Faulty Language Selection

Amanda Kruel from Knoxville, Tennessee, wrote to say that ten years after learning French, she was studying German and her mind would jump from German to French, instead of English, when she was at a loss for a word. This is known as faulty language selection, and it happens to a lot of polyglots. A Florida community-college professor blogging at Sarah on Sabbatical has a nice roundup of research on the topic. She relates her own experience of working in a hotel in Bavaria and not being able to translate to French for some tourists, even though she spoke French. This is part of a complete episode.