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Comment by rocqua | Hacker News Reader

I had one day where I was thinking in 4 languages. That's all languages I could possibly claim to speak: Dutch, english, french and german.

Dutch is my native tongue, so I think in that. I also think in English, part of this is the internet. Part of it is due to understanding most of CS and math in english terms.

I was alone on vacation in France, I learned some french in high-school. That combined with basically only speaking french to people there made me think in french a bit. Finally on that day, I had met a group of German scouts. I learned even less German in high-school, but it's closer to dutch.

So there I was, thinking in four languages. I recall at one point thinking of some English phrase and then thinking 'comment je le dire en allemande' which is my french attempt at 'how do I say this in German'.

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Hah! I also learned French in High School, but then much later in life I learned Dutch. Now whenever I go to France and try to speak French, Dutch words push out the French words in my head, sometimes too fast for me to stop from actually saying them in the middle of an already dubious French sentence. It's quite infuriating.

Usually I do still know the word in French, but the Dutch words are always so much closer to the surface.

I love living in Europe :)

I get the same thing, try to recall a German word and a French word pops up. Interestingly it also happens with BSL (a sign language), I try and recall a word and the sign pops up; I'm not that accomplished in any language other than English, perhaps that's related but it struck me that words with the same/similar meanings across languages must get stored "together" (spatially, logically, whatever) some how.

Same experience. I've basically forgotten all my (basic) Arabic by studying (equally basic) French. I've practically lost 100% of my vocabulary because trying to fetch a word in Arabic from my brain always yields the French term, of which I can't get rid thereafter.

Never encountered such a clear demo of how limited and bucket-like my brain is.

I have a similar problem whenever I cross between multiple countries in Europe and encounter the first motorway toll in a new country. No matter how hard I try as I approach the toll I always greet/thank the person in the booth with the language of the country I've just left rather than the language of the new country (happened to me again last month driving from Portugal through Spain and in to France). My mind just goes blank. Seconds after pulling away the word/phrase I wanted pops in to my head - it infuriates me!

I only know two languages, my native English (south west England) plus Norwegian (fairly fluent but terrible accent and massive gaps in vocabulary).

When I am in the company of people who don't have English as their first language, or perhaps don't speak English at all, I sometimes have an almost irresistible urge to speak Norwegian to them. It's as though my brain does something like: they speak a foreign language, Norwegian is a foreign language, so Norwegian will do.

It's funny, I have school-level French and only think in it when I get really angry. Or if I need to vent it all out, I write in French (with a pocket dictionary no less!) Who knows, it could be because I don't use expletives very much, or all that casual-listening to French media is paying off, or French is naturally a great language for these sort of emotions.

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