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/lit/ - Literature

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11136207 No.11136207 [Reply] [Original]

I guess that many people here are at least bilingual.

Why is it so hard to remember all the vocabularies? Even though I use English every day, mostly reading (4chan or other news) but also watching shows, have troubles writing. I have no difficulties reading most things but when it comes to writing, I never know how to phrase a sentence correctly and I have a hard time remembering all these nice words I learned once.

How is it for polyglots? I can only imagine the frustration I would encounter speaking more than 3 languages. Dont you forget many words so that eventually you only know the basic vocabulary?

>> No.11136233

I think it's incredibly difficult to become a skilled writer in a language you didn't grow up with.

You could be the greatest writer there is in your native toungue. It's still going to take x amount of hours to relearn how to write in your target language.

>> No.11136239

I cannot appreciate (most) books in my native language. I find the narrative always somehow childish and I cannot take it seriously. It really does not even matter what book is in question

Now when I pick up the same book written in English, it is a different story. It has a different "tone" for me and I have by no means mastered English, I find it much more enjoyable read for some reason.

>> No.11136242
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11136242

when you see a word you don't recognize, write it down with a definition in a notebook or on a flash card. Keep a journal in English and try to use new words whenever possible. All you can do is practice as often as possible.

>> No.11136247

>>11136233
Can you ever be a great poet in a language that is not your native tongue?

>> No.11136509

>>11136239
I'm learning french and i know exactly what you're talking about.

>> No.11136519

>>11136247
Joseph Conrad wrote in english, despite it being his third language and learning it well into grown age. Strindberg wrote a great deal of his most famous works in french originally, as did Beckett.

Not poets I guess though.

>> No.11136539

>>11136519
Don't forget Nabokov, who wrote better English than most natives.

>> No.11136593

>>11136519
>>11136539
So the problem is that I am a brainlet?

>> No.11136617

>>11136239
whats the native language?
>>11136509
that french has a greater tone?

>> No.11136618

>>11136207
Sometimes it happens. Some concepts are entirely different in two languages so what you're thinking of, even though it's not the words for what you're thinking of but the mental image of it, get you completely lost. It makes the word association you go through to remember a word you can't grasp much weirder. You also begin to realize how much context matters for some phrases. Saying "I'm hot" sometimes translates as "I'm horny" or things like "stop bothering me" is near "don't rape my virginity" and that's in more related languages. I have a hard time translating my native language to English and probably know more words in English, but because a lot of meaning is kind of shit people assume you mean because they hear it, a lot of it is like trying to have to explain JEJ MEMESTER MEMESTAR to your grandmother. Or why wew lad in this instance is not a nice thing.

>> No.11136621

>>11136207
I think it's probably just that you haven't practiced it enough. For example I can read German pretty well, but have a lot of trouble remembering grammatical rules; it's just because of the way I've been studying. The more you use it in an active/creative sense the easier it'll become.

Also, as a native English speaker, I recently learned that I don't actually know what half of the words I know mean. I started looking up dictionary definitions and almost none of them were congruent with what was in my head, so don't feel bad about forgetting words.

>> No.11136684

>>11136519
Eliot also wrote a bunch of poetry in french, though he started learning at ten

>> No.11136690

>>11136539
nabokov learned english from childhood, though, his nanny spoke english to him

>> No.11136701

>>11136207
Encoding (writing/speaking) is almost always harder than decoding (reading/listening). There's no substitute for exposure/immersion/practice, unfortunately.

>> No.11136707

Don't feel bad about it. I'm a native Spanish speaker, with a decent Portuguese level, and I couldn't even dream about knowing every single word in my own native language, not even close.

However, I do have a little adventage with portugue, having a vocabulary pretty similar to Spanish.

Anyway, the more you use a language, the easier it becomes to you when speaking/writing/reading/hearing it, so, the more you use another language's vocabullary they get stucked in your head

>> No.11136736

>>11136539
>>11136690
yeh Nabakov was a native English speaker 100% bilingual from birth

>> No.11136744

>>11136707
>stucked
stuck

>> No.11136793

>>11136744
>I couldn't even dream about knowing every single word in my own native language.

My point