Hi all
I’ve been using SSIW for a few weeks & it hasn’t been going too badly…
However, the last couple of sessions I’ve hit a snag. To explain, I speak conversational German (not fluent yet, but working on it), but much more advanced in it than I am in Welsh. Suddenly the German words/phrases are coming into my head instead of the Welsh ones.
I’m not confusing the languages, but the German seems to be making my recall of the Welsh much slower.
Has anyone had this happen & if so, how do you get around it?
Thank you
Don’t worry about this @kate-99. There is a lot of research that shows that when people speak more than one language, all of those languages are always active in their brain. The control centre part of the brain has to learn to suppress the one(s) not currently needed and give priority to the language you’re focused on. It will come with practice, but in the meantime it shows that the learning you’re doing is stimulating the part of the brain responsible for all of your “other” languages.
You can help the process by doing something like playing some Welsh songs softly in the background, or listening to the Welsh radio for 10 minutes before starting - cues to your brain that it’s “Welsh time” now and help to bring that to the foreground.
But that suppressing one language and giving priority to the one which is required at the time has been shown to be one of the cognitive advantages that bilingual children develop over monolingual ones. It gives the control part of the brain practice at giving attention to what is needed and suppressing what is irrelevant at the time, and that is a useful skill to develop.
Thanks from me as well - this is definitely a problem I’ve experienced too! I know you’re a polyglot @Deborah-SSi - does the suppression get any easier when you’ve got more languages?!
From my experience, it does, though like any other skill, if you want to be able to switch from one language to another, you need to practise doing it.
The first time I went to a Polyglot Gathering in 2015, I thought my brain was going to explode and I became totally mute, unable to function in any language at all! But I realised that without practice, I wouldn’t get anywhere, so I started doing that - swapping from one language to another and making sure I got exposure to all of them, even if just a little, and this year when I went it was a totally different experience and I loved it!
They don’t have a qualifying number. You just have to have a passion for languages. A lot of the talks are in English as it’s the most common language between the participants, but there are language tables where speakers gather to practise different languages, and some talks in different languages as well. There’s a lot of choice so always something you can attend.
