I am curious, I want to know if others experience this feeling.
I am at a stage where everything I hear, I try to translate to my familiar language before making sense of it. I am wondering if this is a stage or it will stay with me. I find it very tiring. I know 2 languages very well and I don’t remember going through this stage, but I guess it’s because I was a kid when I learnt them.
Do you guys have experience in what I am talking about?
It’s just a stage.
I’m slowly coming out of this although I still do it with newly learned words. My brain will be like: Listen listen listen "oh new word, that means “fish” (or something)… listen …“oh damn I just missed the last 10 seconds of the content because i was acknowledging that one word i heard”
haha. It can be annoying. But I’m sure you are already there in a small way. IE: If someone says “Hello” or “goodbye” in the language you are learning do you translate it to mean Hello/goodbye in your brain or do you just take it as is?? Its the same thing really, just that more words will be like this in the future and of course some your brain will acknowledge and translate.
Ditto. It’s just a phase. IDK how long it usually takes though. Actually I think I’m still struggling sometimes especially when it comes to algebra! X’ (
It’ll stop as you get more proficient in the language. I personally only went through it once, after that now that I’m on a third language I find I’m not doing it even though I’m not so good in the language yet ;D So this could be the first, last, and only time.
Learning a new language is completely different than learning to speak your native tongue. As children we have time to develop our ability to speak while our minds soak up words and meanings like little sponges. As the years have gone by your natural language skills have become rooted in your unconscious mind. The words we speak now come easily and we are able to express ourselves without hesitation on most occasions. Now, as you desire to speak an entirely new language, there is a process or as astamoore said: “it is a stage” where your conscious mind receives the new information and passes it to the unconscious (permanent) mind. The more you practice and become familiar with this new vocabulary, your unconscious mind will convert and replace these foreign sounds with real meaning. This is a gradual process. My experience is that I only translate words or phrases that I am not too familiar with, but the ones that I am, I don’t have to anymore.
well it’s highly subjective. For instance even though I could speak fluent english from a very young age, I still find a new word every now and again. I have noticed that, while in russian, native speakers know basically “the entire language”, except for tech/medical/scientific terms/etc, english is different in that it contains words that are used only either by very educated people, writers or in some cases even the british. Indeed some time ago I spent a long time listening to an audio course called “verbal advantage”, and the product was targeted at americans who wanted to increase their vocab. in english - the same product would be unthinkable for native russian speakers. English has a plethora of variegated words and unless you peruse the entire dictionary their meaning to edify yourself you’ll be stuck with trying to guess their meaning from context and juxtaposition with other words, and will unlikely be able to use them with any degree of proficiency.
I guess this can be compared to how even educated Japanese people don’t know every hiragana.
"I guess this can be compared to how even educated Japanese people don’t know every hiragana. "
I think by “hiragana” you mean “kanji”
I don’t know Russian, but the idea that you can know the “entire” language is probably not objectively true, even with the exceptions you mentioned. I think this point of view may come from the history and self-image of the people who speak the language.
In fact, in English, one of the most basic ideas about good style is to use the most accessible word that fits the context.
Please just take the following as an example to illustrate my point, and not as a correction or criticism of your writing.
For example, your English posts in general are, to me, very well written. However only one phrase you wrote in the above post: “English has a plethora of variegated words and unless you peruse the entire dictionary their meaning to edify yourself…” stands out to me as inappropriate. While showing an accurate use of many uncommon words, to me they are not really necessary for the context. I would have written," English has a great variety of words and unless you read the entire dictionary…"
I see language as a means to communicate and nothing else. To understand and to be understood!!!
dooo, yeah sorry I meant kanji.
I used that sentence to demonstrate that there are many words that not every native english speaker knows. This type of thing simply doesn’t happen in native russian speakers unless the word is slang, scientific or otherwise, but “general usage” words are known by all.
I just noticed there is a second thread with the same title, which is where I posted my answer 
I can only say again that it can take a while before you get away from translating a few words or phrases when you hear them in a language that is not closely related to your own or a language you know already very well. I don’t remember doing this with English.
With Chinese for instance I’m still trying to catch a few words or phrases or a short sentence and I feel good when I can because I know what they mean even if the pace of speaking is too fast for me to keep up. But I can say that I’m getting better as I listen more and hopefully this stage will be over once I know the most frequent say 2000 words.
Yuriy, I know there are fewer words of Romance/Latin origin in Russian than in English (where it’s maybe 50 per cent of the language), but are you sure that Russians always know what certain words (what they call “hard” words in English) really mean?
In German, I know for sure that people who use so-called “foreign words” (“Fremdwörter” of French, Latin, Greek or even English origin) don’t always know their exact meaning (often when I ask my students for the meaning of an English word that exists as a “foreign word” in German, they get it wrong). But maybe this is typical of languages that have a vocabulary of mixed origins, which is not so much the case in Russian maybe.
i do not translate english in to my language to understand. i do not know this is a stage or not but what i know is listening regularly 8 months effortless english set did help me a lot. i am aware of this.