Language amnesia accompanies my life as a multilingual. I have learnt to accept it, to treat it like a family member whose visits I may not always enjoy, but who insists on paying me a call regularly. I can now understand why I sometimes cannot switch to another language as fast as I would like to and I’ve noticed that I can be more relaxed about this if I regard it through a lighter, humorous lens. At the same time, I am aware that the exercises I recommended in the series “How to keep up with our sleepy languages” can make a difference in terms of a faster response from the languages we use frequently. I also know that a description of a method may not draw the full picture of the options we have in adapting the exercise to our own needs. Therefore I decided to tell you how I make use of these methods for keeping my dominant languages easily available.
If you prefer to listen to this article instead of reading it, I recorded it for you at the end of this page.
Listening
This method was recommended to me for the first time by one of my language teachers in high-school. I tested it a decade ago on easing my way into learning a Slavic language which I firstly encountered as a young adult and which differed a lot from any other language I had learnt before. What I did initially was to turn on the radio for at least an hour daily for a few weeks before starting the language classes and I just allowed my ears to get accustomed to the sound of the new language. This proved to be of great help in training my ability to distinguish individual words, a difficult task for any beginner. Another advantage was that I could learn the pronunciation faster, since even the specific sounds in this language were no longer new to me.
Since then I have integrated this method in my daily life and now I effortlessly listen to podcasts, news and the radio in all languages I am fluent in. Sometimes I turn on an online radio in a language that I don’t usually use, but which I miss (usually French), and I just listen to the sound of the language for a few minutes, without concentrating on the content. During the years I noticed that what works best for me is a mix between active listening (paying attention to the language usage, to the content) and passive listening, when I just let the sounds play in the background without me following their meaning. I thus end up with two varieties of this exercise that I can spontaneously adapt to my mood and to my concentration level at that time. Having the freedom to decide upon which language I prefer to listen to adds an additional layer of choice. So this permissive mix eventually turns into a multi-facetted activity which, even if practiced daily, does not seem boring or repetitive.
Reading
In the attached photo you can see the books I read, started reading or finished in the past months. In my defence, I had plenty of time to read and also a thirst for reading during this time. The reason I’m showing this to you is not to demonstrate that I soon need a bigger flat to accommodate all these books, but to illustrate how I parallelly read multilingually to train my dominant languages. The arrangement of the books in this photo is meant to highlight the ones I read approximately at the same time.
This strategy helps me follow my content-related interests in a book and, at the same time, keep up with the related vocabulary in a certain language. For example, if I am interested in a book dealing with the topic of resilience and I am not confident with the related terminology in German, I choose its German version. On the other hand, whenever I am tired or I need to get up to speed on a subject faster, I choose to read in the languages I am the most fluent in, namely English or my mother tongue. A light book helps me set a rendezvous from time to time with French, a language I haven’t used in years. There are some other languages I learnt at some point, but that I now have nothing to do with. I get in touch with those by reading my friends’ posts in these languages on social media and I check if I understood them correctly by subsequently reading their online translation into English or German.
Thinking
This exercise comes in handy when I need to make a fast transition to talking fluently in a certain language. Like when I have an important discussion early in the morning. Or, while I was teaching at the university, before I started my seminars and workshops. And when I just want to shake a certain language off my mind for a while. So what I do is to start translating my thoughts in the language I soon need available. Before teaching, I also formulate some complex ideas related to the current topic in the target language. Furthermore, if the context allows it, I even utter some sentences out loud, so that my muscles get used to pronouncing the specific sounds of this language.
There are times when I make use of this method also when I don’t have an urgent need to ease my way into thinking in a certain language. This happens unfortunately more rarely than I plan to, just like doing some physical exercise for that matter, so I hope you are better at this than I am. Whenever I get to practice this exercise, I’m doing it when I’m preparing my breakfast. As I’m currently working on improving my Spanish, I’m using this language to mentally list the steps that I’m doing, e.g. taking the milk out of the fridge, slicing the bread, making the coffee etc. Whenever I stumble into a word I don’t know or I cannot remember, I try to find a synonym to it or a way of describing it and I make a mental note to check it later in the dictionary. The next step would be extending this practice to brushing my teeth, getting dressed or going shopping and describing the necessary steps in the chosen language. What other activities would you extend it to?
Observing
Just as suggested in the article where I initially presented this method, I pay attention to the way competent speakers and writers use words and grammar structures when they communicate their ideas. I try to remember the formulations that match my own style and I do my best to integrate them in my oral and written communication as soon as possible after I’ve encountered them for the first time. The same goes for improving my pronunciation: Whenever I hear a sound or a combination of sounds I am still struggling with pronounced correctly, I do my best to remember the voice of the person while pronouncing it. So when I get to use that combination of sounds on my own, I can innerly hear this “audio recording” and allow the familiarity of the voice help me imitate better the sounds that I can now play in my head every time I need them.
Jumping into a critical teacher’s shoes happens nowadays mostly spontaneously – if I hear incorrect language usage, my inner voice tells me right after what the correct version is. And if I’m unsure of my autocorrection, I make a mental or a written note of it and check it in the dictionary when I have sufficient time to focus on this task. I know that looking something up on the rush will not help me memorise it long-term, so I prefer to postpone this activity to a more relaxed time of the day.
My way of having a critical look at my own language usage is to read my sent e-mails or messages and to look there for inaccurate formulations. This strategy supports me not only in identifying and mentally rectifying inappropriate language usage, but it also shows me my progress in learning that language, especially if I look at e-mails sent a few years ago. As strange as it may sound, I apply this method also to my mother-tongue, as I find it interesting to discover what structures and formulations I tend to borrow from other languages when using my native one.
The insight into my way of putting into practice all methods I recommended in this series would have been too lenthy, therefore the remaining strategies will be detailed upon in an follow-up article. Come back to find out how I write, talk and get the rhythm of the languages I have learnt during the years for avoiding getting out of sync with them.
Yours confidently,
Corina