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Comment by kashyapc | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, as I started to learn my 5th language (French), I just came across this article[1], where it claims studying a new language can "interfere" with other languages you know. To selectively quote:

"[...] we can conclude that learning words from a new language does come at the cost of at least retrieval ease for words in previously learnt foreign languages.’ In one of the experiments, learning the Spanish versions of words also seemed to make participants slightly less accurate when recalling those words in English. [...]"

Although I can confirm the small effect from my own experience, it doesn't faze me. For me, the upsides far outweigh a slight delay in retrieval ease.

[1] https://psyche.co/ideas/will-studying-a-new-language-interfe...

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My native language is French but I learned English at a young age so my English is better. I haven't spoken French regularly for the past 10 years and so, nowadays, it takes me some effort to recall certain French words.

10 years ago, my level of French and English were almost on par to the extent that I didn't even realize what language I was speaking with my parents or siblings (who could also speak both) and would often mix words from different languages based on which one came to mind first.

I took a French class in school (as an easy way to boost my grades) and sometimes the teacher would ask me a question in English and I would accidentally respond back in English instead of French (not realizing it); this amused some of my peers as the questions were usually very basic and therefore awkward to answer in English as anyone could have done so.

I would just respond in whatever language the other person spoke and it took effort for me to consciously answer in a different language than what the other person used.

Definitely a thing for me. When translating between two non-primary languages, I'll often either start talking the wrong one to the wrong party, or just completely blank out on basic words. I assume it's what an 8051 feels like when switching register banks!

I also recall teachers doing our spoken assessments reminding us the moment before the tape started recording that "remember, French, not German" because both tests took place in the same week and pupils would often launch into the wrong language.

I wish people who write and study this would differentiate between close languages (eg Italian and Spanish) vs totally different ones (Spanish vs Russian). I am guessing these are cognitively two very different undertakings, in kind, not just difficulty.

Yeah, you probably want to go the farthest distance from where you are currently. A speaker of an analytic language (say, Mandarin) would probably have their mind stretched maximally if they went for something agglutinative(say, Turkish) and vice versa. Geographic and cultural distance makes this even more of a mind expander.

Can't say I've had that problem (5 languages). My problem has been that what I call "language confidence" erodes quickly when you don't use them for a long time. For example, I use English and Spanish on a daily basis. No issues there. However, I haven't used French for probably 30 years and German for 20. I can listen to both and understand most of it, yet launching into speaking anything other than short phrases feels really uncomfortable.

Tangent: I learned some Japanese years ago. The language made sense to my brain. No writing, just conversation. The same thing did not happen when I attempted to learn Chinese. The way I put it is that my brain simply could not synchronize with the speech pattern and sentence structures. To be fair, I don't think I made a solid effort.

I have experienced this too, and I hope it’s just temporary. Part of it may be that I only have a rudimentary grasp of both languages, but I had learnt a bit of Spanish, and now learning French I find I’m mixing up especially words like tres and muy and things like that when I go back and try to speak Spanish, as well as nouns, numbers etc.. Verbs probably not so much since the conjugation is so different.

It’s tricky because some words are exactly the same (just different pronunciation), some are similar (like from the same root). So I hope this is just teething difficulty.

I experienced this too but the other way, French -> Spanish, and I think it may be particular to these languages as there's so much confusing overlap (for non-natives). I've since dropped French entirely and haven't had any issues with mixed recall with Spanish recently. I imagine learning both can be done if you were to get to a solid foundation with one before attempting the other.

I dont believe it neither (on my 4th/5th, french too). There is often new mental model required, ie with French you need to catch first parts of words since ends are not pronounced, and other quirks. German has these uber long words. Grammar is always a bit different. Ordering in sentences. And so on.

Overall it increases neuroplasticity, best starting as kids when brain is more adaptive. Big gains, regardless if there are some miniscule disadvantages overall.

I definitely have this problem sometimes. I know what I want to say but the only word that pops into my head is in the wrong language.

In traveller communities it is quite common to just say them in a different language - then you have a beautiful language mix where people stilm mostly understand each other. It just gets akward, when you interact with ordinary people again ..

I think this aspect of it is common, but overall the "negative" effects are very minor and shouldn't stop anyone from trying to learn a language.

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