Lost in Translation: Can You Forget Your Native Language?

It’s a question that many bilingual or multilingual individuals ask themselves. What if one day, you woke up and found out that not only can’t you speak another language fluently, but also forgot your primary language as well? Fear not, the likelihood of this happening is incredibly low. However, there are scenarios where someone could temporarily forget their native tongue.

The Case of Forgetting One’s Native Language

The actual term used for forgetting one’s first language is called “first-language attrition.” This phenomenon often occurs when an individual has little to no exposure to their primary language or doesn’t use it regularly enough.

There have been instances where individuals who’ve grown up speaking English as a second language felt like they were losing command over it after spending extensive amounts of time communicating primarily in their mother tongue.

One particular example was with actress Sandra Oh who shared in an interview how she experienced ‘strange cognitive phenomena’ during her visits back and forth from Canada to Korea during childhood – feeling isolated because she’d spoken so little Korean despite being raised by Korean parents.

Another scenario is when immigrant children completely immerse themselves into American culture at school and lose touch with their family’s culture and heritage. They start using English exclusively both formally and informally which impacts the proficiency level of the students’ Spanish (or whichever other language combo) reading comprehension skills compared to more bilingual immigrant peers (add table).

Thus compounds whenever folks go through life changing events such as marrying will find having difficulty reverting back from English to Tagalog (another table showing survey data here) adding even greater strain on familial communication leading some couples down the road of separation/divorce (horrors!)

But fear not! There are ways for people trying to maintain their linguistic fluency, albeit requiring some soco-economic privilege- such as private tutors engaging within expatriate communities (some subheadings here can be: methods to combat loss of native languages,amplifying your fluency once you remember it again. etc)

Can You Really Forget Your Native Language for Good?

Despite the cases mentioned above, it is unlikely for anyone who has a strong foundation in their primary language to entirely forget it. This natural phenomenon doesn’t take away all the years someone spent speaking and using the language.

However, this isn’t an assuredness that remains true for ‘heritage learners’ or individuals who grow up listening to or have limited actual experience using their parents’ language(Spanish). In usual cases like these the likelihood of forgetting is higher because they don’t use enough of them frequently – leading to slower vocabulary assimilation than non-Heritage speakers (insert table)

People often tend to switch between different languages while speaking which could potentially cause overlap with another’s syntax structure (basically incompatibilities) thus becoming challenging forming coherent sentences with ease.

For example, let us assume a bilingual person grew up talking in Spanish but later learned English; then started regularly communicating primarily in English at-home and work – one may begin experiencing difficulties recalling some quite fundamental grammar nuances from before learning English.

How Stress Impacts Bilingual Individuals

Stressful scenarios affect everyone’s mental acuity differently- negatively impacting one’s ability when learning more complex forms/ structures within different lexicons including syntaxes mostly after moving

It becomes especially taxing on those who’ve had similar experiences as third(3rd) culture kids dealing with acculturation stress. This form of stress occurs due to influences both coming from family interactions and social relations surrounding where people facilitate communication during childhood development (Show survey rates data compared between heritage learners) .

In many ways Acculturative stressor typically impacts not just 1 aspect of life but everything 🙁 affecting overall lifestyle habits such as dieting (hi stress-induced munchies), relationships involving struggles to communicate resulting in ostracization from one’s cultural group (example can be pulled here of immigrants and their assimilation) .

In Conclusion

Lost in translation is unlikely – the brain retains ongoing aspects of each language you learn. Still, we urge everyone not to hesitate when it comes to maintaining fluency levels because linguistics such as those living away from home have limited access means- self-teaching materials won’t suffice; people need solid connections within a diaspora community so they don’t lose touch with family roots!

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