Do you stutter more when you speak in another language?

[Javier]

Spanish is my mother tongue, and although I consider my English to be pretty good, I used to stutter a lot more when speaking in English.
On the other hand, one of my best friends used to stutter too, and his case was the exact opposite. He said he stuttered less when he spoke in English (Spanish is also his mother tongue).

So, do you stutter more when you speak in another language?

[Anonymous]

Hi Javie,

I definitely think that it depends on the person. I think what contributes to the increased stuttering in a different language is that your vocabulary is not that large in your second language and so you actually have to concentrate on words (which is the worst thing that you can do when trying to self-cure).

As a South African, we were taught Afrikaans in school. And I always remembering stuttering more in Afrikaans speeches than in English speeches. So yes, I definitely think that if I spoke a second language, I would stutter more. It is much easier to “change the entire thought, insert words” etc when you have a strong command of a language.

[Javier]

I agree with you. I think that when we speak in a second language our fear of saying something incorrectly increases (because we don’t have such a wide vocabulary as in our mother tongue), and this makes us stutter more. I stopped caring about this a while ago. In most cases, even though I might make a grammar mistake or something similar, people will understand me. And if this is not the case, I will explain myself again with different words.

[Gábor]

My native language is Hungarian, but I speak English and some German, too. I think I stutter a little bit less in English and German. In the English language, the words starting with the letters “pr” (like “probability” or “precisely”) bother me the most (in Hungarian we don’t have that many words, so I can avoid them). Thinking about the words also doesn’t help, when I speak a foreign language.

[Javier]

In my case, I used to have more trouble speaking in English compared to Spanish, and the only reason is that my vocabulary isn’t as wide in English, so I had to plan even more words. So we need to focus more on the Crutches. But we can speak using C-13 in another language, even if our vocabulary isn’t that wide. I do it all the time.
The language, or words beginning with certain letters are not a problem any longer. We have 12 (13) ways to avoid having a bad incident.

[Author]

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