Re: CONLANG Digest - 24 Sep 2003 to 25 Sep 2003 (#2003-271)

M. Astrand wrote:
> >--- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> >> PS Hanging on to this list is going to fulfill
> >> one very practical purpose for
> >> me during this year - saving my English! I'm
> >> amazed and dismayed to see that
> >> after only one week of speaking mostly German,
> >> it's an mental effort to switch
> >> to English. Has anyone else going to a foreign
> >> country experienced anything
> >> similar?
>
> Do you mean you can keep languages from blocking each other, when *not* in
> a foreign country?
Well, sort of. Before, the English word for X would pop up in my head each time
I in the middle of a sentence realized I didn't know the next word in German,
and sometimes English words appeared uninvitedly in Swedish sentences -
typically words from subjects, like linguistics, I've mostly studied in
English - but finding myself totally unable to utter a sentence in a language
which I've used every day for years because it's blocked by a language I'm less
good at speaking is a totally new experience.

[snip]
> Speaking three different Germanic languages seems to have created all kinds
> of unhelpful software in my brain.
I sometimes think it were better if I'd learnt Swahili and Chukchi instead of
English and German. The almost-familiar is not infrequently worse than the out-
and-screamingly alien.

Just for masochism value, perhaps one should one day take the time to learn
Dutch properly? I can already read it half the time, but learning to speak or
write it would no doubt create alot of new interestingly unhelpful neuronal
wirings ...

                                                        Andreas