5 Signs You’re Becoming Fluent in a Second Language and Forgetting Your Mother Tongue
How I forgot the Japanese language while living in Japan
A few months ago, I ordered business cards online. Two days later, I was struck by the sudden realization—I forgot to include the kanji characters of my name on my business cards!!!
It was too late to change my purchase, and later I received my cards without Japanese kanji, which must be my identity now. They were perfect for handing out to English speakers. But the problem is, I live in Japan!
Although I meet people from all over the world in this metropolitan city of Tokyo, it will be a long time before I run out of business cards at this rate.
However, this sort of incident is not uncommon—Alvin T., a fellow Japonica editor, has even outlined his experience in this article about the signs he’d discovered after being too immersed in his second language. So, here is my watermark for language immersion to pinpoint some signs of my own.
Signal 1: You Start Growing Another Character in a Second Language
For starters, what is a major signal that bilingual and multilingual people experience? Let’s start with bilingual personalities.
