生疏自己的母语是怎样的体验

I’m sitting in my kitchen in London, trying to figure out a text message from my brother.

我坐在位于伦敦的我的厨房里，试图搞清楚我哥哥发来的信息的意思。

He lives in our home country of Germany.

他住在我们的祖国德国。

We speak German to each other, a language that’s rich in quirky words, but I’ve never heard this one before: fremdschämen. 'Stranger-ashamed’?

我们之间说德语，这种语言有很多生僻词，不过这个词我从来没见过：fremdschämen，“令陌生人害羞”?

I’m too proud to ask him what it means.

我拉不下脸去问他什么意思。

I know that eventually, I’ll get it.

我知道最后，我还是能看懂的。

Still, it’s slightly painful to realise that after years of living abroad, my mother tongue can sometimes feel foreign.

不过，我还是很难过地意识到了在国外居住多年之后，我的母语有时反而感觉成了外语了。

Most long-term migrants know what it’s like to be a slightly rusty native speaker.

大部分长期侨居的人们都知道母语有点生疏的感觉。

The process seems obvious: the longer you are away, the more your language suffers.

这个过程是显而易见的：出国越久，你的母语就会越差。

But it’s not quite so straightforward.

不过这是一个积累的过程。

In fact, the science of why, when and how we lose our own language is complex and often counter-intuitive.

事实上，我们生疏自己母语的原因，时间和方式是非常复杂，还经常是反直觉的。

It turns out that how long you’ve been away doesn’t always matter.

结果表明你出国多久并不一定是最重要的。

Socialising with other native speakers abroad can worsen your own native skills.

跟其他外国当地的人们社交才会削弱你的母语技能。

And emotional factors like trauma can be the biggest factor of all.

而像心理创伤这样的情感因素才是最重要的因素。

It’s also not just long-term migrants who are affected, but to some extent anyone who picks up a second language.

而且，不止是长期的侨民们会如此，凡是学外语的人们都会或多或少受到影响。

“The minute you start learning another language, the two systems start to compete with each other,” says Monika Schmid, a linguist at the University of Essex.

“一旦你开始学习另一种语言，这两种语言系统就会相互竞争，”莫妮卡.施密德说，她是艾塞克斯大学的语言学家。

Schmid is a leading researcher of language attrition, a growing field of research that looks at what makes us lose our mother tongue.

施密德是语言耗损的研究带头人，这个领域研究的是什么让我们失去了自己母语。

In children, the phenomenon is somewhat easier to explain since their brains are generally more flexible and adaptable.

在孩子们身上，这种现象也许更容易解释因为他们的大脑通常更为灵活有适应性。

Until the age of about 12, a person’s language skills are relatively vulnerable to change.

在12岁之前，一个人的语言技能是相对比较容易改变的。

Studies on international adoptees have found that even nine-year-olds can almost completely forget their first language when they are removed from their country of birth.

对国际上被领养孩子的研究表明甚至9岁大的孩子当从祖国搬走之后都有可能完全忘记自己的母语。

But in adults, the first language is unlikely to disappear entirely except in extreme circumstances.

不过在成年人中，除非有特殊情况，母语一般不会完全被忘记。

For example, Schmid analysed the German of elderly German-Jewish wartime refugees in the UK and the US.

例如，施密德分析了之前德尤大战时期移民英国和美国的难民。

The main factor that influenced their language skills wasn’t how long they had been abroad or how old they were when they left.

影响他们的母语技能的主要因素并不是他们出国了多久或者当他们离开时有多大。

It was how much trauma they had experienced as victims of Nazi persecution.

而是他们作为纳粹迫害的受害人经历的创伤有多少。

Those who left Germany in the early days of the regime, before the worst atrocities, tended to speak better German – despite having been abroad the longest.

那些在政府早期离开德国的人们，没有见证最残忍的暴行，他们的德语说得更好——尽管他们出国时间最长。

Those who left later, after the 1938 pogrom known as Reichskristallnacht, tended to speak German with difficulty or not at all.

而那些晚些移民的人们，在1938年的水晶之夜之后迁走的人们，德语说得很差甚至都不会说了。

“It seemed very clearly a result of this trauma,” says Schmid.

“看起来很明显是因为创伤的缘故，”施密德说道。

Even though German was the language of childhood, home and family, it was also the language of painful memories.

尽管德语是儿时，故乡和家里的语言，它同时也是有痛苦记忆的语言。

The most traumatised refugees had suppressed it.

那些创伤最严重的难民们因此而压抑了它。

As one of them said: “I feel that Germany betrayed me. America is my country, and English is my language.”

正如他们当中的一人说的那样：“我感觉德国背叛了我。美国才是我的祖国，英语才是我的语言。”

“Attrition is not a bad thing. It’s just a natural process,” she says.

“语言耗损也不是坏事。它是一个自然的过程，”她说道。

“These people have made changes to their grammar that is consistent with their new reality... Whatever allows us to learn languages also allows us to make these changes.”

“这些人们改变了自己的语法来适应新的生活...无论是什么让我们学习了新语言，它也会让我们做出这种改变。”

It is nice to be reminded that from a linguist’s point of view, there is no such thing as being terrible at your own language.

令人感到安慰的是从语言学家的角度来看，说不好自己的母语也没关系。

And native language attrition is reversible, at least in adults: a trip home usually helps.

而母语的耗损是可逆的，至少在成年人身上是：一趟归国之旅通常会有所帮助。

Still, for many of us, our mother tongue is bound up with our deeper identity, our memories and sense of self.

不过，对我们很多人来说，我们的母语跟我们内心深处的认同感，我们的记忆和自己的认知深深联系在一起。

Which is why I for one was determined to crack my brother’s mysterious text about 'fremdschämen’ without any outside help.

这就是为什么我决定不靠别人帮助自己解开我哥哥的信息之谜的原因。

To my relief, I figured it out pretty quickly.

令我释怀的是，我很快就想出来了。

Fremdschämen describes the sensation of watching someone do something so cringeworthy that you are embarrassed on their behalf.

Fremdschämen这个词描述的是看到某人做尴尬的事连你自己都替他们感到尴尬了的感觉。

Apparently, it’s a popular word and has been around for years.

明显地，它是一个常用词，并且由来已久。

It just passed me by, like countless other trends back home.

我和它错过了，如同很多老家的流行词一样。

After 20 years abroad, I shouldn’t be surprised by this.

在出国了二十年之后，我不应该对此感到意外。

Still, I have to admit that there is something a bit sad about my own brother using words I no longer understand; a hint of loss, perhaps, or unexpected distance.

不过，我得承认连自己哥哥的话都不理解还是有点心酸：仿佛一种失落又或许是一种意想不到的距离。

There’s probably a German word for that, too. But I’ll need a bit more time to recall it.

这种感觉说不定也有德语词对应。不顾我需要一点时间才能回想起来。

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