[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.

[tasuki]

Yes, that logic would have been unsound. It was not my reasoning, just a data point, and not a very impressive one :)

Deep enough conversations, periodically, prevent language attrition. How can I convince you? It's really just like anything else: practice helps. Is that a controversial claim?