Foreign language mode? Я ничего не хочу...

(Note: for my Russian speaking friends, "Я ничего не хочу" has nothing to do with this post, except that it is the phrase that came to my mind as I sat here deciding that I've had enough of doing homework for tonight.)

I wonder if any of my polyglot friends have felt this way... I'm learning Spanish now, but I find myself thinking in Russian as soon as my very limited Spanish vocabulary/grammar fails me. I had a similar experience when I was first learning Russian, only then it was the Hebrew that would slip back in.

I guess I also felt it to some degree following my last Hebrew class, when I was first living in the German House. The first semester that I was not taking Hebrew, a friend of mine would sometimes speak to me in Hebrew. I understood everything without too much difficulty, but at that time I couldn't answer in Hebrew, no matter how much I wanted to. At some point during that semester, the German finally "clicked." I had my first dream in German, and everything just seemed to come naturally. It seems my brain finally created a partition for German, separating it from other foreign languages, recognizing it as a completely sensible, meaningful language without a need for translation. Suddenly, I could formulate sentences in Hebrew again, too. (That was entertaining, actually. This friend came by my apartment to invite me to a concert on campus, rather last minute. We held the brief conversation in Hebrew, and my roommates all assumed he had asked earlier and we'd had it planned all week long. Haha!)

That partition for German seems to have held up, but I don't think I've ever quite reached that point with any other foreign language. The Hebrew is mostly gone, from lack of use. I still remember one or two songs, and a few phrases from dialogues we memorized, but not much else. (Sad, I know... Maybe someday I'll pick it up again. If the Jerusalem Center hadn't been closed during my entire time at BYU, I might have actually found a use for it!) I think I managed to cross a hurdle in Russian which allowed me to focus on Russian without Hebrew getting in the way, but I never really reached the point of a "partition" in Russian.

So, here I am learning Spanish. We've finally learned regular "-ar" conjugations and we're starting to get a little more vocabulary, which means we're actually able to build sentences. The problem is, my vocabulary is still very limited, and once my brain switches into "foreign language mode," it still seems to think that means Russian, especially once I've reached the end of my Spanish vocabulary. I'm thinking that I need (1) to start picking up more vocabulary in Spanish and (2) to make sure I'm at least reading occasionally in Russian, so I don't lose it completely. It would be best if there could be another "partition" rather than just pushing the Russian out... Hmmmm...

Are there others out there who have learned more than one language and had similar experiences? Is there a term to describe this? I just notice that I tend to fall back on the weakest language other than the one I am currently learning. I'm not complaining so much as musing on something that I find interesting.

And the Russian phrase keeps running through my head... Я ничего не хочу! (I don't want anything! Or, more literally, I don't want nothing. I love the double negatives in Russian.) I'm done for tonight... No more homework right now. We'll try this again tomorrow.