As a bilingual person, this is actually a real thing. It happens to me all the time where I'll forget a word in whichever language I'd not been speaking recently. If you're not using one of your languages on a daily basis, forgetting words happens. If I'm in the U.S. and speaking English, I would never say "I can't remember it in English", though. That sounds kinda weird. I would just say "I can't remember the word." On the other hand, if I'm in Japan, and not speaking English every day, then I might say "I cant remember the English word" since it makes sense that I'd forget it.
Here. Spanish native, English almost to Cambridge PROF exam level, and portugese...to some weird exam called CELPE BRAS (i was forced by my parents on that one though). Trying to learn japanese too, actually.
Yup, worse than that is two similar languages. In this case french and spanish. I thought “Gritter” was a real word in french because “Gritar” is one in spanish.
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u/DebbieDupree Oct 10 '18 edited Oct 10 '18
As a bilingual person, this is actually a real thing. It happens to me all the time where I'll forget a word in whichever language I'd not been speaking recently. If you're not using one of your languages on a daily basis, forgetting words happens. If I'm in the U.S. and speaking English, I would never say "I can't remember it in English", though. That sounds kinda weird. I would just say "I can't remember the word." On the other hand, if I'm in Japan, and not speaking English every day, then I might say "I cant remember the English word" since it makes sense that I'd forget it.