Why do multi-lingual people seemingly, with no reason, switch between languages while talking to someone who is also multi-lingual? What benefit does it have over staying with the language they started the conversation with?
In: 4
It’s called code-switching, and it allows the speakers to draw from both languages’ vocabularies to express ideas. Some words in one language don’t have nice, short, or eloquent equivalents in another, so if you’re speaking to someone who knows both languages, you use whichever one helps you to most easily get your ideas across.
My cousins are bilingual and speak fluent Spanglish, lol. They say it’s because sometimes they can’t think of the word in one language so they use the other. Cómo se dice. . .
Code switch is comfortable. It also is something that explains who you are without you needing to explain it out loud. People who can speak your language already get you, and some phrases are just more expressive in another language or just don’t translate very well.
Well, this is my answer as a French who lived in England for a year:
When I met other French people, we would speak French (except if there was someone who didn’t). We were all living in a hostel when we arrived. We don’t use the translation of hostel in French, because we don’t sleep in any in our country.
So basically, that means that we never used the term in our native language, and we only used in English. So when we talked between us, we would use the English term “hostel” out of habit. This is an exemple, but it happened a lot.
It also applies to multiple languages conversations. Sometimes a word in a language is more precise than another in another language. Or sometimes you have inside jokes about a term in a specific language.
Finally, let’s say I’m speaking English with an English guy that also speaks French. If i don’t know how to phrase something in English, then I’ll say it in French, knowing the person will get it.
Hope that answered your question!
Edit:typo and grammar
Not everything translates exactly from one language into another.
When you can only speak one language, you get around not having a word for a specific thing, or not being able to describe something perfectly, because you have the rest of the language available to you as well as slang, and hand gestures etc.
However, if you speak two or more languages, it is usually easier to switch into another language because that language has a particular set of vocabulary that is more appropriate for the topic.
Then on top of that, there’s secrecy.
Being able to switch languages to say something that you don’t want everyone to understand is a very useful tool
Sometimes I know how to address a topic in English because I read an article in English about it and don’t remember or can’t think of the equivalent in French at the moment.
Just because we speak more than one language, it does not mean that the vocabulary span is exactly the same in all languages we speak.
Some ideas just come into my head in English, others in French. If the person i’m speaking too knows both, well there i’m just going to continue with what my brain is spitting out.
Also, for anything technical, English terms are often familiar to more people
a lot of experiences and situations happen get embeded in our separate realities because you’re in your native language brain, or your current reality. So you’ll talk in your native/home language when relating to a story about family, friends, english when talking about work, shopping because the memories, the experience happened in that space. when the two get together you have to translate.
I don’t think its the same as compartmentalizing. IE: a very nice family man who goes to work at the concentration camp.
A friend who was a chronic alcoholic explained how he could pass DUI drunk tests, after awhile being drunk becomes a 2nd reality and you just learn to maintain. Another friend who probably consumed more LSD than any living person should confirmed this.
Not all languages are created equal. The vocabulary and grammar of each language lend themselves to some things better than others. Depending on the topic or concept that the person is trying to convey one language can be better to express it more easily and directly since there’s no real way to directly translate one language to another. To some degree you always have to take some liberties to make it make sense, and if you and the listener both know the other language, then it’s easier to just skip the translation part and speak in a way you’ll both understand anyways.
The topic or concept plays a large role. If I for example read an article about something in english it’s usually the case that Ι’ll have an easier time relaying that information to someone else in english also. When you truly know a language well, you don’t just directly translate your primary language into it and speak it, you think in it. So a lot of times when you’re thinking of something you may very well be thinking about it in the language you heard it in or simply because it’s more convenient for the particular subject.
It’s also something that happens absent mindedly because realistically not all languages have the same presence in the world around us. Most major media is in english, or maybe you buy something but the instruction manual doesn’t have your language and you need to know another, or you visit a website and it’s only available in one language, usually english, so for non native english speakers it’s very common that they have to use their english knowledge multiple times per day and this overall means that many of your more mundane conversations will probably switch through languages a lot since you’re constantly using both of those languages on a daily basis.
I’m not a native english speaker but honestly I think I speak, read or listen to english about as much if not more than my mother tongue daily.
Without claiming to be a linguist, and only have the perspective of somebody who is bilingual, I think the best explanation is that when you are speaking say in Spanish, you get to a point in the conversation where the word you are looking for comes faster to your mind in say English, and without realizing it, you switch to English for a while, until the same happens with a word in Spanish, and then you switch without realizing it back to Spanish.
Latest Answers