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From: Paul
Date: 10/8/02
Time: 5:34:18 PM
Remote Name: 193.217.217.131
Hi, Tobe and Chris. Indeed for the first four or five months after moving to Norway my stuttering worsened to levels I hadn't experienced in quite a while. Since I didn't know much Norwegian then, this increased stuttering was almost entirely in English. I think this extended period of speech difficulty was brought on by all the major changes in my life all at once - a new lifestyle, a new country in a totally different part of the world, a new culture, and a new linguistic environment. But eventually as I became more used to my new life, my fluency improved to about the same levels as before my move.
I find now that my stuttering in most cases is worse when I try to speak Norwegian than when I speak English, especially on the particular sounds and sound combinations that aren't found in English, or are very different from their English counterparts. However, this is not always true. For example, when I talk with our "weekend daughter" (a 9-year-old retarded girl who we care for on selected weekends), my Norwegian is usually quite fluent.
I also speak some Hebrew, and my stuttering in that language is also considerably worse than when I speak English.