Do you ever forget some words in your native language?

[terryse]

Yes, there are words and phrases that i forget to use in everyday conversation. There are also new words that i discovered for the first time when i read a dictionary of my native language.

[SpiralArchitect]

Well there are a few words and phrases that are not really common in general use, so I do end up forgetting them from time to time. Quite a few times some words just end up on the tip of my tongue only for them to not come out. Again lack of usage is to be blamed here.

[sidney]

I haven't been out of my country yet, so I have not forgotten any words or meanings of words in my native language. And even if I were to travel abroad, since I grew up here, it's impossible for me to forget any of the words in my native tongue. I think forgetting you own native language is only possible if you migrated to another country as a child, so you did not have enough time to be fully immersed in that particular language.

[erronousRogue]

All the time. These days I mostly speak English, so if someone tries to have a conversation with my in my native language, I often find myself trying to translate sentences back from English. It gets pretty annoying sometimes.

[chiller]

It happens to me sometimes. I use English at work and from times to times, I can't remember a word or an expression in French (my native language). Hopefully, I always find my way back home!  :grin:

[Korsakoff]

I never forgot words in my native language so far but something almost similar happened to me. One or two years ago I used to be a community manager for a rather huge English speaking community so I had to write a lot of English in my spare time, after some very long sessions the little voice in my head - I hope you know what I'm talking about or else this post will seem very crazy - and my thoughts started to be in English, though I'm a German native speaker.

[Gregor]

Frequently!! I'm a native English speaker but sometimes I just can't find the English word I need and revert to French or even to Tumbuka which I spoke as a child. At other times a foreign word or phrase just seems to sum up what I want to say far more accurately than it's Englisg approximation.

[La Maison de la Mine]

It happens to me all the time. In fact there are French words now that have become part of our English that we speak between ourselves (I have to be very careful when teaching though!!). It is sometimes quite frustrating when you have to start describing something mid sentence something that goes a little like this:

" yes it is true, you do need to empty the...oh what do you call it in English...you know the fosse...lost the English word....oh that's it the septic tank..."

So I would say it is perfectly normal!!

[Kotro]

Yes, this happens quite often. I've been known to be completely at a loss for finding the right word in a given context, and really have to ponder on what to say or risking having someone else completing the sentence for me. What is sometimes weird is coming up with the perfectly adequate word in another language other than your own! I hate it when my friends spurt out foreign words in the middle of their discourse when I can find appropriate equivalents in our language, and so I almost go berserk when the same happens to me.

[True2marie]

No, I don't forget words in my language.

I usually am just tired and can't bring forth what I want to say.

Also, since I live in my native land, I get a lot of practice.

[Bloomsie]

YES.

After spending 18 years learning my native tongue, English, I still forget words as if I am not even familiar with the language. Sometimes if I forget words too often, I would just use broken English and hopefully whomever is listening would just figure it out.

I would always half-jokingly blame my parents for the reason of me forgetting words and structure in my native language. My mom stutters and my dad speaks four other languages and seriously thought it was funny to speak them all to his children. So I didn't really have a full abridged version of English when growing up. Haha.

[broknkyboard]

All the time! I only notice when I'm halfway through the sentence and realize that I only know the word in a foreign language.

[Astdua]

I am guilty of that as well. Due to the mixing up of the languages, I would be writing in one language online, then on another, and then I would be studying a third, and it sort of becomes chaotic in day-to-day expression and casual talk. I find myself forgetting words, or wishing to mix up language expressions, which is actually pretty hilarious and fun. Like, I would be talking about something, and a word in Spanish just wants to roll out of my tongue to express what I am trying to say, and it's so frustrating, because I would sometimes proceed with it which causes confusion.

[lizbeth19hph]

There are many words in my mother tongue that I still don't know and some I haven't used. Both my professions entail me to use English everyday and so I don't have much time using unfamiliar native words in both my speaking and writing.

[PSLoveCharli]

I never "forget" words in my native language (English), but I will every now and then get confused on the spelling from learning Spanish. I think it's common to mix English and Spanish spelling, but I don't want it to be that way for me.

[Expressionism]

Yes, it happens to me sometimes.

This is especially true of English, which I use very often to communicate online, watch movies and shows, listen to music, read... the end result is that there are some words I use far more often in English and end up associating primarily with whatever it is they're about. There are also very specialised words I know in certain languages because I've used them to study the subject in question, but am not 100% sure of the translation or I take a while to think of what it is.

It's usually fine, this tends to happen when I'm tired, and if I didn't use the word in another language I'd probably just say "huhh... the erm... what's it called..." anyway.

[rosacrux]

I come from a Spanish speaking country and after I spent a year in the UK I forgot some Spanish words. I had been speaking English most of the time so when I came back to my country, for the first couple of weeks I had some issues trying to communicate with my compatriots.

[Soroboru]

Yes, it has happened to me before, especially when I'm trying to explain something in Spanish and I can't find the right Spanish equivalent for some English term, and sometimes it's frustrating because the word you are looking for just doesn't exist and you have to start to explain it in a different way. It's sometimes a lost in translation kind of thing.

[justusforus]

Yes, this often hapopens to me! Not sure if it's age or what it is. One gets used to referring to things in a new language, especially when speaking to kids. often when speaking English to my little son, I will use a Dutch word for something as the English word just dosen't come to mind. He is bilingual, so he understands what I mean, but it's not a good habit.

Ha!  I would not blame it on age (out of vanity and the fact it happens to many) but that I think when you think of an object or concept and speak more than one language, the words may "process" on multiple levels (squeezing one to the side).  If you do not get upset and relax about it, the native (or other) word typical is very close to the surface.  This has been my experience so I would not worry about it.

[steve1]

This has happened to me plenty of times. Sadly, I do not really speak my native language much anymore after living at my university (away from my family). I have found that sometimes I can easily know what I am trying to say in English, but cannot seem to be able to articulate my thoughts in my native tongue. Occasionally this is because of impossibilities in translation, but often times this is the result of me not speaking in my native language enough.

[lizbeth19hph]

Yes, there are instances wherein I do forget some words in my native tongue and some words I am not that familiar with, too. Native words which have deeper meaning and are not used in conversations are forgotten once in a while.

[linguaholic]

This happened to me as well when I was living in China for one year. Everyday I just spoke Chinese and English and I started to forget how to speak in my native tongue (which is Swiss-German). However, when Swiss People are writing E-mails we mostly write in high german and after some time in China I really had some problems to formulate correct german sentences. This might also have to do with the fact that I had to write a lot of Chinese Sentences and they are kinda different in terms of Grammar and especially morphology.

[DaBlink182]

Yes this happens to me all the time. Because I read and speak English every day through internet and friends from abroad, I find that I'll be saying a sentence in my native language that contains an English word. I usually don't even notice untill the person I'm speaking to says something about it. It's a pretty annoying habit, but I'm getting used to it more and more. It teaches me to think before I say something, which isn't such a bad thing to learn sometimes.

[Trellum]

I do it almost all the time!  I have memory issues.  It can be so embarrassing, I'm so glad I don't have a job that requires me to have the best and widest vocabulary.  Sometimes it would seem as if I was really dumb or slow because I forget the words for some things I'm about to say.  I try not to make a big fuss about it tho, because if I do people tend to notice it even more.  I just act as if nothing had happened and cool about it.

[scribe_of_the_stars]

Yes I do, especially if I have been traveling a lot, sometimes I find myself hesitating about how to say words in my own language.