Even an adult can forget their native language. Many people who have been in a foreign language environment for a long time notice that it is gradually more and more difficult for them to remember the words that they have used all their lives. It seems that the pattern of this process is obvious: the longer a person lives in a foreign country, the more the native language is erased from memory. However, not all so simple.
Forgetting factors
You can spend tens of years in a foreign land and perfectly remember the language of childhood if you constantly use it. The main factor in forgetting is immersion in a foreign language environment. If a person mainly communicates in a foreign language, then gradually the loss of the native language occurs. Moreover, this happens even when people begin to intensively learn another language, without leaving anywhere. This phenomenon is scientifically called linguistic regression or attribution.
Linguist Monica Schmid of the University of Essex is a leading researcher in the field of language regression. She argues that while learning a new language, two language systems begin to compete in the mind of a person. Children are highly adaptable, their brains easily react to changes and choose one of the languages. Therefore, a nine-year-old child can completely forget the language that he originally spoke.
Adults, as a rule, remember at least part of their native language. Complete forgetting is extremely rare and is usually caused by severe psychological trauma. Thus, Monica Schmid studied German Jews who fled to the United States and England to escape the Nazi regime. It turned out that those who managed to immigrate before the atrocities against the Jews were fluent in German. Many of those who went through the pogroms and horrors of Kristallnacht have completely forgotten German words, displacing them from memory, they were too strongly associated with the nightmare experienced.
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Speech switch
For most people, the native language normally coexists with the newly acquired one. In the minds of bilingual people, there are two language systems, between which the brain switches if necessary. For example, when a person sees a table, each system assigns a corresponding word to the table, and the brain chooses the right one for the given situation.
The more often the speech switch is used, the less linguistic regression. If people completely and permanently immerse themselves in a new linguistic environment, rarely using their native speech, then he inevitably begins to be forgotten. This is a natural and reversible process. To remember the forgotten, it is best to go home or systematically communicate with native speakers, listen to songs, watch films, read books written in your native language.
What language, besides your native language, do you speak?
Author: Anton Vladimirov