Has anyone else forgotten large parts of their first language?

[frenchnoodle]

I'm just wondering if this is a common occurrence, I sat down yesterday to teach DC some of my first language and realised because I use English so much, i've actually forgotten a lot of vocabulary and grammar.

Has this happened to any other multilingual people?

When I took my DM to the embassy to get a passport she had to ask them to speak to her in English.

She can read fluently in her first language but finds pronunciation has changed a lot and doesn't want to admit she spoke a dialect so if she's watching TV or a film in her language she has to put English subtitles on.

Been in the UK for 60ish years.

I’m multilingual but English is my native language and I haven’t forgotten it as I’ve spent the vast majority of my life here/in English speaking environments. But there are some words that I either learned for the first time or only ever really used when I lived abroad. And I struggle to think of the English word for them in conversation! Obscure words like intercom, stationery items, university related terms, foods I don’t eat here.

And if I’m talking about the country I lived in, I use the foreign names for buildings, transport etc without realising.