#mixing languages

"Por favor, looken hacia abajo". Look is mirar, in this situation (2nd person of the plural) it conjugates as miren, result: looken. [Please, look down].

"Estaba buscando el opósito de la palabra". Opposite is, in this context, antónimo, I completely forgot and tried to translate the word from English and this is the result. Opósito doesn't exist. [I was looking for the opposite of the word].

(My brother said this one) "¿Me pasas el glasso?" Glass (of water) is vaso and this is the result. [Can you pass me the glass (of water)?"].

I wanted to say "lo grabaría de ese lado del cuarto", but I actually said "lo recordaría de ese lado del cuarto". [I wanted to say "I would record it in that side of the room" but what I actually said was "I would remember it in that side of the room"].

"Terapista" instead of "terapeuta" because in English is "therapist". (Then I searched it on the Dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española and results that "terapista" does exist but is only used in some South American countries).

18/02/19

I feel so sick today, like really sick. I can barely think. I already lost the ability to focus. I don't know why but I had just responded to one girl at my Uni in Polish. It was a weird situation. She was just coming to the toilet and we bumped into each other and then I was like: "Jest wolne, ja tylko..." ( It's empty, I was just...). And then I realised that I'm speaking Polish. My reaction? I apologised in German 😑

    Question

Hello,

I am Macedonian living in Finland and my spouse is Finnish. I speak quite good English but at home we speak Finnish almost all the time. We have 2,5 months old baby for whose future I’d like her to speak Macedonian and Finnish and to learn English as well. I am struggling between two options in about a year’s time when our daughter starts day care:

OPOL (mum Macedonian, dad…

Am I the only one that usually mixes some languages. I mean,the other day I was making an exercise in italian, I understood it well but answered in spanish. Or the other day I was speaking in spanish with my friends and suddenly began speaking english.

Also, when I'm writing in german or french and I don't remember a word I usually write it in italian, and things like that. For me there's no problem, but today my fiend read some of the things that I wrote and she was like "wtf am I reading" and that made me think what would happen if I also did that in a conversation. I think it'll be like

"Hey, have you seen that thing? I really need it"

"That thing?"

"Yeah, that thing"

"What thing?"

"That thing, you know, I can't remember... El maldito ticket de compras"

Anyone who, like most South Africans, speaks more than one language will know the feeling. You simply cannot produce the word in the particular language, because your vocabulary temporarily abandons you and instead it pops out in another.  This phenomenon is called code-switching and it can be very useful in many contexts. If like me, you grew up with three languages this happens often. More often than many of us would like. However, why do some dislike it?

One group of people that may really dislike code-switching are monolinguals. They those of us who only speak one language and so are unable to code-switch. On the other hand multilingual individuals who speak two or more languages. These are the individuals who will code-switch using the primary language and any additional languages their conversation partner understands. This is possible because more and more people speak at least two languages.

Mandarin, for example is on the rise as a first and second language as an enormous amount of individuals speak it and are thus spreading it. With growing globalization and the spread of certain commonly spoken languages (especially colonial ones), such as English, French and Spanish, we are moving more and more into a world with less mono-linguist individuals and more bi- and multi lingual ones. This is the case as most will learn their home language at home and an official language in school and then possibly also learn a business language that is used internationally. If you are English then these may be the same with just a slight variation in dialect. If not you may suddenly be sitting in the middle of three languages and potentially more dialect and this can become both problematic and useful.

Code switching can be extremely useful. For example to me the word “lekker” or “vrot” does simply not translate into German or English (my other two languages) and the same goes for something like “lebensmüde” in German or “pudge” in English. While there may be ways to correctly translate them but the feel is different. It allows us to convey the precise meaning and feeling belonging to a word with others that also speak the other language or understand the words at the very least.

However this becomes problematic when we begin to do it unconsciously around individuals who don’t speak the other languages and thus have a breakdown in communication. Additionally when we start to mix up sayings and simply translating them when they don’t exist in that form in that specific language. To me this happens more often in Germany than it does in South Africa, as German has incorporated its fair share of Anglicisms. Another problem occurs when the code-switching begins to influence our vocabulary, as it begins to atrophy, when we forget individual words and replace them with the ones we has been code-switching with.

Q&A: Should minority language parents always be consistent about using their mother tongue? http://multilingualparenting.com/2017/03/02/qa-should-minority-language-parents-always-be-consistent-about-using-their-mother-tongue/

  Question

Dear All,

We are an Italian family living in France. We speak Italian at home (two hours at night and on the weekends/holidays) but sometimes in the afternoons after school, when my husband is not there yet, it happens that I speak French as well to my daughter (I’m very exposed to it and I’m also fluent). Both because we are with French-speaking persons or because I speak most of the…