I started conversation practice twice a week in Italian after a year of mostly reading. Since then my vocabulary feels like it has shrunk — words I would have recognised instantly a month ago will not come out, and I am reaching for basic things like the word for shelf. Am I actually losing it or is something else going on here?
Also completely normal to get worse before better while your brain reorganises how it accesses things. I had a two week stretch where I could not conjugate anything correctly right after a big listening push.
The shelf thing is funny and universal. Everyone knows the word for democracy and nobody knows the word for shelf, because books talk about ideas and life talks about furniture. Learn a room's worth of nouns from your own flat and a chunk of this fades.
I labelled things in my kitchen with sticky notes like a cliche and it worked embarrassingly well.
You are probably just tired. Vocabulary does not disappear in a month.
@negative_split_nan · 2mo ago · 3 replies
Nothing is being lost. Recognition and recall are stored differently and you have only ever built the recognition side. Speaking is the first time you have tested recall, so it feels like a collapse when it is really the first honest measurement you have taken. It settles in six to eight weeks if you keep going.
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@negative_split_nan · 2mo ago
Speed it up by keeping a list of every word you reached for and could not find. Mine was about 40 a week at the start and around 5 a week two months later. Those specific words are worth more than any premade deck, because they are the ones your actual life needs.
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@skillet_sara · 2mo ago
That is oddly reassuring. Six weeks feels long though.
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