Retroactive Interference in Action
February 18th, 2009 | View Comments
So I finally busted out some Spanish in the comments of my previous post.
I’ve been volunteering at the Children’s Museum of Houston where maybe half of the visitors speak Spanish. I’d like to get to the point where I’m confident enough in my Spanish to at least mix it in with English in teaching these kids, especially since some of them don’t speak English yet.
My brain is not cooperating. I can switch off easily between English and Chinese as I’ve been doing that my whole life. However, my brain has grouped Spanish and Japanese together in a category apparently named “Languages I Speak Brokenly.”
We were doing a slime demonstration at the museum last week. One of the kids started to eat the slime. I racked my brain for “Don’t eat!” in Spanish and this is what happened.
English-speaking brain: I need “Don’t eat!” in Spanish!
Broken languages brain: “No tabetes!”
English-speaking brain: That…makes no sense in any language!
Broken languages brain: @#$#%^$!!!
English-speaking brain: You’re taking too long! I give up! “DON’T EAT THAT!”
食べる (taberu) is Japanese for “to eat”. “No tabetes” is apparently wrongly-conjugated Japanish. Classic retroactive interference.
After the slime-eating danger had passed, my broken languages brain finally came up with “¡No come!” Which I’m pretty sure is right, but the actual Spanish speakers in the audience will have to weigh in on that.
Yvonne posted this on February 18th, 2009 @ 9:41pm in Japanese, Language Psychology, Spanish, Speaking | Permalink to "Retroactive Interference in Action"
American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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Korean-American girl who blogs under a Spanish pseudonym because being culturally confusing is fun. Native speakers say that she has outstanding Spanish (which is a definite compliment) and outstanding German (which is most assuredly not).
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American-born, Taiwanese guy who took five semesters worth of German and ended up with a major in Linguistics.
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Ah, code switching. It can be such fun when you do it on purpose, and so painful when your brain decides to go ahead in spite of itself.
You think that’s bad? I was talking to my friends Lyna and James (a married couple) last week by phone, and did something much worse.
Before I say what I did, I should stop here for one second and give the following info:
(This sounds like the beginning of a math problem, doesn’t it?)
Anyway, last week, I talked to both of them for a while in English. And then I spoke to Lyna in German, and then to James afterward in Spanish. While I was speaking to James, Lyna remembered something she’d forgotten earlier and interjected in German. James obviously couldn’t understand a word of the last, and asked what we were talking about.
Lyna answered in English without thinking. I, also without thinking, answered in Spanish (how rude of me!)–but automatically added German case endings to all my nouns! Which might be okay if Spanish used declension, but it doesn’t even have the same number of genders that German does. James didn’t understand that I was still (sorta) speaking Spanish at that point, and needed another explanation; but I was too tongue tied (the only explanation I could cook up was in Korean), and Lyna was so shocked she could only blurt out a string of French curses. Which I then needed translated into English, for the hell of it.
I think I broke everybody’s brains that night.
Also, about the “¡no come! thing:
The correct forms (depending on who you were talking to) are:
¡No comas! (singular informal–tú form)
¡No coma! (singular formal–usted form)
¡No coman! (plural ustedes form)
Remember that negative commands take opposite endings: er and ir verb endings start with “a” and ar verbs endings start with “e”.
If you ever do want a kid to eat something, though, “¡come! is entirely accurate. Affirmative commands always take endings corresponding to the type of verb it is.
Thanks! Obviously I totally forgot about the opposite endings thing.