A strange phenomenon

[Hare_Geist]

Whenever we hear a word from our native language for the first time, as soon as we discover its definition, not only does that definition stick in our mind, but whenever we hear the word uttered again, we instantly associate it with its intended meaning. Why, then, when we learn a foreign language, do we have much more difficulty in associating a foreign word with its definition whenever we hear it uttered by someone other than ourselves, even if the definition is stuck in our mind?

Furthermore, I have noticed that, for me at least, this difficulty varies depending on the foreign language under consideration. For obvious reasons, it is a lot less difficult to associate the word with its definition when the language is closer to your own. I can make the association with more ease in German than in French, for example. Well, I say “obvious reasons”, and it is obvious that making the association is harder in foreign languages, yet although it is obvious that this is the way things are, I don’t believe it is so obvious why this is the way things are.

I can understand the difficulty with understanding sentences, since sentence structures can vary greatly from what a person is used to in his own language. I figured that one possible explanation is very similar to the difficulty with sentence structures, namely, that unlike with foreign languages, we know the general forms of words in our native language and how to distinguish them from one another when he hear them uttered within a sentence. However, the difficulty here is with distinguishing words from one another, which is preliminary to, but not the same as, associating a word with its definition. Trying to distinguish words certainly may contribute to troubles making associations, but I doubt it explains the problem or contributes to the difficulty to any great degree.

So we are right back where we started. Say you are an Englishman learning French. You learn the definition of a French word in English, that is to say, the word’s definition is given in English, just like with any English words you learn. Yet when you hear the French word said, you don’t instantly associate it with its definition, like you do with English words, but have to think for a split-second beforehand or even struggle, depending on the foreign language. Does anyone have any clue why this is?