Language came back faster than I thought after 5 years away

Moved back to Toronto last month after 5 years in Dubai. When I landed, I could barely order a coffee without mixing in Arabic words. But after about 3 weeks of daily chats with my aunt and old coworkers, the English just clicked back. It was weird because my dreams were still in Arabic for the first 10 days. Now I catch myself code-switching at the grocery store and people look at me funny. Does anyone else feel like their brain keeps both languages tangled up for a while after returning home? How long did it take you to feel normal again?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesse77320d agoTop Commenter

Ha! I feel you, my brain was doing the same thing after I came back from Mexico City. I asked the cashier for "dos" bags and then stared at her like she was the weird one. Took me a solid month before I stopped ordering "un cafe" at Tims, but honestly the code-switching is kind of a fun party trick, even if the old ladies at the bakery give me dirty looks.

the_dakota18d ago

Man it's wild how your brain just keeps a second language on standby like that. I swear it's the same thing with accents, I'll hang out with my cousin from Boston for a weekend and suddenly I'm dropping my r's at the grocery store checkout. The real kicker is when it happens with completely unrelated stuff, like I once came back from a camping trip and spent a week calling every meal "grub" and expecting people to know what I meant. It's like our brains just grab whatever pattern is freshest and run with it until something new overwrites the file.