Observation of Learning Languages I have been learning Spanish for quite some time and people ask me, 'why can't you speak Spanish after all this?' 'Spanish vocabularies should be easy for you because you speak English!' One once said, speaking a language too well prevents you from learning the new one. I agree with this all by my heart. It's because every time I start learning a new language or having significant progress, it's like having an earthquake shaking up all the language systems in my brain. And it happens to all aspects of a language, including pronunciation, word order, words. For instance, I may keep saying words in my mother tongue, Cantonese, with weird or wrong tone (there are six tones in Cantonese). Forgetting words or can't think of the appropriate expression. It is like there is a land problem so that for the new construction, we need to explore new land while fighting for a position in the existing land where the 'old language' buildings stand. And the competition may have temporary effects on the existing foundation. That's why, I see why it is so difficult for a monolingual to learn a new language. Building reconstruction is difficult. But then as you learn more languages, it becomes easier. Funny how brain works, huh?