ceruleancat | (no subject)

Me, a heritage speaker: TIL gotowy in Polish means 'ready', not 'boiled'. That requires a very strange adjustment of mental lexicon.
Me, a linguist: Shiny language acquisition in action.

I've always heard my mother say woda gotowana (in Polish) when the kettle boiled, which I've always interpreted to mean 'the water's boiled' (woda = water, therefore gotowana = boiled).
Today, I need to check on some admin stuff on an official site, and I run into gotowy and my brain went WTF. Turns out the word just means "ready". She was saying the water's ready.

When you learn a language, you learn words within a certain context, and a lot of the time you never question the details, you just associate the word or sequence with that context. When it's a language you're immersed in, you'll encounter further contexts sooner or later, so you can quickly adjust the range of contexts and meanings to the rest of the speaker community. When it's a second language, or worse, a heritage language that you just encounter in limited situations in childhood, there's a lot less opportunity for the adjustment stage. So when you do encounter a new context, this becomes so weird.

Also I now realise water is a feminine singular (=she) in Polish as it is in French. For me, the basic setting is Hebrew, where water is masculine plural.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is so interesting to learn. Also neat to learn 'heritage language' as a term.

"When you learn a language, you learn words within a certain context, and a lot of the time you never question the details, you just associate the word or sequence with that context. "

This is why I always ask about french words and phrases, what does it mean precisely, what do the particles mean.

Which makes for more explicit learning. But some learning must happen subconsciously, and only later becomes conscious.
Of course what I was referring to was from the perspective of a child hearing language around, before the awareness or interest in analysing it.

In a way like that bit you showed me about Arabic in that book, the English lady who grew up in Egypt.