U.S. Army Sgt. John Hartley Robertson even has a Vietnamese wife and can no longer speak English.
Quoting: UTownTrash Would someone actually forget how to speak their first language? It seems like that would stick with you no matter what.
My ex-wife from east europe started commenting about how she was losing her native language after about 3 years in the US with total immersion in english.
My first 3 years in Mexico I was totally immersed in spanish and did not meet any english speaking person in that time, and by that time was thoroughly thinking, dreaming, etc. in spanish.
Then I started to meet up with a few english speaking people at times, and it was rather difficult for me to switch back to english. Blogging in english has helped but perhaps writing uses a different part of the brain than speaking english.
If I'm not blogging, I still am thinking naturally in spanish, although english is supposedly my first and only language for 40 years.
It is a little difficult for me now to have to speak in english, although I can, but that requires thinking in english first to be really fluent, and since I am so used to thinking in spanish, I find myself when speaking english to first think the thought in spanish and then having to translate, which is not nearly as easy as speaking the language where your thoughts arise from.
If you don't use your native language, you lose it after a number of years.
