Can You Lose Your Native Tongue?

Me and all my cousins lost our native language. It's common for kids.

> But just as they are good language learners, children are good language forgetters. Linguists generally agree that a language acquired in early childhood tends to have greater emotional resonance for its speaker. But a child who stops speaking a language before age 12 can completely lose it. For those who stop speaking a language in childhood, that language can erode — so much so that when they try to relearn it, they seem to have few, if any, advantages, Schmid says, compared with people learning that language from scratch.

Anecdata: I started to use English as my main language about 11 years ago, and about 4 years ago I adopted German as my secondary language. I remember I had an interview in my native language about 5 years ago, and I was literally struggling with finding the words. I was just stuttering for 20 minutes, until they wanted to test my foreign language knowledge...

Another time, I remember I was talking with my parents in my native tongue, and suddenly they asked me why I started to talk in English. I haven't even noticed it, it just become "the language that I speak with everyone".

With that said, I think it would come back quick, if I was using it again as my main language for a week or two (I stopped using it when I was well into my 20s)

Works where archive.ph is blocked:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240519000951/https://www.nytim...

Stationed in Frankfurt, I grew up bilingual with a German mother and American GI father. But because it was still so close to WWII, my Dad insisted "no speaking German" and by the time we transferred back to the USA at age 7 I knew English only.

I'm more surprised that you can lose english.