Why We Forget Our Own Language When We Live Abroad: What Happens to the Multilingual Mind

You are having a conversation in your mother tongue when suddenly something unexpected happens.

A simple word disappears.

You know exactly what you want to say. You can picture the object or understand the concept perfectly, but the word itself refuses to appear.

Then, almost immediately, it comes to you — in another language.

Perhaps you have lived in Spain for several years and the Spanish word arrives before the Greek, English or Portuguese one. Perhaps you work mainly in English and suddenly realise that you know the professional terminology perfectly in English but have difficulty explaining the same idea in your native language.

The experience can be surprisingly unsettling.

How can we forget words in the language we have spoken since childhood?

Are we actually losing our mother tongue?

Or is something more complex happening inside the multilingual mind?

The answer lies in the way our languages interact, compete and adapt to the lives we are currently living.

What Is Language Attrition?

Linguists use the term language attrition to describe changes in a language when a person uses it less frequently or is immersed for a long period in another linguistic environment.

The word attrition may sound dramatic. It can create the impression that a language is gradually being erased from the brain.

In reality, the process is usually much more subtle.

A person may hesitate before remembering a familiar word. Certain expressions may no longer come as automatically as they once did. Another language may influence sentence structure or vocabulary choices.

This does not necessarily mean that the original knowledge has disappeared.

Often, the difficulty involves retrieval.

The word is still part of our linguistic knowledge, but accessing it may take slightly longer.

Imagine a path through a forest.

A path that is walked every day remains clear and easy to follow. A path that is rarely used gradually becomes less visible.

Something similar can happen with language.

The more frequently we retrieve certain words and structures, the more accessible they become.

Why Does the Other Language Come First?

When we learn another language, the new language does not simply occupy an isolated area of the mind.

Our languages interact.

For multilingual speakers, several possible words may become activated when they want to express an idea. The brain must select the word appropriate for the language currently being used while controlling competing alternatives.

Frequency matters enormously.

Imagine that someone grows up speaking Greek but later moves to Spain.

Every morning, they speak Spanish at the bakery.

They communicate with neighbours in Spanish.

They make appointments in Spanish.

They deal with banks, contracts, transport and bureaucracy in Spanish.

They hear Spanish on the street and see it on signs, menus and advertisements.

Meanwhile, Greek may be used mainly during telephone conversations with family or during visits home.

After several years, certain Spanish words have been retrieved hundreds or thousands of times in particular situations.

So when the person needs one of those concepts, Spanish may simply arrive first.

It is not necessarily because the Spanish word is known “better.”

It may be because that is the road the brain has travelled most recently and most frequently.

Do Our Languages Compete With Each Other?

One of the fascinating characteristics of multilingualism is that our languages are not always completely switched off when we are using another one.

They can remain active in the background.

This means that speaking one language involves not only activating the language we need but also managing interference from languages we do not currently need.

This can explain some familiar multilingual moments.

You begin a sentence in one language and a word from another appears.

You know that the word is wrong for the conversation, but it feels strangely more accessible.

Or you produce a sentence that is grammatically possible but sounds slightly unusual because its structure has been influenced by another language.

The multilingual brain is therefore not simply storing several independent dictionaries.

It is continuously managing a complex linguistic system in which languages can cooperate and compete.

What Is Code-Switching?

Sometimes multilingual speakers do not resist this interaction at all.

They simply switch languages.

This phenomenon is commonly known as code-switching.

A conversation might sound like:

“I'll call you después.”

“Tenemos que finish this today.”

“Θα πάω mañana porque hoy no puedo.”

To someone who speaks only one of the languages, this may appear chaotic.

But between people who share the same languages, it can be completely natural.

Code-switching does not automatically indicate poor language ability.

Sometimes the speaker chooses another language because a particular expression is shorter or more precise. Sometimes a word carries a cultural meaning that is difficult to reproduce in another language. Sometimes the switch expresses humour, intimacy or membership of a particular social group.

And sometimes there is no conscious decision at all.

The word that reaches the mind first simply becomes the word that is spoken.

Why Certain Parts of Our Lives Begin to “Belong” to One Language

Perhaps one of the most interesting consequences of living abroad is that languages can become connected to particular areas of our lives.

Think about someone who moves to another country as an adult.

Their childhood happened in one language.

Their university education may have happened in another.

Their professional career may now exist mainly in English.

Their relationship may function in Spanish.

Their conversations with parents may still happen almost entirely in their mother tongue.

This creates what we might call different linguistic worlds within the same person.

Consider something as ordinary as renting an apartment abroad.

You learn words connected to deposits, contracts, utilities, registration and repairs in the language of the country where you live.

Later, someone from your home country asks you to explain the process.

Suddenly, you struggle.

You understand everything perfectly.

But you learned that experience through another language.

The vocabulary, documents, conversations and problems were encoded in that linguistic environment.

You are not simply translating words.

You are translating an experience that originally happened through another language.

Can Living Abroad Change Your Native Language?

To some extent, yes.

Languages influence one another.

A person who has spent many years surrounded by another language may occasionally borrow its sentence structures or expressions when speaking their mother tongue.

They might translate an expression too literally.

They might choose an unusual preposition.

They may hesitate over a grammatical structure that once felt completely automatic.

Even rhythm, intonation or pronunciation can sometimes be influenced by prolonged exposure to another language.

This can feel strange because we tend to think of our mother tongue as permanent.

We expect foreign languages to change as we learn them, but we rarely expect our first language to change too.

Yet language is not a museum object preserved exactly as it was during childhood.

It is a living system.

And living systems respond to their environments.

Can You Actually Forget Your Mother Tongue?

This depends on many factors, including age, frequency of use, linguistic environment and the amount of contact someone continues to have with their first language.

But occasional difficulty remembering words is very different from completely losing a language.

For many adults living abroad, what feels like “forgetting” may actually be temporary difficulty accessing information that is still present.

This distinction matters.

Consider the familiar experience of knowing that you know someone's name but being unable to remember it.

The name has not necessarily disappeared from your memory.

You simply cannot retrieve it at that particular moment.

Then, perhaps ten minutes later, it suddenly appears.

Language can behave similarly.

A native word may temporarily become less accessible because another linguistic pathway is currently stronger.

What Happens When We Go Back Home?

Something equally interesting can happen when multilingual people return to their home country.

Words begin to return.

Expressions that had seemed distant suddenly feel automatic again.

The rhythm of conversation changes.

Humour becomes easier.

Old phrases appear without conscious effort.

Sometimes this happens remarkably quickly.

Why?

Because the linguistic environment has changed again.

The language that had been less frequently activated is suddenly everywhere.

You hear it at breakfast.

You speak it in shops.

You listen to conversations around you.

You see it written on signs.

You hear expressions associated with childhood, family and familiar places.

The old pathways become busy again.

What appeared to have been lost may simply have been less accessible.

The Emotional Geography of Language

Not all words have the same emotional weight.

A mother tongue is often connected to our earliest experiences: the voices of our parents, childhood friendships, school, arguments, affection, jokes, songs and family traditions.

A language learned later may carry completely different associations.

It may represent independence.

Work.

Love.

Travel.

A new country.

A new stage of life.

This means that multilingual people do not necessarily experience all their languages in the same emotional way.

A sentence may feel intimate in one language and strangely distant in another.

An insult may feel stronger in the language of childhood.

A declaration of love may feel easier — or sometimes more difficult — in a language learned later.

The dictionary may tell us that two words are equivalent.

Our memories may disagree.

Do We Become Different People in Different Languages?

Many multilingual speakers describe feeling slightly different depending on the language they are speaking.

This does not mean that they literally develop different personalities.

Context plays an important role.

We may speak one language primarily with family and another primarily at work. Naturally, different aspects of our personality appear in those environments.

But language itself can also influence how we express ourselves.

Languages offer different ways of showing politeness, emotion, certainty, distance, humour and affection.

A person may feel more direct in one language and more expressive in another.

They may find it easier to discuss emotions in a language learned later because those words carry less emotional history.

Or the opposite may happen: only the mother tongue feels capable of expressing something deeply personal.

The person remains the same.

But each language provides a slightly different instrument through which that person can speak.

Is Code-Switching a Problem?

For language learners, mixing languages is often treated as something that must be eliminated.

In a classroom, there are good reasons to encourage learners to remain in the language they are practising. Searching for a missing word helps strengthen retrieval and expand active vocabulary.

But outside the classroom, multilingual communication has a different purpose.

Its goal is often simply to communicate.

If two multilingual friends naturally move between Spanish and English, their conversation is not necessarily defective.

It reflects their shared linguistic reality.

The ability to move flexibly between languages can itself be evidence of sophisticated linguistic knowledge.

The important question is not always:

“Did I keep the languages perfectly separate?”

Sometimes the more interesting question is:

“Why did my mind choose that language at that particular moment?”

The Difference Between Knowing a Word and Accessing It

This distinction is particularly important for language learners.

We often think vocabulary exists in two categories:

I know this word.

I don't know this word.

But language knowledge is more complex.

You may recognise a word while reading but be unable to produce it while speaking.

You may understand it when someone else says it.

You may remember it only after hearing the first syllable.

You may use it easily in one context but struggle to retrieve it in another.

And you may know the same concept in several languages while one version consistently reaches you faster.

Language knowledge is therefore not simply a collection of words stored in memory.

It is also a network of pathways that allow us to reach those words.

Use strengthens those pathways.

Context activates them.

Experience reshapes them.

Living Between Languages

Perhaps this is why the phrase “forgetting your mother tongue” does not completely describe the multilingual experience.

Something has changed, certainly.

But change is not always loss.

When someone builds a life in another language, the linguistic landscape of the mind becomes more complex.

One language carries childhood.

Another carries adulthood.

One contains old friendships.

Another contains professional ambitions.

One belongs to the place we came from.

Another belongs to the place where we learned to become someone new.

Eventually, the boundaries between them may become less clear.

A thought begins in one language and finishes in another.

A joke refuses to be translated.

A memory returns with words we have not used for years.

A foreign word feels more precise than its native equivalent.

And occasionally, standing in the middle of a perfectly ordinary conversation, we forget the simplest word in the language we first learned to speak.

Perhaps nothing has disappeared.

Perhaps the mind has simply acquired more places in which language can live.

When More Than One Language Feels Like Home

Living abroad can change our relationship with language because it changes our relationship with home.

Home may no longer correspond to one country, one culture or one linguistic world.

Neither does our voice.

The mother tongue remains part of us, but it is now accompanied by words collected from other places, relationships and versions of ourselves.

The languages may interrupt each other.

They may borrow from each other.

They may compete for the same thought.

But they also allow us to move between worlds that would otherwise remain separate.

So perhaps the next time a word in another language arrives before the one you learned as a child, there is no need to immediately think:

“I'm forgetting my language.”

A better question might be:

“Why did this language reach me first?”

The answer may reveal something about where you live, who you speak to, what you do every day and even which experiences have shaped the person you are now.

We do not necessarily leave one language behind when another becomes part of our lives.

Sometimes we simply learn to carry more than one linguistic home within us.

A Question for You

Have you ever forgotten a simple word in your mother tongue but remembered it immediately in another language?

Which language comes to you first when you think about work, relationships, home, emotions or everyday life?

And if you live abroad, has learning and living through another language changed the way you speak your own?

Glossart Languages

We do not necessarily lose our first language when we build a life in another. Sometimes our inner world simply becomes multilingual.

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