I have stayed home or spent time with Pecha for most of the summer so far, which means I have been speaking much much more Japanese than English. It has clearly damaged my English ability. Now there are more "Excuse me?" "What did you say?" "Huh?" in my conversation in English. It takes more energy and time for me to start writing my story because I need to switch from Japanese to English. I am seriously worried.
Not only that, my Japanese ability is also declining. Because most people I speak Japanese here understand English I started to mix English words or direct-translation of English words in Japanese. Once I was speaking to my mom on the phone and kept saying "airport...airport..." because I couldn't come up with the Japanese word right away. She repeated "What?"
It's not a good thing because it means I don't fully respect either of the two languages. When I speak Japanese I should really speak Japanese, and English, English.
I'm trying to do both E/J and J/E translation too, and it adds to the confusion. When I translate English into Japanese, I have to be really good at outputting in Japanese while fully understanding English, but then since I've been getting myself used to understand English as English, it becomes a tough task. Then when I finally feel comfortable with it, I switch to Japanese/English translation and there's a whole different problem lying in front of me; understanding Japanese and expressing it precisely in English. The "precisely" part is really hard for I'm used to speaking and writing in my own English, which is largely influenced by Japanese. To be a translator, I need to silence my English voice, pretty much.
So, yeah. I feel lost. I don't know which language I should focus on. I really want to be naturally fluent in English but I don't want to lose my Japanese. But if I try to keep my Japanese it'll be very easy to forget English since it's my second language (and there's a huge gap between my first and second languages). Do I feel this way because I started learning English pretty late? Is my brain just too rigid to switch back and forth between two languages? Or is this not uncommon among bilingual people?
Now I feel like starting some research on bilingualism, but I'm not sure in which language. Seriously.
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2 comments:
What you're going through is totally normal for 2nd language learners. A friend of mine told me that he felt he'd arrived when one dream would be in English and the next one in Spanish. But what do I know?
I think this illustrates pretty well what it feels like to be bilingual...and also what it's like to translate. It's both a blessing and a curse. But don't feel like you're disrespecting the two languages, it's just that they have lodged themselves in different parts of your brain, and you need them for different things.
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