this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2024
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[โ€“] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I have a bit of a different experience. As an engineer, I mostly use English at work, so I usually have issues explaining my area of expertise in my mother tongue and other languages I know. There are lots of terms I know only the English words , so I end up using the term in English or try to translate it and it sounds stupid.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Well yeah, ok, I have the same issue too because I've spent most of my career abroad and learned many technical terms in English and even Dutch, so for those things I have no idea what the words for it are in my native tongue.

But I just use whatever word I do know when I don't quite know the technical word in the language I'm speaking, and it's the same when speaking my native tongue as when speaking some foreign language which is not English: if I miss a word in that language I just almost seamlessly fit in the English word for it instead (or, in the case of German, I might use a Dutch word and hope it just sounds like the right word said in a strange way) and clarify if requested.

That's not at all the same as having tons of trouble speaking because you're translating in your mind.

As far as I can tell it doesn't sound at all stupid, though maybe that's because I'm generally using a foreign language to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of yet another foreign language.