Inability to Speak Native Tongue Fluently?

I dunno if anybody else has this problem but I tend to mix English in to my Chinese since I'm not as fluent at speaking Chinese as I am at English (I am Chinese, BTW, or Taiwanese if you want to be specific). I will, much of the time, stick some English words in the middle of my sentences simply because I don't know the Chinese equivalent. I tend to mix languages a lot actually while speaking, especially with my family and relatives who know both (or all 3 if you count Taiwanese). In the worst case scenario, I mix all 3 languages into 1 sentence. If I started a sentence in English, it would most likely finish in English unless the person I'm talking to doesn't understand English as well. If I begin in Chinese, about 70% of the time, it will be accompanied with some English words in the middle. Another 10% of the time, it is infused with Taiwanese, assuming the person I'm talking to understands that. More or less, this is due to my English Vocabulary being much larger than both of the others, despite myself being born in Taiwan.

Does anybody else have this problem or is it just me? I doubt very many people have this problem, but I'm curious.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I have the same problem, since I was born and raised in England and so I am far more fluent in English than my "native" language. If your parents themselves don't make a concerted effort to give you language lessons you're never going to pick up all the less common words. Ethnic minorities all do that here, even on their own TV and radio stations so it's not uncommon.

In a lot of cases, English words have been cut and pasted into foreign languages where those words describe things that weren't known to these people. For example, you can probably guess what the Japanese are asking for when they want "aisu krimu".

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Ulysses

Ethnic minorities all do that here, even on their own TV and radio stations so it's not uncommon.

They do? Not to hijack thread, but is it done to the detriment of an harmonic integration?

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Well, I suppose it's for assimilation into American Culture (Assuming we're talking about the US). But the thing is, While I can understand almost all Chinese, that doesn't mean I can easily respond effectively. That's just talking too. I'm almost illiterate in Chinese. (Can barely read and write Chinese).

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Your flag indicates you're American. Wouldn't that make English your native tongue? I'm sure that your heritage is important to you, and that the Chinese dialect you speak is an important part of that, but if you live in America then surely it's to be expected that you'd speak English better than any other language.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Nah, no, culture assimilation has nothing to do with it. My brother sometimes can't say what we means because he can't find the right words, even if knows them, he just can't seem to find it when trying to use in a sentence. Get my drift?

I can speak 3 languages, but I have no problem in communicating in any of them. Want my advice? Think before you speak. Think carefully.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yeah, I have that problem too. It's not often and it's not for every sentence, but there are times when I need to incorporate both languages. I can read and speak my ethnic language, but I can't write it.

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I have friends who do that, especially people who don't know as much French because they are native speaking English. French has a lot of small words that English doesn't have and sometimes they have to fit in the gaps.

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You're exactly like my girlfriend, who has to use some English words when talking in Chinese. Like you, she's Taiwanese.

Not that I'm any better -- I barely speak Chinese as it is, but I do understand a lot more than I can express.

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Did you grow up speaking chinese? or English? I think it's because you use one language more often than the other. Or you tend to think in one language, and when you try to converse in another language, you still have to translate your thought in that language.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I think we have similar problem. Most of third generations of chinese in Indonesia dont speak mandarin anymore. There used to be joke "chinese that dont speak mandarin probably come from Indonesia" due to our government discriminatory policy that forbade Chinese to speak, write, or read anything related to Chinese during the past.

Even though I born and live in Chinese family, we hardly speak mandarin with exception my father and his cousins who still speak chinese. My mother herself is able to speak dutch, it's pathetic that none of these languages inherit to me.

Even though recently I have begun to develop feeling of proud being Chinese and having plan to study my ancestor culture in future, I dont have any plan to study Mandarin for meantime because I heard it's very amazingly difficult.

I also dont live in community where there is a lot of chinese speakers around, so learning it now is totally obsolete. I guess Japanese and German are enough for me.

Anyway omnislash, I think you should try not forgetting your mandarin by keep using it everyday instead of english, because you have chance to be bilingual somehow =P.

Just like you, I have friend that has fluency over british english since she was raised in England during her junior high school. Now she is totally clueless when she must write in Indonesia instead of English.

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Originally Posted by Soluzar

Your flag indicates you're American. Wouldn't that make English your native tongue?

Not necessarily. I was born and raise in Taiwan, but become naturalized citizen after living in the United States for 8 years. So what should I indicated in the country flag? I am 22 this year, so I must have been in the States since I was 14. Its interesting that now I could switch between languages even in thoughts, but recently have been more and more English rather then Chinese. People can tell that I am from the states when I went back because my Chinese accent is off. ;_;

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I have an American flag when I was born in Korea (but I'm an American citizen from birth).

I use to be extremely fluent in Korean along with English, but because my family moved to America, both my parents felt it'd be better if I stuck with English since it would be the language I would be speaking most often. My Mom started to learn English, so rather than talk to me in Korean, she'd talk to me in English. After years of that, well, no more Korean (well, little to none).


Though, I do see a lot of individuals who moved to America from another country speaking their native language; however, after taking American classes and being fluent in English they start thinking in English. Although they speak in their native language to their parents, they tend to mix in English words.

How ya doing, buddy?

Yeah see, I don't have an accent anywhere. I can speak both Chinese and English and have no noticable accent in either one. Meaning that I don't sound like an American attempting to speak Chinese, nor do I sound like a Chinese person trying to speak English.

I was born in Taiwan and raised somewhat in both. I immigrated here permanently about the age of 6 and started the public school system in the US, so I gradually picked up English as I went along. While doing this, my parents and my home life was generally dominated by Chinese (and in the case of my grandparents, I had to use Taiwanese), so I ended up understanding both and able to speak both because of it. However, because my life with Chinese was rather restricted, I naturally learned much more English than Chinese, thus a much larger vocabulary.

Now, While I can speak both, my Chinese Vocabulary is much more restricted and the sentences I form are nowhere near as complex as my English ones. So it's not really that I can't speak Chinese as well, it's that I don't have the extensive vocabulary that I have for English for Chinese. I can fit the grammar for Chinese pretty well (except for some minor nuances of the language) and I can make some decent sentence structures, but I usually find myself not knowing the word halfway through saying what I want to say because I tend to think in both languages simultaneously.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I can't speak Tagalog (Philippines) or Bisaya (a dialect, from my Dad's side), though I can understand some words and phrases, and with the way Filipinos around here mix english and tagalog words in the same sentences, it's not hard for me to figure out what words I don't know mean. At least I know all the foods! Oh, and I was born and raised in America.

I had intended to takes classes during school, but my engineering course schedules never fit. :/

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Originally Posted by Magi

Not necessarily. I was born and raise in Taiwan, but become naturalized citizen after living in the United States for 8 years. So what should I indicated in the country flag? I am 22 this year, so I must have been in the States since I was 14.

I see. So English is probably your most frequently used language, which is causing the decline in your Chinese. I assumed you were born in America to Taiwanese parents.

Excuse me for that, I didn't mean any offense.

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Unfortunately, as the schools I've attended in America don't have a secondary language as a requirement, my native language is the only language I know fluently. I suppose in regards to your initial question, this is a good thing because I don't mix it up with anything. However, every time I get acquainted with a newer language, I often want to jump straight to the advanced vocabulary, which makes the language somewhat difficult to learn.

I can't imagine how ackward it would feel to be speaking in one language and switch to another language in mid-sentence. However, just recently I was talking to a client at my workplace and she was describing to me how she recently went to the doctor and resorted to speaking in her native tongue just because that's her most comfortable language.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Magi

People can tell that I am from the states when I went back because my Chinese accent is off. ;_;

That happens to me too, but when I'm speaking English. I speak with a weird hybrid accent, so when I go back to Malaysia, my old school mates tell me I sound like an American, but to Americans, I still sound Malaysian.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I tend up to mix up Korean with English... a lot.

Yep, I have same problem, when I speak Korean in Korea, they say I have this weird western accent, while here some people say I still have some Korean accent.

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I don't have an accent, but until I was about three years old, I spoke primarily a different language. Now I can understand that language, but I'm not as good at speaking. So I guess that would "inability to speak native lounge"

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I'm Japanese (I was born in the US though), yet I can barely write or speak the language. I can kind of understand it, mostly when my parents or a relative speaks to me in Japanese. Anyone else who talks to me in Japanese, I can only pick up one or two words. Whenever I speak Japanese, it always ends up sounding too American.

Ok, this is gonna sound really bad, but I actually when to this Japanese school on saturdays a long time ago (for about 10 years IIRC), and by the time I quit going there, I still couldn't get any of it. My sisters were able to successfully learn the language, but I can't. Hiragana I can read and write fairly decently, Katakana I can read ok but barely manage to write, kanjis are a whole different story. I can barely write my own name's kanjis.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Whenever I speak with family members in my home country, I have a tendency to mix English with the Filipino language whenever I'm not sure what the translation is. I sometimes feel out of place when I do so, but a few of my cousins told me that they thought it was fine. Otherwise, I can fully understand the language, so it's not uncommon to see me having a conversation that involves a family member speaking to me in Tagalog and me responding back in English. We're able to understand each other just fine.

For the older relatives, I try to eliminate English as much as possible since not all of them can understand it.

How ya doing, buddy?

Well, most kids today mix tagalog with english, which sounds annoying. It's like singlish. "You know kasi eh, I'm so gutom na, eat naman tayo doon!" And with the HUEG influence of American pop culture in here, it's no wonder people are starting to have difficulty in speaking tagalog. I don't get it why they speak english when they can talk in tagalog or in dialect(bisaya).

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Originally Posted by Bolide

I can't imagine how ackward it would feel to be speaking in one language and switch to another language in mid-sentence.

I do it almost all the time now....Suppose I'm used to it. And people I talk to in Chinese are also used to it then, because they haven't said anything or said "What?" after I talk.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by vemp

Well, most kids today mix tagalog with english, which sounds annoying. It's like singlish. "You know kasi eh, I'm so gutom na, eat naman tayo doon!" And with the HUEG influence of American pop culture in here, it's no wonder people are starting to have difficulty in speaking tagalog. I don't get it why they speak english when they can talk in tagalog or in dialect(bisaya).

Argh, those people test my patience out . I really hate it when these people speaks any of (insert language here)glish. A lot of teenagers here think "it's damn cool to show off my fluent english by speaking the mixture of english and my own language". Youngster these day think that speaking Indonenglish is much cooler than speaking our own native language. What a shame.

Jam it back in, in the dark.