Will Learning A New Language Affect Your Native Language?

Learning a second language can actually have an effect on your native language. Mostly the experience will be beneficial for you, but there can be times when it is not.

I will go through the different ways your new language can affect your native one.

How A New Language Can Positively Affect Your Native Language  

I would argue that learning a second language only has beneficial effects for your native language and I will explain some of the ways it does this.

Grammar

Grammar is an important part of language learning and you are always going to automatically compare what you are learning to what you know, which means your native language.

You will of course have no interest in your own language, but you will find that you do end up still finding out a lot about it.

I certainly had my eyes opened when I first started learning French. Everything seemed so strange and to try and make some sense of it, I ended up looking at English grammar. If I could understand that, then I could work out why and how French was different.

I of course now have a greater understanding of English grammar from this experience.    

Language Exchange Partners Will Ask You Grammar Questions

Language exchanges are awesome and one of the reasons why is because your partner will ask you questions about your native language.

They are usually pretty simple questions, but are also the type of questions that make you think. Chances are you will have no idea why something happens and you will want to look it up to explain it to them.

It might be something like “Why do you use A sometimes and AN other times” As a native speaker, you might not realise why this happens, you just do it and do it correctly, maybe you can explain it, either way, it gets you thinking about your language and makes you verbalise why the grammar works in the way it does.

(You can read more about – Language Exchange Partners)

Language Learning Also Helps You Explore Your Own Culture

Language and culture are very closely linked. Usually if you learn about one, the other is going to be involved somehow.

You are going to end up learning about your own culture by looking at another.

This may just be through your own discovery, comparing the culture of the new language to your own, or it may be again because a language partner is asking you questions about your country and culture. 

I have definitely learnt more about my own culture since learning a new language than before.

How A New Language Can Negatively Affect Your Native Language 

While the positives always outweigh the negatives, they can’t be avoided and it is good to be aware of what can happen. Sometimes learning a new language can have a negative effect on your native language.    

First Language Attrition

Language attrition is a fancy way of saying that you forget a language. This isn’t really going to happen to most language learners.

It is really only going to be noticeable in someone who moves country and is totally submerged in the new language and has no exposure to their native language, which is extremely unlikely now in the age of the internet. You are always going to be able to check social media to talk to your friends and family in your native language.

This may have happened a 100 years ago if an English speaker moved to rural china for 35 years. If they never hear any English in that time, they would start to suffer language attrition. If they came back to an English speaking country, they would struggle.

It would probably be very hard to forget everything, but I imagine you would be very rusty and take a few days to speak English correctly again. You brain would sort of just be stuck in Chinese, since it’s been using it exclusively for so long.

You may suffer this if you move away and come back after a long time, but it will probably be a couple of words you feel rusty with, rather than the whole language.

This Can Be Seen In Children

You can see this happen in kids quite often though. If you see kids who have two languages when they are young, but then stop speaking one, by the time they are adults the 2^nd language is totally gone and they basically have to learn it all over again, like they are a new learner.

You Can Easily Get Muddled Between Languages

What you will commonly find when learning a new language is that you get muddled up between the two. You go to say something in your native language, but the 2^nd language comes out instead.

This can be annoying, but it’s actually a good sign. This shows your brain is picking up the new language and wants to use it more.

You will notice this more if you have been using the new language for a while. You brain almost gets confused about having to switch back to the native language. It’s like you turned that part off and it takes a minute for it to fire back up.

This will not last forever and soon your brain will be able to separate the languages much more efficiently. This is a short term negative, but really it’s a long term positive as you are making progress. 

Words Do Not Have The Same Meaning

You are also like to suffer the problem of trying to say something in your native language, but the second language coming out, if there is not actually a word for what you are trying to say in your native language. 

Not all words are equal in languages; some languages have words that others do not. If you are describing something in English, you may realise that there is no word for what you want to say and end up using a word from your 2^nd language. 

I’m not sure if this is a negative, but it is a strange phenomenon that you will only suffer after learning a second language and is more an issue for whoever you are speaking to, as they do not understand the concept of what you are trying to say. 

Conclusion

As you can see there are plenty of positives to learning a second language, it is only going to make you native language skills stronger.

The negatives are there, but they are either very rare or just temporary, I would certainly not let any of these put you off from learning a second language. It will really be the best decision you can ever make.  

(You can read more about – How Important Is It To Listen To Authentic Native Material In A Second Language?)