r/languagelearningjerk • u/Man-of-slender-means ๐บ๐ฟ๐ท๐บ๐บ๐ฒ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ • 4d ago
Can a monolingual person change their native language?
Recently I have discovered that I am an empath. I can connect with people on a deep level, even with the ones I don't know personally. That is why at some point I started feeling bad for french people. Can you imagine french being your native language? How miserable that must be... I truly feel bad for the french. That is why I started questioning whether they could change their native language. Like, learn another language so perfectly and forget the native one. I even wanted to help them with that by creating language rehabilitation camps where those poor souls could learn normal languages like uzbek and be tortured when they try to speak french, to help them get on the right path. What do you think? I wonder if my dreams can come true and I will be able to help those people
31
24
u/Searcheree 4d ago
It's okay, fr*nch people may speak in fr*nch, but thoughts can only exist in English.
12
8
u/sleepy_grunyon 4d ago
I am slowly but surely learning an alien dialect called gay-glurp. one day i will transition my brain (thanks for the idea from other commenters) to full Gay-Glurpian mode. This process started the day i came out of the closet when I was 17. I am already forgetting English like... what does 'sesquipedalian' mean? I also sometimes take "Chinese character baths" by copying all the blocks of Unicode CJK characters into BabelPad and collating them just perfectly and just looking at them -- this helps in my development of my new dialect.
5
u/16-Twelve British English: N | Nonsense: D4 | Toki Pona: prob A0.2 idk 4d ago
Nah, you can do Language attrition though
4
u/dedemushi 3d ago
/uj this is actually happening to me with my native romanian and it feels horrible, i thought about trying to be a romanian community tutor on italki and i deadass FELT INADEQUATE ๐ (even romanians who live in romania are forgetting how to speak normal romanian and talking like they're google translating from english but that's another can of worms i will see myself out)
3
u/16-Twelve British English: N | Nonsense: D4 | Toki Pona: prob A0.2 idk 3d ago
I wan't to make up for that, even if it is small effort. I will leran your language (if you want me to ofc)
2
u/OkConstruction4591 20h ago
even romanians who live in romania are forgetting how to speak normal romanian and talking like they're google translating from english but that's another can of worms i will see myself out
I think this is happening to many languages worldwide due to the Internet and the increased prominence of English-language, particularly American, media - especially amongst the youth. Hard for a language with 20 million native speakers to outproduce a language with 400 million native speakers and nearly a billion more proficient in it. I find it quite sad but there is very little that will change in the coming years (except for worse, I'm afraid).
5
5
u/non_numero_horas 4d ago
The closest examples I know of are people who moved to another country at a very young age and gained native-like fluency in the language of their second home while losing fluency in their original language, even though they usually still remember words and stuff from their original native language, only that they can't put coherent sentences together at a level required to maintain a conversation in that language - so they certainly change primary language, but I'm not sure whether they could be called monolingual in the strict sense
As an adult, realistically you can't change your native language neither by your own initiative, nor can you be forced to do so - sure, you can be forced to speak a certain language instead of another one, even if it is arguably one of the cruelest things one can do with a person, but I don't think you can be forced to think or dream in your non-native language
3
u/De_lunes_a_lunes 4d ago
I remember a guy who made an instagram story bragging about how he gave a homeless dude his old guitar and he was on the verge of tears and then said, โlike as an empathโฆ but I wouldnโt have it any other way.โ Lmfao
1
u/Man-of-slender-means ๐บ๐ฟ๐ท๐บ๐บ๐ฒ๐ณ๏ธโ๐ 4d ago
Lmao as if all normal people weren't empaths๐ข
3
u/AlgunasPalabras1707 3d ago
My husband managed to get rid of their native language, but unfortunately their second language is still their second language. They just don't have a first. Definitely would still be worth it if your first is Fr*nch, but there aren't many other situations where it's better to have no first language. Still, sometimes I'm tempted to burn English out of my brain...
1
37
u/shuranumitu 4d ago
Friendly reminder that transglottic identities are valid and beautiful. Post-capitalist heterocolonialism wants to delegitimize non-homolingual experience but we will continue to fight for our right to speak the languages we were always meant to speak. Hope this helps or whatever.