First Language - Second Language = Native Language - Foreign Language?

Ok, here I am again, back in Germany. I tell you this: My brain still "lives" in English. I am back in my native country, surrounded by my native language, and yet, it feels weird. On the plane back, I only talked English to the staff and the other passangers because it felt more natural. I told my brain, "You better get used to German again once we've landed."

Well, I am able to talk in German, and I have been writing and chatting in German regularly with friends and family while I was in the States, but man, it's an act of concentration to not slip into English in an oral conversation!

Actually, when I was on the phone with my sister yesterday, I read a comment on Facebook (in English) and continued talking to her in English as a result...until I noticed it some sentences later!

My first language at the moment is clearly English. I have no problem with it (maybe some people around me might because they don't understand me if I speak English, but again, I don't). I love the English language and have, in fact, always liked it more than my native language, from the moment I first came into contact with it back in elementary school. Indeed, I feel as if I'm visiting a foreign country right now. Strangely out of place...not belonging here. It's more than just my first language that has changed, I have changed.

I would love to hear from other people who have spent some time in a foreign country if they have had the same problems concerning their spoken language once they came back. I don't remember having problems with it when I returned from Spain after a four week internship there, but then, it's quite some years ago and maybe I have just forgotten about it.

So, what's your experience with it?

First Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning

Do you wonder why I use the word "acquisition" with the first language and the word "learning" with a second language? Well, it's simple, actually. See, babies and children learn their first language(s) without effort. They seem to absorb the vocabulary, grammer rules, pronunciation and sentence structures like a sponge. They can even distinguish between several languages if the speakers and/or the situations are clearly separated. That way, babies can learn more than one first language. They become bilingual or even multilingual. I have heard of children who grew up with four different languages and ended up understanding and speaking all four of them like a native language.

First language acquisition is passive.

When children start a new language at the age of three or older, on the other hand, their natural ability to absorb the new language without effort is already gone. From that point on, we need to study hard in order to learn a new language. We need to learn all the new words, the grammar rules and pronunciation. Some sounds may be so difficult to pronounce that we never quite manage to reproduce them. Only few people manage to acquire true fluency in a second language, and even fewer manage this without spending years in a country where they speak that language every day.

Second language learning is active.

How can this great difference be explained? The difference is found within our brains. When children are born, they are able to distinguish between every phoneme which is used in any language. However, as we grow older, our brain loses the ability to hear all the different phonemes; it concentrates on the phonems it needs for its first language(s). That is the reason, for example, why many Asian people can't distinguish between the "r" and "l" sounds. These sounds don't have any difference in meaning and are therefore mingled together by their brains. They don't need to distinguish between them.