Poll: German and Chinese speakers and left handed?

[dementior]

Hi there,

This is by no means any proper research study just simple curiosity. I have studied German as my third language and Chinese as my fifth language and I happen to be left handed. It is impossible for me to speak them both at the same time, that is, I cannot speak German anymore without the Chinese popping up frequently unless I am immersed in only-German environment for a while.

Well, I was having some beers the other night (I live in China) and there were two others German speakers (none of them native speakers) who were like me learning Chinese. These two people were pretty fluent in German but I noticed that they could not help use Chinese words frequently, like me they just could not control it... Then half joking I asked: you are not left handed by any chance are you?

 

Both of them were.

 

Would you mind answering the poll if this is your case 

 

thanks for your help

[imron]

I can't speak German and I'm not left handed, but I have experienced similar situation of Chinese popping in with other languages I know smatterings of when I try to speak them.  It's like my brain has a 'speaking a foreign language' mode, and when in that mode if it can't find the word in the foreign language I'm using it tries to substitute it with a foreign language that I know better.

[muirm]

Do you have any data points indicating that right handers don't encounter the same phenomena?

 

For me the worst is pronouns. If I ever try to speak Spanish, I have to stop and think about each pronoun or I will say it in the wrong language. Also, it sounds strange but I can't remember the word "abstract" very well in English. I immediately think of "抽象", but then I can't recall what it is in English. I literally looked up "抽象" in a C-E dictionary just now to write this post.

[ilovelamp]

 

I can't speak German and I'm not left handed, but I have experienced similar situation of Chinese popping in with other languages I know smatterings of when I try to speak them.  It's like my brain has a 'speaking a foreign language' mode, and when in that mode if it can't find the word in the foreign language I'm using it tries to substitute it with a foreign language that I know better.

 

"Speaking a foreign language mode" is exactly what I experience too sometimes -_-. I do speak German, and I am right handed. I studied Japanese in school for 5 years (although I still suck), and I often try to recall some Japanese phrases, or try to translate things, and the missing words are always automatically German.

 

There was a news story a while back about this Asian girl who could write English with her left, and Chinese with her right, simultaneously, and even about totally different topics. I think she also did Korean too.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I'm right-handed and native German, so I don't fit into your poll, but I never experienced any "interference" anyway (I believe that is the term for what you are describing).

 

Back when I was studying both Japanese and Chinese at the same time - or with any languages I studied at the same time, like French and Spanish - , I found it difficult to "shift gear" between languages. I am totally lost for words for a few moments, and I swear I can physically feel it crunching in my brain! But that is something entirely different, I believe.

 

I learnt English when I was little, like, 4 years and onwards (when my family moved to the US), and my parents were really strict. It was either English or German. Maybe that is why I never experienced any interferences in any languages later, but who knows - I am purely guessing.

[Touchstone57]

Interesting topic. I'm left handed and a language learner, but I've never experienced this 'mixing of languages' people talk about when trying to recall words in different languages. 

 

There are a lot of myths about left handedness and how it affects the brain - these myths are often backed up by false or insubstantial research as well as "So and so was famous, and left handed, therefore...". A common one I hear from Chinese people is， you are left handed, so you must be: intelligent, creative, good with musical instruments etc.

 

It seems there hasn't really been enough research about left handedness and how it affects the brain - particularly in language learning. Language processing is meant to be done in the left hemisphere of the brain. So for left handed individuals the right hemisphere is dominant - I'm not sure how this comes into play and how it would affect language switching though.

[wibr]

I also have the "foreign language" area in my brain, it used to be occupied by French but Chinese took over since I started to study it more intensively...so now when I try to speak French a lot of Chinese will come out... English as my second language has it's own space, absolutely no confusion there

[renzhe]

I'm left handed and speak both German and Chinese, neither as a mother tongue. I don't notice mixing between them, probably because my German is much better than Chinese and I learned it much earlier.

But like imron says, language-mixing is very common, especially if you jump between several languages in one day and with languages where you're not completely fluent. I've experienced this in many combinations, the most common and strange being Portuguese-Chinese.

A common one I hear from Chinese people is you are left handed, so you must be: intelligent, creative, good with musical instruments etc.

But... that's all true!!!

And you forgot handsome.

[xyz123abc]

You aren't the first one thinking human brains do have a separate function for native language appart from foreign languages. It's a Neurological hypothesis

 

There are the odd cases where a person, after experiencing severe (physical) trauma (brain surgery, stroke, tumor, etc) has his native or foreign language skills impaired, selectively.

 

If I ever find the reference again, Ill post it. (wikipedia is not a valid reference)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_multilingualism

 

Language acquisition appears to play a large role in the cortical organization involved in second language processing. Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), representations of L1 and L2 have been found in spatially isolated parts of the left inferior frontal cortex of late learners (Broca's area). For early learners, similar parts of Broca's area are activated for both languages — whereas late learners have shown to use different parts of Broca's area. In contrast, there is overlap in active regions of L1 and L2 within Wernicke's area, regardless of age of L2 acquisition.^[7]

[Shelley]

This is probably because the right side of the brain controls the left and the left side the right. Language is supposed to be a left hemisphere thing and art is a right hemisphere thing. Being left-handed may increase your ability to learn languages.

 

One of the reasons I picked Chinese to learn as my third language was because it is supposed to be one of the few languages that uses both hemispheres of the brain, the left for standard language and the right for characters as they share a lot in common with art.

 

Since learning to write characters I am also now able to write English with my left, (I am right handed) with a bit of practice I expect it would be almost as good as with my right. Before Chinese I couldn't even imagine doing it.

 

I find myself throwing French into my Chinese sentences but only in my head, when I am trying to work out what an answer is to question in my textbook, I find I will think of half of it in French. I get cross with myself and try really hard not to do this because I need to learn Chinese not French  

 

I also have a smattering of German but never use it with Chinese, my mother spoke German and as a kid I was exposed to it but never learnt it, maybe that's why.

 

I agree that probably what happens is you switch in to foreign language mode and as long as its not your native language your brain thinks its ok

 

My mother was truly bi-lingual with English and German and would switch between them with no problems. She would talk on the phone at work in German and then turn to me and speak in English back and forth with out skipping a beat as it were. One reason she got her job was her language skills.

 

So hopping between languages is entirely possible and quite amazing to witness.

[Shelley]

I wonder if perhaps the poll should have been for any other second language and Chinese and left or right handedness. Not sure why just German.

[li3wei1]

right-handed, and offer suffer from cross-language confusion, sometimes coming out with full Chinese sentences when I think I'm speaking French.

[hedwards]

I've definitely had interference problems regularly. It's worst when I don't give myself buffer time between the languages. If I go from studying one language to another, I wind up having to pause a bit to remember which language I'm working with. It's moderately annoying, but if a correct response in a different language is popping out, that implies a degree of fluency. Or at least the potential for fluency as you're thinking in the language.

 

FWIW, I'm ambidextrous.

[dementior]

 thanks a lot for your interesting responses!!

 

it seems taking a look at the poll results that most of you right-handed people who can speak both languages do not have a problem switching from one to another... (5 vs 2)

My point was basically: could it be that these two languages take up the same room in the brain or trigger the same connections for some reason in left-handed people´s brain?

 

Back in the day my German was very fluent when I was living there and it is now when I am in China that I have started experiencing this ¨interference¨ when I try to speak German, obviously because my German is a bit rusty as well.

But taking a look at your comments it seems it might not limit to what kind of language it is or the grammatical structure of it, but rather how well you were able to master it or the order in which you learnt it. I do not experience any interference when I am speaking English (my second language) and I can switch without any problem to Chinese and back.

 

@Shelley what you say about using left part of the brain for standard language and right part for characters is very interesting I will do some research on it

 

@Renzhe you say you dont have any problems mixing up German and Chinese but you mention that your German is a lot better than your Chinese. My problem is that currently my Chiense it getting closer to the level I used to have in German and I think the more I learn Chinese the more room I might  be taking up from German... I cannot however explain this accuretly since I have no background in neurological studies hehe

 

So far it seems I am the only left-handed here having problems with these two languages hehe 

[French]

This thread reminds me of one of my very best friend. A few years ago, he picked Chinese as his 4th language and German was his third. He spend one year in China (Beijing) studying Chinese. When he came back in France, he told me that Chinese words were popping up in his head while speaking German and vice versa.

For the record, he is right handed. 

[Lu]

I had it with French. I learned pretty decent French in secondary school, but as soon as I started learning Chinese it pretty much disappeared overnight and was replaced with Chinese (even though at that point I barely knew any Chinese yet). I hardly ever speak French anymore, but when I do I have to translate every single word from Chinese. It's quite labourious. I speak German too but never had trouble with mixing that with Chinese. I am right-handed.

Like most people around me in secondary school, I learned Dutch (1st and best language), English (2nd), German (3rd) and French (4th). Quite a number of classmates and friends at the time would somehow start speaking German when drunk. Not English or French, always German. Languages are funny.

[Law-West]

My native language is Hungarian, I used to take all my school subjects in English for two years, I lived in Germany for about two years, I've been studying Chinese for two and a half years and Japanese for about a year.

 

Contrary to the native vs acquired language argument above, I've even experienced several instances of interference between German and Hungarian, since I tend to think in various languages, and if I have to react quickly to something that just happened I don't have time to readjust.

In one case I accidentally pushed someone at the school gym and promptly apologised in German, after telling him to be careful, also in German. This happened in Hungary and he did not speak any German. I also find German and Chinese especially easy to mix up for some reason, and I get more confused by it than mixing up other languages. When learning Japanese and switching back to Chinese I often find myself still using Japanese grammar structures with Chinese words or putting Chinese words into Japanese sentences.

 

Btw I'm right-handed.

[anonymoose]

I learnt French at school for seven years, and reached quite a high level. I also learnt German at school for three years, though never got very far with that. I find, however, that I can still speak German without interference from Chinese, yet I can barely string a sentence in French together without Chinese popping into it. And no, I'm not left-handed.