Speaking Japanese After a While

Yesterday morning, I spoke Japanese, but words “sí” in Spanish and then “对” or “對” in Mandarin came into my head to answer “yes”-or-”no” questions in Japanese before finally thinking and saying “はい”. 😅

I understood everything my Japanese friend said, but because I hadn’t spoken Japanese in a long time, I struggled a lot to express myself in the language. I struggled so much that my friend said it was their first time seeing me like that, and they were worried… 😢

The next day, I met the same friend again, and my Japanese was completely different. We spoke about many interesting topics, and I was speaking normally again! I no longer mixed languages in my head, and my friend said I did really well! 😄

The point I’d like to make is this:
Spoken languages are natural, so it helps to forget the sensation of speaking, thinking about speaking, grammar, vocabulary, and rules in general, and just simply speak. When we especially speak in our target languages about topics we are passionate about, we tend to forget that we’re speaking in another language and simply speak about topics that are deeply interesting to us and improve our speaking skills in our target languages. 💡