I had the opportunity to interact with some Japanese speaking individuals online through PS3's home. The strangest thing happened to me whenever I drew a blank in the conversation. Whenever I couldn't figure out how to say something in Japanese I would try to figure out how to say it French rather than construct it in English or... god forbid... Japanese.

At first I thought I was doing this because I was tired, but even now, as I try to construct Japanese sentence in my head, whenever I'm unsure of how to say something I try to construct it in French.

French is not my first language. I don't even consider it much of a second as I've been out of practice for years.

Anyone else have any similar experience or know possible reason why this could happen?

I'm almost considering shadowing some French and uping the French voc just so that my head doesn't hurt as much when this happens.

I call this "getting your second languages mixed up" syndrome. (Not really. But now I'm glad it's not just me).

When I first started studying Japanese in high school my senior year, I had studied spanish for two years my sophmore and junior years. During thist ime my Spanish was much better than my Japanese (which is pretty much saying I didn't speak either). Whenever I spoke Japanese and I instantly tried to think of a Japanese word, Spanish came out!

Fast forward a few years when I needed some easy credit in college. I took a summer Spanish course, and much to my dismay, I had forgot almost all of my Spanish. Worse yet, when I wrote/spoke/ and tried to produce Spanish, Japanese came out! Japanese became my stronger second language, so sentences like "donde esta el inu" kept coming out.

I admire anyone that has learned more than two languages. I don't know how you do it.

donde es le inu! LOL

大阪に住んでいます combien de temp?

kazelee Wrote:donde es le inu! LOL

I lol'd too. Thanks for sharing that, samesong. I look forward to knowing 3 languages well enough to mix them up.

I've had this. I also know that one of my Russian professors, sometimes accidentally defaults to Dutch, when he's teaching in English; but never to Russian. multiple second languages are likelier to mix themselves up than your mother tongue.

I've noticed this with Korean, but never with Japanese. When I can't say something in Japanese a certain way, I just say it another way. I guess it's a remnant from living in Japan, falling back to a second language won't help so you don't.

With Korean though, I'm just starting out and know pretty much nothing... and my korean girlfriend who I'm sorta learning it for, speaks perfect Japanese (that's how we communicate) so I fall back on Japanese all the time. It's so simple too since you can say a korean sentence and just put a Japanese word in the middle of it, the grammar is similar enough.

I insert Japanese into Spanish if I forget a word, which probably adds to the overall confusion because they probably think I'm inserting English. I mainly do this with nouns though, probably because the grammar is too different for anything else to be randomly inserted.

Spanish is my 3rd language.

Interesting. I've done this as well, mostly with Romance languages while on vacation, throwing Italian or French phrases into Spanish. I've never had it happen with a non-Latin language that I was studying, so I assumed it was just because, to me as a native English speaker, all the Romance languages seem quite similar.

Granted I had barely studied any Japanese at that point, so it'll be interesting to see if I bust out some "え?! 何?!?!"'s or whatever on my next trip

When I try to study Spanish(I am very much a beginner), and what I'm looking for in Spanish doesn't come to mind right away, Japanese pops up. Or when I try to come up with a Spanish sentence, my brain wants to arrange it in Japanese word order.

Perhaps this is because I haven't been able to go Spanish-Spanish yet, but whenever I try and think an English thought in Japanese, Spanish comes up. I have no trouble communicating/understanding/thinking organically in Japanese[no trouble here means no trouble up to the limit of my ability -- and my abilities are pretty limiting]

I used to have this a lot in the beginning, just thinking of German words when I couldn't think of the Japanese ones I needed... Now (Japanese is a lot better than my German now *grin*) the opposite is happening... When I try to think of how to say something in German (2 German speaking people here at my volunteer placement)... I can only think of the Japanese.

And not totally related but...

When we're playing pictionary, and I need to draw something... The first things that I think of are kanji... (Well, technically they aren't letters, so maybe it would be allowed :p)... Just, no one here will know what 人 means, so it's more practical to just draw a stick figure ^_~

PrettyKitty Wrote:I insert Japanese into Spanish if I forget a word, which probably adds to the overall confusion because they probably think I'm inserting English. I mainly do this with nouns though, probably because the grammar is too different for anything else to be randomly inserted.

Spanish is my 3rd language.

I put Japanese grammartical elements into Spanish. El casaは…、Espanaから…, etc. (I also call everything 'el'.) Sometimes I just stop speaking Spanish and finish the sentence in Japanese.

Wow!

I was expecting to get reamed with posts like "aren't you exaggerating a bit much " and "take it down a knotch dude."

But apparently this is something very common. :o

When I started studying Swedish I always mixed it with German and now I mix in Japanese in my English and the other way around.

In Japan, I'd look at a train and say, "Il y a un densha" or "Le densha s'en vient" (French) . Hope Japanese will supplant it one day as the go-to L2.

Yep, I get it too, especially when just starting a new language.

HA.
Because of my previous experiences with French, I've said things like "random word"がbesoin(だな?...) <---I don't know where I got that from, but it kept on popping up in my mind for the longest time.
Yeah, not good.
Then again, if you're an AJATTian/input type person and you're trying to limit your output, this other/previously learned second language business can be good. For me at least, I try not to speak too much. However, this is difficult as I often have random moments where I spurt out random (often nonsensical) Japanese words and sounds because...I'm not even sure why...
That's why, to prevent any damage as far as developing bad patterns in Japanese (like "random word"がbesoin, etc.), I'll just think or say something in French instead of hurting myself by screwing up the Japanese.

Happens to me too. If I can't say something in Japanese, I'll inadvertently revert to Italian or vice versa.

I guess it's the way your brain works. It has to learn an alternate way of expressing every thought, and you have to train yourself to use the appropriate mode of expression based on who you're talking to. However, if you're stuck, your brain probably reverts to another "alternate way of expression".