When I was learning English (thirty some years ago. Immigrated from Russia, legally, with not a lick of English under my belt) reading it was so confusing. I still to this day do not understand the pronunciation of “Colonel”.
So, so you process English through translation in your brain still? A friend once explained to me she hears the words in English, translates it into Spanish in her head, answers it in Spanish in her mind and then translates it back into English to speak. Ever since I’ve been in awe of multilingual people. Tried Spanish in high school, twice, same class. Failed miserably both times
So your friend is not an efficient bilingual if she still translates in her head. I'm multilingual, I think in the language I'm currently speaking/writing. If I'm just thinking on my own, the brain picks the language it wants. The best way to learn a language is to learn it like a child. Think about your mastery of English, you don't translate "water" in your head by example, you know what water is and that the sounds for "water" mean this thing. You apply this to all languages. That's also not efficient because languages are rarely literally translatable into one another.
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u/Adventurous-Bee4823 20h ago
When I was learning English (thirty some years ago. Immigrated from Russia, legally, with not a lick of English under my belt) reading it was so confusing. I still to this day do not understand the pronunciation of “Colonel”.