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One of the reasons for my so-so French is because it almost became my mother tongue. I moved to France at age 3 and stayed there for 3 years, during which I learned much more French at school than the Spanish I learned at home with my parents. When I returned to Mexico, I would talk to my grandma in French, even though she just knows Spanish.

So I could say that I gradually forgot my mother tongue, because of a lack of practice. Like some of you people. I know of a couple of indigenous Mexicans who left their communities and moved to the city, and some years later, they would forget totally their Tarahumaran (to put an example).

That's my situtation, except my English is pretty good. I grew up in England, but I've been able to speak Cantonese all my life. I've noticed in recent years that it's begun to deteriorate slowly and I'm worrying that I won't be able to speak it when I move out of home.

A comforting thought though is I think I've been speaking it for too many years to just forget it... My sisters, who came to England at 8 and 14 can still speak Cantonese although it's just hard to speak completely in cantonese for them. They can manage fine, but it's just difficult sometimes.

Yeah, it's happening to me too.
It's really weird and sad because I've been so busy lately, improving my french and english and learning spanish that I almost forgot romaninan...
gonk

This is why my parents make me go to Polish school, so I won't forget, and also to improve my speaking. I could never forget how to speak Polish, but my accent is going away and I know more English words than Polish.

O.o

A friend of mine, who's Romanian too, seems to be keeping up with her language rather well. She knows English (learned it a long time ago) and is trying to learn French. Though she's forgetting German now (which she doesn't really care about knowing the language, it seems). Her family tends to speak in Romanian when they can, I think. It's sort of amusing (because we have a love-hate friendship and I love getting the chance to bug her), because when she gets really hyper or angry or something, she'll slip into it^^

I only know English (tch), but I've been really wanting to learn a few others (German and Romanian mainly). I used to know a bit of German as a kid. It was stuff like bathtub or tree and 1-10, and now I'm sad I've forgotten it. I've forgotten all my Spanish too ((ACTUALLY that's good. I was only in Spanish 1 for 5 years, a WEIRD mandatory thing, and the teachers didn't even know how to pronounce the alphabet, so I unlearned a bad thing^^)). Let's see... then there's French, which I NEVER learned in the first place. Except "ouef", or "egg". I used to know how to say "I'm as hungry as a wolf", but I've forgotten it, *sighs*.

i did french at primary school,was pretty fluent but hated it,so i choose german,irish and japanese at secondary school and now i have forgotten most of it,but even now i still understand what french people are saying.its quite strange.