Hi! I just saw a post in [r/ENGLISH](r/ENGLISH) in which the poster was very worried about their adult son, who frequently used nonstandard constructions despite being a native speaker (like saying “discomfortable” instead of “uncomfortable”) and everybody was commenting how that’s very concerning and to have him tested for a learning disability.
… which made me a bit paranoid because the same exact thing happens to me when I speak German.
I just turned 24 and was born and raised in Germany and in German-speaking contexts. The secondary school I went to was fully English-speaking and the degree I’m doing now is partially taught in English with temporary internships abroad, so I do spend around 50% of the time hearing/speaking/engaging with the world in English rather than German and have done so ever since I was 10. But though all this time I’ve still always communicated with my friends and family in German (and the rest of the world obviously since I live in Germany).
It happens quite a lot that I’ll accidentally misuse idioms in German (like “mit der Kirche ins Dorf fallen” instead of “mit der Tür ins Haus” or “die Kirche im Dorf lassen”, or the other day I said “nicht mein Zirkus, nicht meine Flöhe” since I thought that’s the German version of “not my circus not my monkeys” oops). I also stumble over my words sometimes in sentences, or use the wrong article/gender for nouns. Obviously I know the correct gender, it’s just a matter of speaking faster than I can think and then I’m too far into the sentence to correct myself etc. When I listen to recordings of myself speaking German, I get a bit worried sometimes about how awkward and stop-and-go my sentences and constructions are.
But this is only a problem in spoken language. I’ve always done relatively well academically without too much effort, my grammar in written German is obviously that of a native speaker, and I’ve written plenty of term papers I got As on. One time a professor commented on a paper I’d submitted (in German) asking what my native language was (💀) but he still gave me full marks so it can’t have been THAT bad?
Soooo do I need to be worried about cognitive issues around “forgetting” my native language? Am I just a bit stupid or is this normal? At this point it feels like I don’t speak any of my languages fluently anymore
Edit: “too” but I can’t edit the title fml. Talk about not speaking any language fluently lol (I promise it was a typo)
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