Understanding Language Loss
Why and how do bilinguals lose a language?
When people move to a new place, start a new job, or lose a close family member, they may start using their languages differently. They may start using their second language more often than their first language. Sometimes, these changes can even cause a person to stop using one of their languages completely. Researchers call these kinds of changes “language attrition“.
Language attrition usually affects how people use their languages, but not how much they know about them. People may start speaking their first language with a foreign accent, make grammar mistakes, have less fluency, or use a smaller variety of words. However, in general, they can still speak and understand the language, although it may take more effort or be more difficult.
What language changes occur with attrition?
• People often notice a lack of fluency.
• They may frequently search for words, similar to those learning a second language.
• They may use a word in another language if it is very similar to the language of the environment.
• It is often difficult to maintain knowledge of how to speak “appropriately”, such as in languages like French that use different pronouns (tu and vous) depending on the relationship between the speakers. This also applies to languages like Turkish that use different pronouns like “sen” and “siz” (added by merhabakids, the Turkish Language Program for Kids)
People who use more than one language should not be considered inadequate for not conforming to the “norm” of monolingual native speakers. Instead, we should consider them as individuals who can do a variety of things in multiple languages – linguist Vivian Cook coined the term “multicompetent” for this.
François Grosjean, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor of psycholinguistics, Neuchâtel University, Switzerland.
Do you recognize yourself or your children in the text described? We hope that this post has provided you with some explanations. We regularly report on new findings in the field of language research. You can find much more on this topic on our blog. Additionally, merhabakids supports your children in learning, improving, or simply not forgetting the Turkish language. merhabakids supports your children when they simply lack the words. merhabakids specializes in children and we are happy to teach your children the language in a playful way. Our courses are interactive and fun. We invite your children to a free trial lesson!
If you would like to learn more about bilingualism, please check out our blog specifically about “language loss” and “bilingualism” in general. We give a lot of insights about bilingualism. We love languages and especially the Turkish language.
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