well you did a good job and i hear what you were saying. thank you

also, i know it is for a different reason... but maybe not quite so different in an odd way. until age 8 i was perfectly 100% bilingual and could flip languages in mid sentence with perfect inflections and all. my relatives would tease my parents because their inflections had been altered by living abroad, while i, born over your side of the world, i reacquired perfect local inflections within a couple days of being here (for holidays).

But, after years in the islands and Florida, English took over... When i was not spoken too in English i even answered in English... i began to realize this one day... when it was already too late. Then, in 1999 i got stuck having to come here, across the ocean.

And the language. it was TERRIBLE. i was beyond tongue-tied. I was brain-tied. I had to work around phrases i could conceptualize but not verbalize. i hit verbal stone walls. See, i was not accustomed to translating from English because i learned both languages in "native" form - brain was used to going directly from concept to word. So although, in a pinch, i could fill in with English, and then translate (to produce stilted phrases), i felt incredibly linguistically handicapped. Like someone had taken a module out, erased some things, scrambled others, and put it back in. My sentences were punctuated with "mmmmm" while my stomach somersaulted and i felt my eyes would pop out from frustration.

In addition - a separate issue though - my "level" of language - notably lexicon and phrase vocabulary, was not as evolved of course because my higher schooling was all done in the US. Interviewing was awful - i did not know the formal terms for things like salary nor even the word "interview!" In English I was eloquent and had always been good at interviews. Suddenly i was verbally incompetent. And WRITING job applications? HAH!!!! (at least i had weeks to work on them, unlike speech, whcih was "on the fly"). So, perhaps i can relate a little? to what you are experiencing. Certainly, I know the experience terrified me. Given my adult age i was afraid of never being able to acquire a native level again, one appropriate for my age.

WELL.

If it can be of comfort, i reacquired the lapsed skills AND acquired a greater level of mastery in the local language. No stroke here, but... the point is, it wasn't a new language... but i had lost some and had to integrate new stuff to it. And you will be able to recover, replace, reorganize, and if need be, add. So take heart. IT CAN BE DONE.

~ waves ~ from across the ocean