae]

Aww, this topic actually makes me sad. In the Philippines, we use mostly English in our schools. It's probably nice that most of the populace understands English but the problem is most of us probably find it hard to express ourselves eloquently in our native language. I honestly don't know the Tagalog equivalents of most scientific and mathematical terms and I envy other countries which use their own language for most things.

[limon]

I think it is most common when you are favoring one language over the other, the brain forms habits is all.

However the vocabulary is not lost, it's simply pushed to the back for the shelf so to speak, meaning the brain grabs for the words at the front that are easier to reach.

[Trellum]

I'm sure something very similar will happen to me when/if I move to the Netherlands and stay there for the rest in my life.  I'm sure my english and spanish will not be as good as they both are now   I guess nothing can be done about this, unless I get a translation job and I get to use the 3 languages daily. But that's not a really realistic goal to be honest; life always gets in the way. 

Life as an adult is really stressing already, so being fluent in several languages becomes a really minor priority.  Because there are far bigger priorities in life as an adult, specially as one living in a foreign country. Oh well, we will see   But I'm sure this is a very common thing...

[Dame6089]

Great question? I noticed that my English had gotten worse when I was learning Spanish. I would just forget how to say basic words in English. It was kind of comical really because I was taking one step forward with Spanish, but taking one step back with English. It was like I wasn't improving at all.