Attack of the Russian Words!
I'm noticing this weird phenomenon in which I am haunted by my past study of the Russian language, and it is affecting my ability to speak Spanish.
Background in the two languages:
I 'studied' Russian from 1990-1992 - meaning I went to class most of the time and occasionally did some reading on my own when I felt like it, and then lived in Moscow for six months in 1993, where I got to the point that I could carry on a halfway decent conversation.
I pretty much dropped it after that, and nowadays I would be hard-pressed even to have the most basic conversation in Russian.
With Spanish, I spent a year doing Rosetta Stone (RS) Levels 1-5, then another year of daily reading (news, stories, novels) and occasional conversations, and have now started working with a private tutor. I have a pretty expansive vocabulary when it comes to reading and writing since I've spent so much time with it, but I need a lot of work in the speaking and listening area.
So the Russian thing seems to come in waves. When I first started Rosetta Stone, the Russian words came flooding back, as if individual words were clammering to get out the door before the Spanish ones could. After awhile this seemed to get better.
Then, this spring I did 4 months of RS Italian, and the Russian words came back with renewed vigor, and luckily subsided later. Interestingly, this time it seemed to include 'new' words that I hadn't thought of since 1993.
And now that I started working with this tutor, the Russian thing seems worse than ever! And the strangest thing is that a couple days back I was listening to a radio show on the failed Soviet coup of 1991, and I seemed to be able to understand the short audio clips in Russian much more easilty than I would have a year ago. Not that I got every word, but they really seemed to 'pop' like never before!
6 Answers
Well, when I speak Spanish my brain seems to know it is "foreign" to me so often just decides to use words from any other "foreign" language I have been exposed to instead of the correct Spanish one.
You are using the same part of the brain for every language that you learn. The brain is a muscle the more you use it the better it gets. So of course if you are exercising that part of the brain it gonna improve. Its true many language cross over each other. I have the same problem. I learned German first, did very poorly so decided to take Spanish. Then went to Germany and did awesome with my German with the help of my translator book. Now I am am trying to improve the Spanish that I know and find I get German words mixed up in my Spanish sentences. Its very embarrassing.No one seems to notice or has said anything yet though. I am glad or would loose all confidence. I have no answer for how to fix it. They say children are able to do several languages and speak them all without mixing them up. To me that is amazing. Till then I just practice.
Wordup,
did you know that several Russian words come from Italian? I learned this while I was in Mongolia. Mongolia is an old USSR state, so they use some Russian words that sound immediately familiar to English speakers. When I looked into it more, by reading some grammar books, I found that many Russian words have origins in Italian.
My funny hypothesis would be that since that is true, and Italian and Spanish have so many similarities, maybe this is what is happening with you.
But then again, I really think it's probably just that weird thing that your brain does when it's studying another language. Whenever I can't think of a Spanish word, my brain automatically fills in the blank with Mongolian.
If you find a way to overcome or counteract this learning phenomenon, let me know.
I live in a bilingual country. I used to talk to people iuage and they talk to me in one language and they talk in another. But sometimes I find that it's better to just talk like that. Not all languages are equal! I do it sometimes because some languages get the message across better than others. In "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell one of the reasons Chinese children do better in math initially is because their words for numbers are just 1 syllable so they move on to addition faster. (But this advantage might not be as helpful later on and eventually by graduate school everyone else catches up and might do much better).
Russian and Spanish have different alphabets which is why people who have to master another alphabet will have to do 2x more thinking. In Japan still struggle a lot with English on their anime and TV shows because the alphabets are different. They have to convert Japanese characters to English characters then work from there.
That´s why I don´t want to study another lanaguage. It is hard enough to trying to keep one aother straight even among very fluent bilinguals. That´s why I think code switching is common.
Ha! That is strange! 
