Interference

As a child growing up in a Puerto Rican household, I quickly learned the nuances of speaking a different language. However, as I grew older and was required to pick a language to study in high school, I decided that taking Spanish would be too boring; I already knew Spanish! I went out on a limb and took up French. I found that I had an affinity for languages so picking up French wasn’t the most difficult task. As I continued with the language and began to speak French more and more, I found I had difficulty speaking Spanish. I noticed something was wrong when I would use improper nouns and adjectives that just didn’t exist in Spanish, but did in French. I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back, I know I was experiencing retroactive interference. My new knowledge of French was interfering with my prior knowledge of Spanish. Regardless of the fact that I knew the information was retained, I was unable to retrieve that information as readily as I could before I began learning French. Much to the chagrin of my Spanish-speaking relatives, my poor communication skills continued until I could barely speak any Spanish at all without becoming confused. I could only call the resulting vernacular a hybrid of French, Spanish, and English: Spranglish.

I’ve wondered what could have happened to my existing knowledge of the Spanish language. It couldn’t have just disappeared, could it? I believe what must have happened was that I was experiencing trace decay. This is a process in which memories are lost because I failed to use them. I was so busy forming new memories and rehearsing French, that my Spanish fell into disuse, and now I struggle with the language. Also, I’ve admittedly put in far less effort into re-learning Spanish than I have put into learning French. Now, however, as I no longer study French, I find that my speaking abilities there have decreased dramatically. Hopefully beginning to speak Spanish again will be easier now that I’ve forgotten more French. I understand now that I need to put in the effort to learn Spanish again so I can better communicate the language with my family as well as with my peers. Learning new languages is tough, hopefully re-learning a language isn’t as challenging!

3 thoughts on “Interference

  1. Chidi Chukwunenye

    Interesting post! Like you I also know another language. But I think that because my family’s language is so dissimilar to English that I have not really had an issue with interference. In terms of re-learning, I think that with practice it will all come back to you relatively easily. For example, I will commit the lyrics to a song to memory, and then I won’t hear or sing the song for months or even years. When I do go and listen to it again, it takes a a few listens to remember the melody and the lyrics, but it all comes back. So, I think if you were truly fluent in Spanish, which I think you were, everything you knew before will all come back.

  2. Michael Norton Wagenknecht

    Very interesting story… I grew up with a similar sort of occurrence. I learned German at a young age and continued to learn it at a young age until I stopped learning it at about grade 7. Meanwhile, English is my best language and I learned French through grade school as well… My German started to fade and I noticed when I tried to talk either French or German, I would speak both of them at the same time, but my French was significantly better. I’m not sure if it was interference, or if I had just not used the German for a while that it started to fade.
    Reason being my father knows 5 languages fluently and whenever he talks he never has any interference with it. Maybe you have to learn the language up to a certain age so that you don’t forget it? My french and English are good but I regret not putting in as much effort in German when I was younger, I did not think I would forget as much as I did, but glad its coming back now. Would be much easier if I continued it at a younger age.

  3. David Charles Mewkalo

    Although I can only speak English, I also believe I suffered from a form of interference when trying to learn a new language. As many students do, I took Spanish all throughout my high school years. In the beginning it was very easy as I learned how to say “hello,” “goodbye,” and “how are you?”
    But as I progressed my knowledge of English begin to interfere proactively with my new Spanish abilities. The well rooted structure of the English language did not directly correlate to Spanish grammar. I would find myself trying to speak Spanish using Spanish words but the English syntax. My English was making learning Spanish difficult. I eventually got used to the fact that English phrases cannot be translated word for word into Spanish, but the adjustment took some time.
    This can also connect with schemas for learning new things. I tried to fit Spanish into my English schema without my adjustment but to no avail. In order to learn Spanish I had to adjust my schema or create an entirely new one.

    David Mewkalo

Leave a Reply