Oh no! I'm losing it!

I suppose I could say I am losing many things these days (except those extra pounds off my body), but what has me most concerned recently is the loss of my foreign language abilities. Linguists have a fancy term for that phenomenon- second language attrition, and I am a victim. Here is my sad story.

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Five minutes!  I spent a lot more time than that!

When I was in college, my best foreign language was Spanish.  I have heard Spanish all of my life and studied it from sixth grade through a Master's degree. That extended period of study equated to countless hours spent listening, speaking, reading, writing, and yes, studying grammar in Spanish.

After graduation, I taught Spanish in public school for quite a few years. Instead of improving my own Spanish language abilities, I concentrated on how to teach others a foreign language (not an easy task!). My Spanish took on the typical basic characteristics of Spanish I and Spanish II courses.

I'm not sure all of my students were this eager to learn!

Recently, I began an informal project with a friend to reread the Spanish classic, El Ingenioso Caballero, Don Quijote de la Mancha. I pulled my old college copy off the shelf and was delighted to discover that my much younger self had made very helpful summary notes at the bottom of each page. Not only were the notes a guide to reading comprehension, but they were written in fluent Spanish.  I could hardly believe that it had been me writing those notes like a native speaker of Spanish. Where had that fluent Spanish gone?

I can still read  Spanish fairly well, although it takes more concentration than reading in English. I need absolute peace and quiet in the house!  But my Spanish oral fluency is not what I would like it to be. My husband inquired as to whether reading a 17th century novel was going to increase my ability to speak Spanish on our trip to Spain this fall.  I told him that at the very least, I am starting to hear Spanish swirling around in my mind again.  I may surprise a few Spaniards by speaking to them in the style of  Don Quijote!

Don Quijote and Sancho Panza

Then there is the matter of Brazilian Portuguese.  Intellectual curiosity caused me  to sign up for a Portuguese course at the local university one semester many years ago.  It was love at first sight for me.  I signed up in subsequent semesters for all available Portuguese courses and even spent a summer in Brazil on an NEH grant.  We were given an exit exam at the end of the course. I received a 10, the highest possible score! My Portuguese abilities were in great shape!

A Brazilian praça

But when I returned to my Spanish teaching job in the fall, I had quite a shock. I would try to speak Spanish and out would come Portuguese.  About the time I was getting the two languages straight in my mind, I began an administrative job in the school district which required different skills than pure language skills. Both my Spanish and Portuguese went into a slow decline over almost two decades.

My third career was teaching Portuguese courses at the university level.

I quickly immersed myself in Portuguese language and Brazilian culture and survived the first semester.  As time went on, Portuguese completely took over Spanish in my mind.  Students would speak to me in Spanish, and I would understand them with no problem, but if I tried to answer back in Spanish, it was all Portuguese.  Very embarrassing! Now it has been almost a year since I have spoken Portuguese on a regular basis, and I am beginning to feel very sad that I no longer hear that beautiful language in my head.

So I definitely have a bad case of second language attrition.  I'm going to work on remedies this week and let you know what I have self-prescribed in next week's blog.  If you have suffered from the same disease and have found a cure, please let me know!