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

* When first using a language it takes considerable time and skill to learn to use it.
* It literally takes years to being speaking and many more years to develop into a fully fluent human.
* Once you learn a language that way, your brain relies on pattern recognition.
* For example, when you read a sentence, you are reading each letter and putting them together one-by-one to figure out what the words are, you are seeing entire words as one symbol that represent a concept to your brain.
* The different in learning a second language is that you very aware of the process involved as you have already developed cognition.
* With the first language you are learning about the world and how it works right alongside learning the language.