I was bilangual as well. I grew up speaking Lithuanian, and moved to the US at around 7, picking up English surprisingly quickly. My lithuanian is also very rusty, as yes, the only people I ever encounter that speak it are my family (and apparently you).
I was going to come on here and make a very similar point. A few years after moving to the United States, I was involved in a "vocabulary bee", won in my school and did very well at the state competition. This despite the fact that I had been speaking English for less than 3 years, and had no training for the competition, instead answering largely on intuition. I realize now how much knowing Lithuanian helped me largely because of its latin backgrounds.
Later I went on to take several years of spanish, and I had the experience, and noticed it amongst my classmates that the people that picked up the language the fastest were the ones that already spoke more than one language.
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Laba diena!
I was bilangual as well. I grew up speaking Lithuanian, and moved to the US at around 7, picking up English surprisingly quickly. My lithuanian is also very rusty, as yes, the only people I ever encounter that speak it are my family (and apparently you).
I was going to come on here and make a very similar point. A few years after moving to the United States, I was involved in a "vocabulary bee", won in my school and did very well at the state competition. This despite the fact that I had been speaking English for less than 3 years, and had no training for the competition, instead answering largely on intuition. I realize now how much knowing Lithuanian helped me largely because of its latin backgrounds.
Later I went on to take several years of spanish, and I had the experience, and noticed it amongst my classmates that the people that picked up the language the fastest were the ones that already spoke more than one language.