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çava  ·  3204 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Does your head use multiple languages?

I was raised semi-bilingual. English is my strength and a totally obscure language was my second. For the first 16 years of my life I didn't realise my 2nd language was different from English. I lived in New Zealand and utilising Maori words in an English world was passable. I now dream and think in French as a consequence of 1 and half years spent in France. I find all my dreams are in French and all my thoughts before sleeping are in French. Honestly, I find it quite unsettling. I think it is because I learnt French later on in life and the intrusiveness of the 'other' language is more apparent to me. My English has also suffered suffered since I became proficient in French. So currently I have three languages, one (Maori) which I must translate to English then to French, and English which is not as abstract to translate into French. My biggest struggle is translating concepts, that don't exist in one culture, to another.