Korean Job Discussion Forums

[pangaea]

I have a question for those of you who may studied linguistics or language acquisition in more depth than I have.

The two languages, besides English, that I have had the most exposure to are Spanish and Korean. I studied Spanish for 5 years in middle/high school and have picked up some Korean here. Though I am by no means fluent in Spanish, I have retained some vocabulary and knowledge of basic sentence structure. I know more Spanish than Korean.

I have noticed that when I am trying to think of how to say something in Korean, if I don't know a word I need in Korean, my brain automatically throws in the Spanish word for it. I don't even think about it. It's like my mind goes through the dictionary in my head and pulls out an option by process of elimination. (I don't want the English word, I don't know the Korean word, it must be this.) For example, one day I was trying to think of how to say, "The food is delicious." I don't know the Korean word for "food" so the phrase that popped into my head was "Comida mashisoyo." (I know "mashisoyo" will do. That's not what I'm asking here.) Of course, I immediately recognized that was wrong.

My question is, is this a phenomenon that has been studied by linguists? Is this just natural confusion when dealing with a 2nd and 3rd language?

[NYC_Gal]

I often end up thinking in Espangul as well. Spanish is my second language (9 years of study) and I do the same thing!

[djsmnc]

Why not apply for an advanced linguistics degree and research that? Not trying to sound rude, but I wonder if anyone has actually researched that phenomenon yet?

[kbit]

thats funny. i actually do the same thing, substituting spanish for korean, but just jokingly and pretty consciously. my korean has surpassed my public school spanish education acquired espanol already.

[ED209]

I guess you are storing all your second languages in the same box. You kinda are on the right route to answer this puzzle though. Your brain acts differently when coping with a second language(Spanish and Korean). You have different coping strategies and mechanisms for producing your second language and these can get mixed up. Look into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlanguage as a start.

[CSlinguist]

Wow I didn't know there were so many English/ Spanish/ Korean trilinguals out there. I'm actually half Spanish/ half Black and I grew up unilingual in English but throughout my pre-teens/teens I picked up more Spanish and speak it moderately well now. However, I started learning Korean a couple yrs ago and now my Korean is alot better than my Spanish and I actually have the opposite problem as you pangaea. I'm so used to translating English to Korean and vice versa that whenever I try to find the word for something in Spanish my mind automatically goes to the Korean word. It's actually pretty annoying because sometimes if I'm having a convo in Spanish I have to translate in my head from English to Korean to Spanish.

I actually have a BA in Linguistics and Psych but I don't remember studying anything about this phenomena. I just know that there are several theories about whether or not bilinguals/ multilinguals have one lexicon (i.e one storage system for all the vocab in all the languages they know) or a separate lexicon for each language. Perhaps if we knew the answer to that question it would shed light on this phenomena.

It's all very interesting.. (at least to me, I'm a linguistics dweeb I guess )

[isisaredead]

[LL Moonmanhead]

judging by your start date you have been in korea for 2.5 years or so, but you don't know what the korean for food is?

Well done

[isisaredead]

[PCRamplified]

ED209 got it. I am fluent in Spanish, but it a second language for me as well. I noticed this same thing when I was studying Chinese, so I asked a linguistics professor about it. She basically said the first and second languages are processed in different parts of the brain, so if you are actively using the "second language" part of your brain, you will default to something stored there before you hop back to the "native language" part. I suppose this would also explain how people who have strokes or brain trauma can lose the ability to speak a native language and not a second language or vice versa, but mostly I just think it's pretty cool.

[peppermint]

I took eight 8 years of French and two of German before moving to Korea- this isn't limited to a Spanish speaking phenomenon.

[Chet Wautlands]

What will really surprise you is if you study Korean for a long time, and then suddenly have to speak Spanish, your Korean will start interfering.

The interference generally happens when grammar allows it to. So, because nouns work roughly the same way in Spanish and Korean, you can mix them up. You'll be less likely to mix up verbs.

[CSlinguist]

[SeoulNate]

From what i remember in linguistics, and yes, we did actually talk about this topic, is that the average person can really only learn 2 languages completely. There are exceptions to the rule and some people are geniuses when it comes to language, but 2 is typical.

Anyway, when it comes to language learning, when you start learning a second language your brain makes 'space' for the new material. However, when you start learning a third language, your brain uses the same space and kind of writes over itself, like a hard drive. That is why you are having trouble with it. I find myself having the same problem with Korean writing over my French.

[dumpring]

Nah I have the same problem. When I lived in Guangzhou I kept using Japanese instead of Canto, and now here I keep using Canto and Jap instead of Korean. Nightmare!