a great turn of phrase with a freshly minted verb

[firecat]

From peterpayne, the blog of an American living in Japan. He runs the jlist.com web site for Americans who wanna buy Japanese toys, DVDs, porn and stuff.

http://www.peterpayne.net/2005/10/on-stereotypes-how-and-why-words-jump.html

(The first windowful of the entry is OK but if you scroll down it's probably NWS because it includes ads for some of their naughty stuff.)

Anyway, he writes about living in Japan for so long that he has forgotten some English words (for example, "gynecologist"):

It's a strange feeling, not being able to recall a word you know you should know -- you stand there with a dumb look on your face while your brain googles your hippocampus, trying to find the term.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

When I started learning languages I built storage bins in my head. I had English and everything-else, and the latter contained French. When I started on German I had to build a bin for French, and until I built it I confused words in French and German. Then I had English, French, and Other, until I started on Russian...

I always confuse the latest two.

I wonder: if I get good enough, will I start confusing languages that are actually related somehow? :-)

[firecat]

I guess it's been long enough since I learned any new languages that I'm not having this problem with Japanese.

[usqueba.livejournal.com]

I can't build bins. Language is stored all over the place, in little clumps, throughout my brain ;). Sometimes my brain kicks out the right word, wrong language... sometimes it produces the right language ::sigh::

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I was working English then German then Icelandic. I have a very very tiny smattering of French and that only recently from travelling.

I think this was my nature (not compartmentalizing, which I do not endorse for others) and my first German teacher in middle school. She had seventeen languages, when I knew her, and passed onto me the picture more of relationships than bins.

Icelandic is quite archaic which is where I think there was the disjoint. I felt as if you almost had to think differently to speak it, and my brain couldn't quite make that leap. So there was the quick step, sideways so to speak, to German, and then back.