language take over

[Noelia]

Does it happen to you sometimes that the acquired language takes over and you can't remember your own when you're trying to think of a certain word?

For instance, sometimes, in a sentence in Spanish, when there's a specific word I want to say, only the English word comes to my mind and I cannot think of the Spanish one, to the point that I have to look it up as if it wasn't my native language.

I believe the more we study and the more we are in contact with the language, the brain starts storing it in the same area your native language is, and that's when conflict begins.....

What do you think?

[johnr]

Estoy totalmente de acuerdo contigo. Ayer por ejemplo estaba hablando con mi hijo y me olvidé la palabra 'gate' en inglés. Otro ejemplo relacionado, hace dos semanas hablaba con un hombre en mi huerto y estabamos cambiando nombres' My name is .... blah blah, y obviamente y no podía escuchar mi respuesta, así que me dijo 'sorry', y mi primero reacción era decir 'ah me llamo John' pero en español.

Pero lo peor de todo es que mi capacidad de deletrear. Tengo que detenerme cada más vez y pensar 'cómo se escribe esto en inglés'.

[sendai]

Yes, that happens to me, too. And other similar things, like I'll say a sentence and one of the words will be in Spanish and the rest in English.

I don't know what causes it, but it's certainly a sign that we are improving that we have reached a fairly good proficiency in our second language.