Language acquisition and language loss (Estonia, Sweden, Germany, UK)

Friend Lars’s aunt was born in Estonia, brought up in Sweden, then moved to Germany before finally settling in England.  

So, her language acquisition was in the order of: (1) Estonian; (2) Swedish; (3) German; (4) English.  

In her later years, as Alzheimer’s started to get a grip on her, she began to lose her English, so my friend had to converse with her in German.  

The next language to go was her German, which made my friend resort to using Swedish.  

In the end, my friend had to go and learn Estonian when her Swedish started to disappear as well.  

So the “last in, first out” principle applies not just to employment and redundancy, but to language loss as well.


Update 251111:  The penny's just dropped.  People say Alzheimer sufferers can remember things that happened way back but not what they did a few minutes ago.  This language loss case is the same pattern.


Update 041211:  I spoke my S.E.Chinese dialect of Teochew/Chaozhou/潮州 until the age of six when I then went to school and started acquiring higher level language usage (e.g., abstract concept vocabulary and expressions of ideas and thoughts) in English and Mandarin, so my level of dialect is something like that of a ten-year-old.  Should Alzheimer's hit me, will I end up with just my dialect (as that was the first language I acquired), and therefore communicating like a ten-year-old??  Eek.