The Surprising Consequence of Living Abroad
The tough life of a bilingual person
If you’ve read me before, you know I started learning English when I was 10 (I also shared my tips to help me improve my language skills here).
I moved to Dublin in August 2015. I knew I had to move abroad to speak better English.
My English has definitely improved for the last 5 years but I noticed something as the months went by. The more I spoke English, the worse my French got. I also noticed that my Spanish, a language I studied for 7 years, has been vanishing into thin air.
The coup de grâce occurred a couple of weeks ago. I was speaking in French and my interlocutor told me that I sounded like someone who has been living abroad for a while. My French was grammatically incorrect and tinted with English.
I felt exposed like I feel exposed when someone assumes I’m French because of my accent.
This has made me think (in a mix of French of English): what happens in the brain when you speak different languages?
I wanted to share with you a few things that have been happening in my life since I moved abroad.
