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Esperanto confused with other languages

by eriksangel15, April 26, 2016

Messages: 16

Language: English

eriksangel15 (User's profile) April 26, 2016, 1:00:42 AM

Esperanto is the second language that I've really made an effort to study, with Spanish being my first in high school and college many moons ago. I was just wondering if anyone sometimes wants to switch to Spanish when using Esperanto or studying, or if it's just me.

jaldrich (User's profile) April 26, 2016, 1:39:16 AM

Yes, I think many third language learners experience that!

http://tesol-dev.journals.cdrs.columbia.edu/wp-con...

ludomastro (User's profile) April 26, 2016, 7:54:07 PM

It still happens to me. Like you, I learned Spanish before I ever became interested (or aware) of Esperanto. Given the similarities, I've slipped into Spanish from time to time. Of course, it's not just Esperanto. I slipped the Spanish word for shark into a Japanese sentence once at a restaurant. Needless to say, the waitress was very confused.

In my defense, I was in Japan on business and had only learned a few phrases. Tiburon (shark in Spanish) can be made with "normal" Japanese syllables and I had completely blanked on same ( サメ or 鮫 ).

erinja (User's profile) April 26, 2016, 8:46:29 PM

It has nothing to do with Spanish per se, it's just that your brain searches for a foreign language word and picks it out of the wrong foreign language. I used to get this when returning to Yiddish class on Monday after attending Esperanto events on the weekend.

Alkanadi (User's profile) April 27, 2016, 6:17:59 AM

I mix up Esperanto and Arabic all the time in my brain. Luckily, I can correct the mistake before it reaches my mouth. I think I can only study one language at a time.

It is as if my brain has two categories. The first category is for my native language. The second category is a disorganized soup of all foreign languages.

When I was taking French in school, our teacher would always confuse Spanish and French. I think it is normal.

eriksangel15 (User's profile) April 27, 2016, 3:40:34 PM

It's nice to know that it's not just me or just Spanish.

bartlett22183 (User's profile) April 27, 2016, 6:22:33 PM

erinja:It has nothing to do with Spanish per se, it's just that your brain searches for a foreign language word and picks it out of the wrong foreign language. I used to get this when returning to Yiddish class on Monday after attending Esperanto events on the weekend.
I have had a similar experience just with international auxiliary languages. Sometimes when thinking how I would write something in Esperanto I have come up with an Interlingua word, and sometimes when thinking how I would write something in Interlingua I have come up with an Esperanto word. For those who are not completely fluent in more than one language -- and sometimes even then, the phenomenon of "code switching" -- there can be cross contamination.

jennazenna (User's profile) April 28, 2016, 12:33:53 PM

I saw this article last night and many of the comments at the end were speculations about how multi-language speakers sort meanings in their brains. Kind of fun read for those of us who love collecting/learning/using languages.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/2...

Squo (User's profile) April 28, 2016, 12:56:45 PM

after reading these statements I have decided to learn Esperanto as a second language then moving on to Arabic then Japanese.

lagtendisto (User's profile) May 1, 2016, 10:30:09 AM

eriksangel15:I was just wondering if anyone sometimes wants to switch to Spanish when using Esperanto or studying, or if it's just me.
Nothing wrong with it. I would recommend to see it like some positive and creative process to figure out relationships between words of different languages.

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