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.

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).

There's nowhere I can't reach.

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.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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.

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

Yeah, speaking is actually my stronger point of Chinese/Taiwanese than everything else. Like, I can't read Chinese worth shit. Maybe the occasional words and simple ones to get me by, but I definitely can't read a chinese newspaper. My writing of chinese is possibly even worse. I would probably write at like a 2nd grade level, if even that. But as far as speaking goes, I'm not that bad, but it does make some people feel strange if I mix and match words of different languages.

I was speaking idiomatically.