Today in German class we had a spontaneous discussion of what has been happening to our language skills since arriving in Germany. It turns out I'm not the only one whose English is getting worse! As we all agreed, our English is getting worse, our German is getting no better, and for those of us who have learned another language, that's the one that keeps surfacing/the one we're thinking in.
Surprisingly (and comfortingly), our professor says that is normal. She said that will happen for about 1-2 months, and then German will kick in/we'll start getting better at it, and then we will leave.
Relatedly, we spoke about how here pre-school is ages 0-3, kindergarten begins at 3, and then elementary school. Students who are already bilingual by the age of three (because after age 3 it is *statistically* significantly more difficult to learn a language, and then every subsequent year it gets more and more difficult) then receive special linguistic counseling to make sure they keep the grammar separate, etc (in the US we call this ESL, but unfortunately there are not many bilingual children because there is no childhood language education, nor are there very many ESL teachers).
Moral of the story: life is much easier for everyone if we speak more than one language, so learn young. I can attest to this, because drunkards street Berlin, high school students, or waiters at Mexican restaurants (so they speak German, Spanish, and English) speak better English than I cans speak German, French OR Spanish. When you experience that all the time, it's really frustrating/embarrassing.
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