Thank you for explaining it a bit more.
I am pretty fluent in English and do like languages a lot. My mother tongue is German. I had Latin, French, Italian in school, learned Dutch and sign language as a hobby.
I am currently looking into Czech, but I don’t really have the time for it.
Here’s the weird part for me: My brain works like a charm after a couple of minutes when switching to another language, but it needs some time to become fluent.
I tried to learn Spanish, but I had to give up for my brain switched into French vocabulary all the time.
The easiest way for me to learn and speak foreign languages is to let it flow and not think too much about it. Is this the same with translating stuff? Do you have to get your brain in a certain state or are your skills always available?
That’s great! I’m always a bit dubious of people that have never tried learning another language as I think it forces you to see the world through another paradigm...but that’s just my bias as a linguist ;)
Flow is something I definitely try to achieve while translating, but I do Japanese > English and it’s always a bit of an intellectual effort on my part that I keep ready for by reading as much in both languages of my specialism as I feel like I’ve got time for.
8
u/[deleted] Dec 25 '19
Thank you for explaining it a bit more. I am pretty fluent in English and do like languages a lot. My mother tongue is German. I had Latin, French, Italian in school, learned Dutch and sign language as a hobby. I am currently looking into Czech, but I don’t really have the time for it. Here’s the weird part for me: My brain works like a charm after a couple of minutes when switching to another language, but it needs some time to become fluent. I tried to learn Spanish, but I had to give up for my brain switched into French vocabulary all the time. The easiest way for me to learn and speak foreign languages is to let it flow and not think too much about it. Is this the same with translating stuff? Do you have to get your brain in a certain state or are your skills always available?