Alters and languages

can someone help me understand alters and language, because I just completely forgot my native language and I am so confused.

I have dutch as my native language and English as my main second language. I have noticed differences in my ability to speak or understand English a lot over the past couple of months, but those differences were always pretty minor. so for example I would suddenly be much more fluent while speaking with a much better accent in one occasion, and then in another I would be unable to speak in English because I just can't find the words.

Today all of this was very different and I had this experience with Dutch for the first time. I could hear people speak in dutch and I could hear it was the dutch language, but I had no idea what any of the words meant. To me it felt like I was listening to people speaking german or something, so I would be able to identify some basic words, but not even close to understanding enough to make out sentences or even a topic the people were talking about. I don't know if this is the first time i've had this, but it's the first time i have really noticed this.

Are these differences signs of different alters? and is it normal to have these major differences in the ability to speak or understand some languages?

thanks

It is most likely connected. It does not necessarily indicate new or undiscovered alters although it could since by your wording it seems this is the first time it has happened?

At least with us it is common. Some of us can speak English quite poorly (mostly the children) as the older alters have worked on it. But depending on the age and time of their personal "creation" if you will they might have varying degrees of ability to speak English.
Jo spoke 100% Japanese and zero English for a few years as an example

Bejer mentioned this in the forgetting things you know thread earlier today. Non of us speak any other languages but sometimes I struggle to comprehend English. I will hear people talking but not be able to understand what the words mean or make sense of them. It's happened all my life I never used to think about it and more recently I've assumed it's dissociative in nature.

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In our case, we've got Alexis, who understand Spanish a little bit while none of us even like that language and were mostly asleep or drawing during spanish classes at high school...
When he's around, we can understand most of it. When he's not, it's like we never had Spanish lessons in our life.
Now I think about it, it can explain why "I" had such good grades in Spanish without even being able to remember a single thing about it...

could be a couple of different things.
one is differences in alters. we have some who consider themselves native english speakers, other speak a different language.

it can also be some kind of dissociation.
you know ho sometimes derealization can make straight lines look crooked? It can also change sounds so we don't recognize them anymore.
dissociation also effects the brain and especially the area that is important for language. that is why often it gets difficult to speak when dissociated. it might also influenc your comprehension of language.
try grounding. and be patient with yourself.
we sometimes lose the ability to read. that is weird too.

NyxX wrote:Bejer mentioned this in the forgetting things you know thread earlier today. Non of us speak any other languages but sometimes I struggle to comprehend English. I will hear people talking but not be able to understand what the words mean or make sense of them. It's happened all my life I never used to think about it and more recently I've assumed it's dissociative in nature.

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Yeah, and I'm also Dutch.. in our case, it's because we also had a (very bad) life in England. There's a group of English parts because of that, and a few of our 'anp' Dutch parts, dissociated away from 'English' as a whole after our last visist there. I've always thought my English sucks bigtime, but we just don't have a lot of parts who didn't get triggered by the language, before the crisis.

I live a bilingual life and this is normal for me, too.

The mixing up - it ends up feeling like you can't speak any language... Sometimes I have a third language in the mix and then it gets even worse. I just cannot find the words anymore! That's all normal, I think, as I've heard about it from others in similar positions.

Losing the ability to understand a language is different. I haven't experienced that. I have experienced myself speaking in the wrong language to someone and not noticing, but losing your skills like that indicates dissociation to me. Do you feel like it is associated with a specific part?

I kind of forgot I posted this, so sorry for the late response.

I think both the explanations if it being just dissociation or it being an alter seem very believable. I don't really know any of my alters yet, so it could be that it's a part of one of them. I have my first real appointment with my T next week (first one after my intake), so i guess i'll talk to her about it to see what she thinks of everything.