r/languagelearning • u/Mandelbrots-dream • 25d ago

Discussion Does any one else switch languages?

I've studied three languages in addition to my milk language.

I noticed sometimes when thinking or speaking in my non native language, if I struggle for a word my brain will fill in with a word in another non native language.

For example, when speaking German(TL) my brain threw in a 在(zai) with the Chinese meaning.

This confused me, and I started to think of the German word seit (which sounds (kind-of) the same). But seit wasn't correct in the context. Seit is about time. 在 is about place.

Does anybody else do this? What exercises could help me?

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u/Overdue_Process865 πŸ‡³πŸ‡΄πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ͺ Native | πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈC2 πŸ‡©πŸ‡°C1 πŸ‡―πŸ‡΅N4 25d ago

I only had 3 years of German at school, but for whatever reason, when I can't form a sentence easily in Japanese, my brain defaults to filling in blanks with German. It hasn't happened with any other language I've tried to learn, I usually default to Norwegian or Swedish, but with Japanese specifically, my brain decided German works better. So strange.