In school, I spent a total of six years studying German. This was quite some time ago, my last class would have been almost twenty years ago. In that time I have traveled to German-speaking countries six or seven times. The times I have gone recently it was really difficult to understand and speak any German. When I grasped for words the Indonesian word would often come to me instead.

This month, however, I went to Germany and did not have these same problems. Indonesian didn’t pop-up suddenly and unexpectedly for me at all. I was also better able to understand conversations around me. My understanding isn’t amazing and my speaking is not good at all, but it was so much better than during the time I was living in Indonesia. Sadly I think this means I’m losing some connections to Indonesian and this has perhaps allowed my German connections to be more easily used.

A quick search shows that this language confusion I experienced has happened to others. I did not find someone talking about exactly my scenario, but I doubt it is that uncommon.