My social life is facebook-linkedin-dvds and they are all in English. You could think this is a good thing, indeed, it is not. I am gettin' confused a lot and I haven't yet left Italy for longer than a month in my whole life. I wonder what it feels like for expats that are full time exposed to a foreign language!
During the day I find myself thinking in Italian ...but then I formulate the phrase in English...but my interlocutor is Italian, so I have to translate it! And it is not easy to do it fast and to choose the right words, so I just stick with the same 50 Italians words and keep going with them.
Can it really be so hard? Do some people have a gift for language switching like someone has for music?
It just takes a little bit of immersion Paola. You've got the grammar and the vocabulary so it will come quickly once you spend some time where you can only use English. After a short while you won't have to translate in your head anymore. After a while, it can even get reversed. Sometimes now, when I'm speaking English, I can only think of the word in Italian!
RispondiEliminaYeah, some do have a remarkable gift for languages. Given my own desire to learn all the Romance languages, I'll wager that sooner or later I'll confuse one for the other. My girlfriend, who is Portuguese, and has been learning Dutch, often confuses German words for Dutch words.
RispondiEliminaYes, it will become natural - then one day you will suddenly start to dream in another language: magic!
RispondiElimina