I found the section about how a basic interaction such as hi, how are you becomes so second nature that we almost forget that it is in reality a complicated neural interaction that allows it to happen in the first place. It reminded me of many experiences I had living in China - near the end of the semester, speaking Chinese with strangers and saying excuse me in Chinese when bumping into someone was burned into my (neural?) memory so resolutely that I had trouble switching back to English. In airports, big tourist attractions, European and Indian tourists would ask me for directions or for help finding something in English and it would take me a couple minutes to remember how to respond in my own native language. Tripping over a foreigner I would always say the (considerably longer) Chinese version of excuse me and would get a really confused look in return. I am curious to see if this phenomenon gets more or less frequent as I learn a third language. On one hand, it would seem that the addition of another complete vocab list would make it much easier to make inter-languages mistakes in other languages. But I have read and heard polyglots say that the more languages one learns, the easier keeping track of all of them gets. In that way I could see the brain, or at least the lingual portion of it, as similar to any other muscle in the body. The more its trained and exercised, the more weight it pulls.
My first call with my language partner is scheduled for tomorrow. I have individually studied some phrases and grammar already so she can correct what I already know, but I think I will end up asking her what she thinks is important to know. I know that if I was asked to teach English I don't think I would be able to replicate what a ESL textbook would teach, since it isn't how I and other native English speakers learned the language, so I think it would be unreasonable to ask someone who isn't familiar with that style of teaching to replicate those results. Overall I am excited and hope everything goes well.
Comments