Nothing has happened to my English. Yet.
I was riding the bus home tonight and standing next to me was a German couple, trying to figure out which bus stop they should get off at. In German: "How many stops?" the woman asks. "Two or three," answers the man. "If you're not sure, we should probably ask someone," the woman prods. The man opens his guidebook and studies it for a moment. "Two," he replies. "Are you sure? I can ask someone." "It's two." "Are you sure?" At this point, probably against my better judgment, I ask the woman: "Wohin geht ihr?" "Where are you going?" The woman looks at me surprised for a moment, and then tells me the name of the stop. It's the next one. We talk for a few minutes. It turns out the two are husband and wife and they are on their honeymoon. "Herzlichen Glückwunsch!" I congratulate them. They'll spend a few days in Rio, continue on to the "Green Coast" of Paraty, and finish on a beach resort further south in Brazil. The woman is from Frankfurt and I can hear the vocal sweetness of her Frankfurt vowels. She asks me how I learned German, and as I tell her the 15-second version of my story, I realize that the German words feel strange on my tongue. The words are reduced to vocabulary and grammar, choppy and separated. Their flow is interrupted by Portuguese phrases that insist they can tell the story better than their German counterparts ever could. English isn't anywhere in the mix.
The newlyweds get off at what we all hope is the correct stop and I am left with my own thoughts of the conversation. While it was great to speak German for a few minutes--or rather speak a language in which I have more than a 50 percent chance of having what I mean match what I actually say--it was even more rewarding to confirm that my Portuguese really is improving, and is slowly becoming my brain's first "go-to" language in any given conversation. Of course, tonight's linguistic progress could just be a sign of some language-based predicament yet to come. Whatever the case, I'll be sure to write about it here.
5 comments:
don´t worry briana! we will write in german again!you don´t have to sacrifize your german ;)
gute und baldige besserung!
umarmung
sara
do synapse "short out" and get pruned that quickly? hehe portuguese is such a beautiful sounding language. when we get customers that speak it i try to be the associate to help through their shopping experience first. yea..our retail store is kind of "high end" we do one on one shopping haha
Danke, Sara! We need a Stammtisch, or "bate-papo", as it's called in Brazil!
Aurora, thanks for visiting this blog! I don't think synapses "short out" that quickly, no, but vocabulary from one language does start to replace the other. It all balances out eventually (if you're lucky), but it is interesting to note in the meantime which words come in which language first. I have a few friends who know five or six languages - I can only imagine the fun they must have in similar situations!
Wow Briana, I didn't know you had a blog. I love your article and I have to admit that the same is happening to me now. I'm staying in Nice, France at the moment to learn some French and while learning French I watch my English disappear somehow. But we'll make it! :) XXX Lucy
Hi, Lucy! Thanks for finding your way here ;-) You have a blog for Nice too, right?
Thanks for chiming in about this whole "language-replacement" phenomenon. I have no doubt your English will return; then the trick will be to maintain the French!
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