Why is it that it takes no effort at all to think of and use your first language, but you have to constantly think about it and translate for your second?

Question

I’m taking a German class and despite knowing a solid bit of the language, I still have to constantly think to speak and understand it. Why is that?

In: Culture

Answer 1

I believe you think in the language in which you learn about things. For example I’ve learned most basic things in my native language, so those things I do tend to have to translate, but I’ve learned my job using mostly english resources, forums and such and when I’m working I think in english, there name of concepts I don’t even know in french and sometimes when I’m talking with co-workers I have issues just forming a sentence in a french way because I come up with the essence of the sentence in English.

Compared that to for example numbers, which are like the first things that I learned when I discovered english, well for some reason these still make very little sense to me. You can have someone with a moderately thick accent talk about a specific subject and I’ll follow along just fine, but have someone perfectly say $4.35 and I’ll have to almost count on my fingers for some reason…

Not that it answers the question though, but I always thought this was funny ^^