[tashi]

I feel like I read a different article than you! I thought she was saying that she had a pretty good relationship with her parents overall (other than some teenage resentment about their not learning English), that she lost her fluency unintentionally just from not being around other Cantonese speakers, and that the story had a fairly happy ending, as she was now re-learning enough to have more meaningful conversations with them again.

[xyzelement]

> hat she lost her fluency unintentionally just from not being around other Cantonese speakers

But how does this happen? If your mom and dad only speak Cantonese, then if you're having real conversations with them, you're maintaining that language.

The original poster must be right, she must have not cared to have deep conversations with them for a long long time to let things get this bad. Because he's right, plenty of people immigrate to the US and maintain their native language even if they never use it outside the home.

[tashi]

Is that how it works? Deep enough conversations, periodically, prevent language attrition? I don't know anything about this phenomenon, so that could be how it works. But the fact that she seems to have love and gratitude for her parents and the fact that her brothers are in the same boat makes me not jump to blame it on a bad relationship.

[xyzelement]

> Is that how it works? Deep enough conversations, periodically, prevent language attrition?

Yes, that is exactly how it works. The logic in the article is that the author lost Cantonese because she wasn't speaking it. Atrophied.

The post we're replying to makes a good point. How do you not use the only language your parents speak? It means you're not talking to your parents.

[bmn__]

> It means you're not talking to your parents.

The article admits that she

• rebelled and for a time would not speak (shout) to the parents other than English

• moved to the other side of the continent.

[tashi]

You seem very certain, but that doesn't seem to be the consensus about how it works.

[xyzelement]

> You seem very certain, but that doesn't seem to be the consensus about how it works.

Just so I am clear, you're saying it's not an accepted fact that people don't lose a language they actively speak?

[tashi]

Yes, to be 100% crystal clear, I'm saying the thing that feels so obvious to you that to deny it would be pure stupidity does not appear to be true.

There's a quick summary at https://languageattrition.org/use-or-lose/, from where you can get links to decades of research on language attrition. Apparently, for people who speak multiple languages, there's some kind of interference effect between languages that's very counterintuitive, which means there's not the correlation between time spent per language and fluency that you would think there would be.

[tasuki]

I'm also pretty certain: deep enough conversations, periodically, prevent language attrition (I speak one language natively, three fluently).

[tashi]

That's a very impressive achievement, but I think this is one of those classic examples of the post hoc fallacy, "I succeeded by doing this, therefore those who do this will succeed." That logic is unsound.

[sinuhe69]

There’s often a significant difference between someone own perception/admission and reality. The fact that her parents have to call her and not vice versa in the context of Asian culture speaks volume. Also the typical content of the conversations she cited doesn’t suggest a rich communication. Anyway, if you speak a language regularly - in any language - you can’t lose it, not to mention your first language.