being multilingual doesn't help
i forgot the whole concept of what i forgot
this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
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"I can't think of the human phrase for that"
still buffering. please stand by
It's so random, too. I'll forget the word in languages that I'm fluent in, but remember it in Japanese or French or something else that I only studied a little bit of.
I end up having to describe the concept I'm trying to recall and hope that whoever I'm talking to can put the pieces together to help me find what word I'm looking for. Brains are weird.
The point isn't to be multilingual, though. It's to lie about being multilingual because you forgot a word in the only language you speak.
kurwa
mać
It happened to me once.
And now I don't remember at all what it was about.
Nah, anybody i know already knows I don't word good.
why use fancy word when good word do trick?
👆👍
Word?
I am multilingual and that is frequently an issue I have ... with my native language. Which often forces me to make a decision on whether it's fine to just use the English word (plus using an English word in the middle of a non-English sentence trips me up), which the recipient might or might not understand.
The same happens to me often. Luckily for me, both Gen Z and people in corporate environments like to insert random English words in my native language, so depending on the context it might come up as pretentious corporate or "Howdy fellow kids", but at least not like I'm a complete idiot.
TBH I'd rather look like an idiot than a pretentious corporate.
insert meme
You use the English word because you're a pretentious idiot
I use the English word because I forgot
We are not the same
In Hong Kong, mixing a moderate number of English words into speech is considered an indicator of good education. There is, however, a very specific way to do it, and doing it wrong will instead cause the opposite effect.
This effect is so strong that many English words have been actually absorbed into Cantonese as loan words and displaced their native equivalents.
Skill issue, I mix in english without noticing
I'm living in Sweden but only speak English still. When I'm in a group everyone switches to English but if I don't talk for a while they start slowly mixing back in Swedish words. There's a sweet spot with Swedlish that to me sounds like a bunch of giggly people a drink or two in trying to see how far they can get away with mispronouncing words while still being understandable
Depending of tone and context, they might think you're both.
They are correct for once.
When my mom's best friend started to develop ... I'm not sure, but some kind of age related disorder that caused her to forget words ... She would just use "tree" in place of the word she couldn't remember.
She expressed this to her friend group and they all just extrapolated the actual word intended and went with it.
"It's missing that, uh... French for certain something."
"Je n'ais ce quoi?"
"Who the hell is Jenny and why should I care what she said?"
What if I forgot the word in several languages?
It means you're byelingual.
"Sorry, I forgot the English, Finnish and Arabic word. I can offer you Urdu, Basque and Polish, if you're interested."
I do that for my own native language - Portuguese - because some words I only learned or mostly used when I was living abroad or from sources in other languages so the word that pops in my mind isn't in Portuguese (generally its in English but sometimes in other languages).
This is especially so for technical words and often used words which are close in both languages but not exactly the same.
So this actually can happen when you're multilingual (and is weird as fuck, IMHO) and I do have the feeling that for some people who don't know me well, me saying "I don't remember this word in Portuguese" can come out as me being pretentious and showing off my language skills (especially if the word I remember is in a language other than English, since around here and for my generation knowing English isn't really unusual) when for me it's almost the opposite and I actually feel that I'm supposed to know it.
I mean, this really does happen. It's only really seen as pretentious in the English-speaking world because so few native English speakers learn foreign languages to a high level.
I always remember it in whichever language is least understood by others in the moment
Or people will just think you're illiterate in two languages.
Just insert a random word from a language your conversational partner doesn't speak.
As an Estonian, I offer the following interesting sounding options: türa, jäääär, ajukääbik, kaksteist kuud, sõlmenditolgend
randomly inserts Cantonese words
"Sorry, what I mean was..."
starts speaking Mandarin
(The reverse is also true, I could visit China then randomly start using English... and they'd be like: "Wah, you went abroad? 好厉害啊！", at least that's how I imagine it to be like)
This is a great way to end up in this situation'
Poor Linda
no, because you should say the word in your native language anyways.
you have missed the point. you don't need to know any other languages to use this approach.
Some people don't have one
Prayers going out to all the people without a native language 🕊️🙏
what??
how would that work???, living alone in the jungle until adulthood and only then learning?
or is a shit americans say kind of thing?
not sure what OP meant, but it reminded me of the forced assimilation of peoples in a colonial setting, where a potential scenario is that
- the grandparents speak their native language fluently, and the dominating language almost not at all
- the parents speak both the native and the dominating language, but badly
- the kids speak the dominating language fluently, and the native language almost not at all
So in that case the parents can be seen as not having a proper native language, because they have two languages they can sorta make work, but can't fully express nuance and complex thought in either.
Then said language is not their native language.
The nativa language is the first one you learnt as a kid, the one your parents taught you.
So it is a "Shit americans say" after all.
That was a joke but I agree with Kazerniel
How do you spell ocurance?
Me recently…
works if your white