Forgetting My First Language

I have a weird language history, so let me chime in. I was born in Brazil to Japanese parents. My first language as a young child was japanese. As I entered school, portuguese became the predominant language in my life and both my parents decided to focus on that, speaking portuguese at home. Once I grew up, I went to college in Canada and have lived in North America ever since.

I have lost all fluency in Japanese. Japanese culture had always been a part of my life as a child, but despite my family (cousins, etc) growing up on misoshiru and jpop and anime, we all spoke portuguese, so Japanese-the-language never felt like "home".

These days, I also occasionally forget portuguese vocabulary. I do still "speak" with family, but mostly by text via WhatsApp, and conversations are usually pretty casual and don't involve nearly as much eloquence as, say, a good book. The vast majority of my life now revolves around english-speaking culture: my job is full of english technical jargon that I've no idea how to translate, english is the language I share w/ my wife, and it's the language I use to consume information and entertainment. English is now my "home", so to speak.

I think the author has a similar experience: she learned english in primary school and lived a primarily english-oriented life, so english became "home". The phenomenon of wanting to reconnect with one's roots later in life doesn't strike me as particularly unusual either. In retrospect, I did unintentionally distance myself from my own parents during my 20s (partly because that's sorta the whole point of becoming an independent adult and discovering new things) and only really started to regain that level of touch after having kids.

My point is: loss of language can have a lot to do with prioritizing things one feels are impactful in their lives (though those things may not necessarily be important - parents are certainly important, but it's the sort of thing that one can easily take for granted). Having had such a weird life experience wrt "first language", I'm keenly aware that the first-ness or even the familial aspect don't necessarily correlate with the cultural surface area that a person interfaces with the most. In some rare cases, your second - or third - language is what feels like home.

I found that one particular thing that helps preventing forgetting your native language(s) is reading. Specifically as I get older I rediscovered some absolutely great classical books in my native Hungarian, Russian and Ukrainian languages. Not only did it help me keep my vocabulary rich, but also helped me learn more about the history of my homeland and probably kept the bond alive.

Another thing that may be even more effective is if you have kids then use your native language exclusively with them. My son speaks perfect Hungarian for example, and it just warms my heart when visiting his grandma (who doesn’t speak English at all) I can see him telling her bedtime stories before going to sleep.

It is exceedingly rare for an adult to undergo true attrition of their first language when it is the dominant language throughout childhood.

On the other hand, it is very easy for children to completely lose their first language (sometimes in as short as 6 months when exposure is entirely removed).

In this case, it seems that the author was not a Cantonese-dominant speaker from school age, and their Cantonese input was limited, so I imagine the attrition really occurred during childhood. Now, they just retain some slowly fading scraps of the language.

Such speakers are termed heritage language learners, and they're the focus of a huge body of research, especially focused on the Spanish-speaking communities in the US.

It doesn't help that Beijing is actively discouraging the use of Cantonese and all other non-Mandarin dialects of Chinese.

Schools in mainland China are allowed to only teach in Mandarin, not the local dialects and almost all TV media is Mandarin. Even in HK, most local schools don't teach Cantonese formally anymore and it's hard to find Cantonese specific written materials like textbooks etc especially for kids.

To the author's point, in US cities with large Chinese populations like SF or NYC, there are many bilingual English-Mandarin or Mandarin immersion schools to pass on the language to kids, but few or none Cantonese ones.

Without that supporting academic ecosystem, it's just a oral language spoken by less and less each generation.

What a heartbreaking story. However, I believe it didn’t result from “wanting to be successful in America“ but from the estrangement from his parents and family. Millions other immigrants, who are successful in America, don’t lose their first language.

I recall being thoroughly disturbed when I first started dreaming in English. This happened after only having lived in the US for 5-6 years. It was part sadness and part shame for betraying my mother tongue as a grown-ass man.

That was almost two decades ago. The article brought back some memories.

This article maybe explains why my grandfather would get so angry when us cousins would ask him to speak in Italian, his childhood language, when we were small. We thought it was so neat that he had this whole other world, but at most he would say a few words for us, then lapse into a stony silence. In later years he wouldn't even say the few words. We all knew he wasn't mad at us, but he was definitely angry, definitely upset, maybe somehow embarrassed too - but why? As kids we'd think, maybe he's getting forgetful in his old age. In fact his mind was tack sharp until his final year, in his 90s. I had no idea there was a name for this. But it makes a lot more sense now.

I'm Norwegian, but have lived in the UK closing in on half my life now (25 years in Norway, 21 years in the UK).

I have by no means forgotten my first language, but over the years I have certainly noticed loss of vocabulary, or more frequently more effort to switch over to thinking in a different pattern and finding the right words.

Sometimes I'll catch myself about to inject an English word when speaking Norwegian to my mother.

I don't think my fluency will ever disappear as they did for the article writer, in part because I used it daily for much longer than the writer did, and in part because I still read a reasonable amount of Norwegian, but it drives home how much of fluency depends on regular use.

There are parts of this article that I relate to deeply and there are parts that sound absolutely insane to me.

Like the author, I immigrated to the US as a child, in fact to almost the same neighborhood in Brooklyn. Like her, I also made a point of learning English well, of looking at assimilation / "becoming American" as a really important goals - which I believe was right. I do have embarrassing memories of pretending to be American and not speak my native language in public -- it was a stupid idea to try to pretend to be something I wasn't, but I can see why the 11 year old version of myself that had just moved across the ocean would act that way.

The thing that's a little weirder to me is the loss of the first language (as compared to refusal to use it at times.) I suppose there may be a genetic component since the author and her brothers have all lost their Cantonese - I don't think this is common. Most times, people get rusty in their native language but it comes back easily with immersion. I do believe the author that this is a problem for her, it just seems like a rare one.

Two things felt crazy to me in the article.

First, I think the author's experience of allowing the sole language she had in common with her parents dilapidate - is extremely uncommon. You can pretend to be American all you want (as I did) but at the end of the day, if your dad doesn't speak English (mine still struggles) then you're "forced" to speak to him in your own tongue so you don't lose it. The author and her brothers must be weird birds indeed to have spent years not being able to communicate with their parents and somehow think that's fine.

Second, the author is clearly lamenting this but she's not talking about action until the very end. Cantonese speakers are extremely common in the US, as is media and opportunity to take classes etc. She's taking advantage of some of that, and I have to imagine that it must be easier for her to relearn the language than for someone studying it for the first time.

My point being, is if this is really important to her (as it should be) she should focus less on lamentations of the past and go whole-hog into fixing the problem today.

This is to be expected, as it doesn't seem to have ever set in as a real language in their life. My wife and daughter are foreign, and of obviously different ages. My wife speaks English perfectly but with an obvious accent, but still dreams in her native language. She'll never forget it. The kid just had exposure as a child and was learning when she came, and today speaks English without an accent and has no memory of her first language.

She shares the author's pain in that she can not speak to her grandparents, at all.

I feel there's a point in life where language gets imprinted and you're stuck with it, probably by age 10 or so. People older will forever have varying degrees of accents, and people younger will happily accept whatever is current. I find it truly fascinating myself, especially because those older learning hear themselves speaking it perfectly.

I learned German as a kid, but I forgot most of it when I started learning English in elementary.

Nowadays, (I'm living in the Balkans) I forgot words of my own language, and I (and most of my friends) mix English and my mother language quite often, creating a language similar to that in the "Clockwork Orange". Still don't know if that is a good thing or not. I'm trying to 're-learn' German and it is a lot harder than when I was a kid.

There is also a funny story about a baby in Serbia, whose first words were in English due to the media/cartoons the family gave to baby to watch.

Are there examples of successful communities where second and third generation immigrants didn't adopt the dominant language in their region, or country?

Coming from South Africa, where there are eleven official languages [1], but English is the de-facto language for communication, it seems like having people not able to have a common language for communication is a recipe for balkanisation, ghettoisation, fragmentation and general strife.

[1] South Africa has eleven official languages, mostly because that was part of the cost of getting conservative Afrikaans speakers to accept the end of apartheid. Even today, they are the firmest proponents of multilingualism.

I am a Hong Kong immigrant in Canada. I spent a part of my childhood in HK and the rest of my time in Canada.

There was an era that the parents insisted on communicating with their kids in English so that their kids didn't fall behind in school. Speaking not in English was a taboo at school: Kids raised their eyebrows. Some kids were punished for not speaking in English. (Circa 70s and 80s English speaking Canada)

Now we realized the attitude has been damaging. I've met some adults cannot hold deeper conversation with their parents just like what the author said. In addition, these adults may not know or understand culture subtitles why some trivial matters (such as number 4) being inappropriate.

My high school was great in celebrating all world cultures and the indigenous people. In addition, some of my teachers in Canada spoke other languages at home and understood well how kids would not fall behind by speaking their native tongue at home. Nowadays, many parents would like to send their kids to French immersion school so that the kids can appreciate working in other languages.

I am lucky enough to have enough vocabulary in Cantonese to understand grown-up topics with my parents. Occasionally, I helped the Canadian born Chinese to order proper food in restaurants. They thanked me profusely. I also have early elementary school level Mandarin so I can navigate in many Chinatowns around the world without a hitch. During some occasion, I feel like I have an adult body but think like a kid since I never lived as an adult in any predominantly Chinese speaking (Cantonese or Mandarin) nations.

Something like this is a huge problem with the young Vietnamese generation in Germany. They speak flawless German but bad Vietnamese - so they can't talk to their parents.

I had a co worker who grew up in NYC to Chinese speaking parents. When I asked her how her weekend went on time she said, her parents bank was bought and she needed to go there and help out as her parents didn’t speak English well enough. “When you live in a country for 40 years you should try to learn the language”. Having visited I can see how you could get by without English, though it would limit you.

what I infer from the article is that the author doesn't talk to parents much. It is the frequency that keeps our memory cells charged.

After driving a four-wheeler for a decade, without touching a bike, people tend to forget balancing. Although it takes very little effort to revive it. Just a session or two may be.

Same should be true for languages. Start talking frequently and it will revive all your language skills.

First thing I thought was she should watch some more Wong Kar Wai movies. Then she gets to the end and I'm like yaaaaas.

I wish I knew Cantonese. It's such a beautiful language. One of my dreams is to go to Hong Kong. Hopefully it won't be too pillaged by the Chinese before I get to visit.

Looking at my family history, in the last 4 generations we have leaped from German to Spanish to Portuguese. As a child I lived in England for several years and then had a hard time coming back to Portuguese (I couldn't understand if people spoke too fast).

Who knows what my grandchildren will speak.

This has been my experience too. My family moved from Chennai to Mumbai and lost my first language Tamizh. I can speak but cannot read and write with speed. I feel deep sadness because it feels like I lost something that was very close to me once.

This happened to my great grandmother, I thought it was unusual, but I guess not.

Came to the United States as a teenager not knowing English, but quickly picked it up. Eventually her french speaking elders all died off so she stopped speaking french out of circumstance, she never taught her kids french and french materials were not available at the time. In her 90s she said she didn't remember how to speak french. I thought it was sad but it actually didn't bother her because she didn't need to speak french anymore.

Some people who didn't know her thought she was senile if she mentioned this to them.

Eerily similar experience here. I came to the US from Russia at the age of 9 and slowly watched my Russian slip away. 23 years later my vocabulary sucks and I have a strange accent.

I have made an effort though by reading a few books in Russian, including Crime and Punishment.

The author saying “I have so much to say, but not the words to say it” is the heartbreaking reality of my conversations with my parents. Luckily, my ability to understand is still sharp, so I get them talking and hear stories about their lives.

I consider myself really lucky that my parents spoke to me in different languages. Quite a few of my cousins regret only learning how to speak English. I can still speak 2 of the languages they taught me but I've almost completely forgotten Italian. Like the author, I guess my parents didn't really see the need to speak it when they moved to Canada but I can kind of understand it still.

Seems to be much more common as a thing with children who haven't finished acquiring both their L1 and L2 (as in multilingual) while still going through the biological sensitive period where you have to acquire language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_attrition#Age_effect

My first language is Danish, but my mother married an American when I was 6. He said I shouldn't speak Danish so I lost the language, when I came back to Denmark in my 30s I had to learn the language all over again, which I still speak with an American accent.

When I began to relearn Danish I started to remember German which I spoke from 6-10 and also had a year of in high school.

I always recommend, a great story about losing your cultural background in favor of fitting in https://gizmodo.com/read-ken-lius-amazing-story-that-swept-t...

What a heartfelt article, and one I can identify with well despite English being my first and only language. I'd tell the author that this affects all of us, not just those struggling with forgetting a first language (although that must throw the situation into even starker relief). I still wish that I could relate to my parents on a deeper level, although their English is fluent and near perfect. Perhaps their fluency in general has slowly declined with age, which could be a factor. But there are certainly times where I feel stuck in small talk with them.

I hope the author has children one day. It's the ultimate gift of being able to relate to your parents. Suddenly you understand the biggest and most important event of their entire lives: the birth of you, and perhaps your siblings. That can't be described fully in any spoken language, and it adds a beautiful layer to your relationship that you'll both understand so well. Even if you are never once able to speak about it.

Honestly can relate. I grew up learning Hindi, and while I can still speak it, I can’t read it (don’t really see scripture outside of India.) Not to mention my vocabulary is restricted to an 8 year olds. I just consider myself a “Westerner” now and that’s about it.

I used to work with a Polish guy who told me he had similarly forgotten his mother tongue. I had never heard of such a thing at the time, and it seemed such a bizarre and sad phenomenon that it felt rude to pursue my curiosity as to the circumstances.

I wonder how similar this process of language attrition is for peoples primary language(s)? Could this be related to other forms of cognitive decline and disease?

Anyone have an archive link?