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Comment by codetrotter | Hacker News Reader

Haha yeah it’s pretty awkward to be having a conversation in my native language, in my own country where I have lived almost my whole life and suddenly want to say a word and only remembering what the word is called in English.

This happens me from time to time for whatever reason. And I’m not even an expert in English. I guess in my case it comes from reading and writing a lot in English even though the language I speak to others with my mouth the most is by far my native tongue.

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I know this feeling all too well. I find that the internet in my own language is very low quality compared to online content in English. If I go to a bookstore, probably 70% or more is translations of books originally written in English. So I prefer to just buy the original on Amazon. There are entire subjects I only "know" in English. Every once in a while, when having a conversation about one of those subjects, I just can't find the right words in my language. I think it happens to a lot of people here and everywhere in the world.

Affirmative. I started having problems talking about my profession at the university, since everything I read was in English, to the point the teacher complained because I was mixing English and my native language. This experience however exposed to me to the fact that I did not want to talk about my profession in my native language, because all the important stuff is in English (software development).

It’s infuriating when the word does not exist in the other language, so you search and search and end up just constructing something with several words.

Does not even need to be a complex word: cheap for example does not have a word in french, you need “pas cher” (not expensive) or “bon marche” (~good deal)

We all forget a common word from time to time.

I guess if you have backup word stored in different part of brain, it gives you more options.

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