Re: InterLanguage Lapses, was Re: Technical terminology

En réponse à Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>
> Ha! I hope to check that soon!
>
Hehe, I said that I don't have a *strong* accent. But I do have an accent when
speaking Dutch, just not a French accent ;))) . Most people who hear me
speaking Dutch tend to say that I speak Dutch with a Belgian accent ;))) .
Influence from the Brabants of my friend without a doubt :))) .

> For the rest, I agree with you. Lapsing from one language to another
> is
> something you can get used to. I am not exactly bilingual, but here at
> home we
> have the following situation: my L1 is Dutch, but I am also quite fluent
> in
> Polish and a few other languages; my fiancée's L1 is Russian, but she
> speaks
> Polish as well as I do, and her Dutch is getting better and better.
> Actually,
> we ought to switch to Dutch, but we know each other for nine years now,
> and we
> have always spoken Polish. I find it extremely hard to change languages
> at this
> point.
It's exactly the same situation with us. My L1 is French, his is Dutch, and we
use English at home, although we ought to switch to Dutch in order for me to
improve my understanding of the language. But we don't switch language (and we
probably never will) simply because English is the only language we're both as
proficient in it as the other, and thus provides us an equal base for our
communication. If we communicated in Dutch or French, one would always have an
advantage over the other, and we cannot have that in our relationship.

> Since none of us is a native speaker of Polish, this Polish is not
> "fed"
> properly. As a result, it is deteriorating. More and more word we
> don't
> remember immediately in Polish are instantly replaced by a Dutch word.
> The
> result is some awful Polish-Dutch hybrid, in which Dutch nouns are
> sometimes
> even "enriched" with Polish case endings.
We have exactly the same phenomenon happening with our English. Since it's
neither's mothertongue and that our understanding of each other's L1 is
progressing, we find ourselves replacing English words we can't remember at the
moment or we feel are not correct for what we want to mean with Dutch or French
words, and our English is progressively becoming a strange English-Dutch-French
sabir. But unlike you, I'd never call our communication language "awful". I
find it myself pretty nice and effective ;)))) .

> That would have been okay if we hadn't had a daughter. I just don't want
> her to
> pick up such a monster, but on the other hand, switching languages just
> doesn't
> work (at least, not longer than a few minutes, at most).
>
Well, I wouldn't like a child to pick up our personal tongue either ;))) .
Luckily, we don't plan to have any children :) .

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply