What's it like to be fully bilingual?
March 8, 2023 2:58 PM Subscribe
I am infinitely and endlessly fascinated by the fact of being fully bilingual. As someone who has only ever spoken one language, I simply don't understand it, and thus it continually impresses and amazes me.
As one example, I recently watched the Navalny documentary, and his daughter, who grew up in Russia but now attends Stanford, speaks perfect, impeccable, unaccented English. Navalny himself speaks excellent English. All of this blows my mind. I'm writing a story now where a character is Italian but speaks fluent English. So, you who are bilingual, can you tell me anything about what it's like? When you're speaking in your second language, are you translating, or do you shift modes and begin thinking and operating in the other language, swimming in that water? I once heard someone say that he's a different person when he speaks Italian than when he speaks English. If you relate to this, can you say how and why this is so? I'm just interested in anything you can share about what the bilingual experience is like. And just know that I have great admiration for your capacities!
As one example, I recently watched the Navalny documentary, and his daughter, who grew up in Russia but now attends Stanford, speaks perfect, impeccable, unaccented English. Navalny himself speaks excellent English. All of this blows my mind. I'm writing a story now where a character is Italian but speaks fluent English. So, you who are bilingual, can you tell me anything about what it's like? When you're speaking in your second language, are you translating, or do you shift modes and begin thinking and operating in the other language, swimming in that water? I once heard someone say that he's a different person when he speaks Italian than when he speaks English. If you relate to this, can you say how and why this is so? I'm just interested in anything you can share about what the bilingual experience is like. And just know that I have great admiration for your capacities!
For me it's just like knowing more ways to say something. Or more names for the same object or thing.
For eaxample, in English maybe you use the word couch ususally. In a conversation someone else calls it a sofa. When you hear it, you dont translate sofa to couch in your head (because they are just two words for the same object). Its the same for another language, you don't translate the word for an object from one language to the other. It's just another name for the same object.
I don't know exactly how, when you are speaking, the brain knows to use words from one language vs the other though. But sometimes in casual conversation with other bilingual people a mix of the two languages comes out, so the brain clearly has some context that helps it decide to pick the word for an object in one language vs another.
posted by CleverClover at 4:10 PM on March 8, 2023 [15 favorites]
For eaxample, in English maybe you use the word couch ususally. In a conversation someone else calls it a sofa. When you hear it, you dont translate sofa to couch in your head (because they are just two words for the same object). Its the same for another language, you don't translate the word for an object from one language to the other. It's just another name for the same object.
I don't know exactly how, when you are speaking, the brain knows to use words from one language vs the other though. But sometimes in casual conversation with other bilingual people a mix of the two languages comes out, so the brain clearly has some context that helps it decide to pick the word for an object in one language vs another.
posted by CleverClover at 4:10 PM on March 8, 2023 [15 favorites]
I studied in Malay language education system until I was 18 - all instruction and exams and communication with my teachers and peers at school were in Malay - but I spoke English at home and with my peers outside of school.
I separated my internal language that way as well. When I did maths in my head, I wouldn't think "five times three" - I'd think, "lima kali tiga". For the Malay language subject, when I was asked to write essays, I'd always choose the factual / debate style ones as that was what I was most comfortable with - because everything I learned was in Malay.
For English language exams I'd always pick fiction composition instead, because that's the realm where my daydreams, fantasies, adventures with friends, crushes and personal dramas occurred.
That being said I also did fiction composition in Malay and I think it's a gorgeous language for storytelling. I think the difference being a native speaker is that you see a cultural color behind some words that gets lost once it's translated. So you can say berjasa gets translated to English as meritorious but I'd say that only captures 25% of what the word means, it's only the closest equivalent we have in another language. So it's about understanding the cultural heritage and associations behind the word far more than simply the meaning of the word itself.
I moved out of Malaysia at age 20 and after about 2 years my internal thoughts reverted 100% to English.
posted by xdvesper at 4:18 PM on March 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
I separated my internal language that way as well. When I did maths in my head, I wouldn't think "five times three" - I'd think, "lima kali tiga". For the Malay language subject, when I was asked to write essays, I'd always choose the factual / debate style ones as that was what I was most comfortable with - because everything I learned was in Malay.
For English language exams I'd always pick fiction composition instead, because that's the realm where my daydreams, fantasies, adventures with friends, crushes and personal dramas occurred.
That being said I also did fiction composition in Malay and I think it's a gorgeous language for storytelling. I think the difference being a native speaker is that you see a cultural color behind some words that gets lost once it's translated. So you can say berjasa gets translated to English as meritorious but I'd say that only captures 25% of what the word means, it's only the closest equivalent we have in another language. So it's about understanding the cultural heritage and associations behind the word far more than simply the meaning of the word itself.
I moved out of Malaysia at age 20 and after about 2 years my internal thoughts reverted 100% to English.
posted by xdvesper at 4:18 PM on March 8, 2023 [13 favorites]
I grew up bilingual but learned additional languages along the way, and the languages I was bilingual in as a child are not the same as the languages in which I consider myself bilingual as an adult.
I do not translate between languages - the way I described it to someone is that it's like my brain has different compartments for different languages, and I just switch from one to the other. When I am tired, "glitches" in this switching occur: I think I am speaking in language A but am actually speaking in language B and am not aware of this until pointed out to me, or I think I'm writing in English when actually I've been phonetically writing out Korean using the Latin alphabet.
Personally I find translating between languages difficult, because i often can't find exact conceptual matches between languages. When speaking with my family, we don't strictly stick to one language. We might mostly be speaking in language A but will use words or expressions from language B (or C or D) if that conveys the exact meaning we want to express. Or we might be shifting between languages without consciously being aware of it. I have been told my voice sounds different when I speak different languages.
I read somewhere that people who become bilingual as adults are more likely to continue translating in their heads, while people who've been bilingual since childhood don't do this at all.
On preview, I have a similar compartmentalization to xdvesper above - I cannot do arithmetic or math in general in English. Mental calculations are done in Korean, and honestly I'm not sure the language in which my brain is solving equations but it's definitely not English.
posted by research monkey at 4:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
I do not translate between languages - the way I described it to someone is that it's like my brain has different compartments for different languages, and I just switch from one to the other. When I am tired, "glitches" in this switching occur: I think I am speaking in language A but am actually speaking in language B and am not aware of this until pointed out to me, or I think I'm writing in English when actually I've been phonetically writing out Korean using the Latin alphabet.
Personally I find translating between languages difficult, because i often can't find exact conceptual matches between languages. When speaking with my family, we don't strictly stick to one language. We might mostly be speaking in language A but will use words or expressions from language B (or C or D) if that conveys the exact meaning we want to express. Or we might be shifting between languages without consciously being aware of it. I have been told my voice sounds different when I speak different languages.
I read somewhere that people who become bilingual as adults are more likely to continue translating in their heads, while people who've been bilingual since childhood don't do this at all.
On preview, I have a similar compartmentalization to xdvesper above - I cannot do arithmetic or math in general in English. Mental calculations are done in Korean, and honestly I'm not sure the language in which my brain is solving equations but it's definitely not English.
posted by research monkey at 4:30 PM on March 8, 2023 [7 favorites]
You might appreciate Speak Memory, the autobiography of Vladimir Nabokov. Raised in Russia in a trilingual household, he went on to become one of the greatest and most precise writers of the English language.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:12 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Winnie the Proust at 5:12 PM on March 8, 2023 [3 favorites]
the thing about being a different person when speaking a different language is so because idioms and patterns of speech are different; they can express different ideas and mindsets.
Additionally, it is sometimes true that people learn different languages, or become immersed in them, at different points in their life. The language I was speaking most when I was a teen is not the language I speak most today as a middle aged person. There are layers of emotional association I have with phrases and words that were part of my day-to-day vocabulary then, but not so much now. When I have occasion to use them these days, it is like smelling a smell that was associated with a memory.
Thinking about translation only happens on rare occasions when a particular meaning is tricky to express, usually because a word exists in one of my languages and not in another, so when I encounter it during a thought process, I find the word isn't there and have to start figuring out how to express the meaning some other way.
In speaking with other bilingual people I very often find that words from both languages are being used when they're needed (because the word exists in only one of the languages.) It's no big deal.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:18 PM on March 8, 2023
Additionally, it is sometimes true that people learn different languages, or become immersed in them, at different points in their life. The language I was speaking most when I was a teen is not the language I speak most today as a middle aged person. There are layers of emotional association I have with phrases and words that were part of my day-to-day vocabulary then, but not so much now. When I have occasion to use them these days, it is like smelling a smell that was associated with a memory.
Thinking about translation only happens on rare occasions when a particular meaning is tricky to express, usually because a word exists in one of my languages and not in another, so when I encounter it during a thought process, I find the word isn't there and have to start figuring out how to express the meaning some other way.
In speaking with other bilingual people I very often find that words from both languages are being used when they're needed (because the word exists in only one of the languages.) It's no big deal.
posted by fingersandtoes at 5:18 PM on March 8, 2023
I feel like your question is peculiar to unilingual anglophones. Fluency in English to the point of bilingualism is not unusual; it's much easier to achieve in English than any other language due to the ubiquity of anglophone culture.
The vast majority of 'ESL' speakers I know (most of whom can speak English at native fluency) code switch constantly, including to different registers of the same language. Think of how you speak to a peer, vs how you may speak to an audience or to someone who's accorded enormous respect. You don't translate between different registers in these situations; you simply speak. It's the same for those who can speak multiple languages at native fluency. There's very little intention that goes into it, switching languages and registers is nearly instantaneous. Have you ever heard bilingual people speak among themselves? They will switch languages in between or even within sentences, inserting a word in one language in the middle of a sentence in another.
posted by sid at 5:43 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
The vast majority of 'ESL' speakers I know (most of whom can speak English at native fluency) code switch constantly, including to different registers of the same language. Think of how you speak to a peer, vs how you may speak to an audience or to someone who's accorded enormous respect. You don't translate between different registers in these situations; you simply speak. It's the same for those who can speak multiple languages at native fluency. There's very little intention that goes into it, switching languages and registers is nearly instantaneous. Have you ever heard bilingual people speak among themselves? They will switch languages in between or even within sentences, inserting a word in one language in the middle of a sentence in another.
posted by sid at 5:43 PM on March 8, 2023 [5 favorites]
I am fully bilingual in English and Hebrew, and read and speak a bunch of other languages at a FAR less fluent level; those are the ones I had to learn the hard way (with grammar books and actually thinking about it.)
I learned English the easy way, by hearing it around me as an infant and young child, in Missouri. I learned Hebrew the other easy way, by moving to live in a Hebrew-speaking environment (in Israel, sigh) when I was four. That was young enough for me to become fully fluent both in the language and the culture. By which I mean: I learned the nursery rhymes and early childhood stories, which form the cultural foundation of these languages.
I've been interpreting (hearing things in one language and repeating them in another) since I was five. At first this was mostly for the benefit of my mother and/or visiting relatives. When I learned how to read and write, I started translating (reading thins in one language, writing them in another.) Notes to school were my first area of focus. My poor mother... she would eventually become able to communicate on a practical level. But she never did gain the elegance of speech in Hebrew and educated presentation that she had in English (I think she would have, but she didn't live long enough to.)
What it feels like? It feels like talking. I stumble to express myself to about the same extent in both - not very much. Some domains of knowledge come more easily in one language, some in the other, mostly based on where I was first exposed to them. So I count in English and multiply in Hebrew, and I divide and do trigonometry and geometry proofs and so forth most easily in Hebrew, because I learned to count in English (Sesame Street!) and did all my k-12(ish) education in Hebrew.
By profession, I'm a translator and interpreter. To translate, I keep my eyes on the source document (Heb or Eng) and touch-type in the target language (Eng or Heb). Do I look up words? Probably as much as I do when writing, and often it's more to find the exactly right nuance than the meaning. I generally *know* what it means.
There are many words and phrases and concepts that don't convey easily from language to language. Modern Israeli Hebrew lacks exact counterparts for "nice" and "kind", to name two common bugbears, and it doesn't do well with the imperative ("press the button" is a pain in the neck, because if I'm talking to someone, I need to know which of the two-and-only-two grammatical genders to use.) American English doesn't have a counterpart for דווקא and פרייר. Hebrew doesn't sufficiently differentiate between crocodiles and alligators, and has muddled up rabbits, hares, and hyrexes to the point of requiring me to do an actual dictionary lookup to verify I've used the correct English word. To say nothing of tigers and leopards! Massive animal muddle for somewhat amusing historical reasons.
Phrases and adages and proverbs and allusions are unique per language. Those may be the hardest to convey, even if my text is technical. But what my process of translating looks like, to an observer, is that my eyes are on my left screen and my typing is appearing on my right - and that I type at about the speed I type when composing a letter or writing a report in either language. And interpreting sounds like I'm listening intently to someone and repeating what they say. It's just as hard for me to repeat English verbatim as it is to repeat the meaning in Hebrew (or Hebrew into English.)
I am about equally likely to want to share a bit of poetry in either language, and they float up to my consciousness depending on context, and ignoring the language of the people I'm speaking with. This ends up with me doing a lot of impromptu poetry translation.
My speaking and declamation voice is very different in Hebrew than in English. I'm not sure quite why. I'm recognizably the same person - but the Hebrew sounds a lot more eloquent.
By comparison, I took several years of Spanish at a community college, after falling in love with Mexico City's vibrant art life. Understanding it is ok, by now, as long as I have a dictionary handy for the hard words. The many, many hard words, which are the ones I have never seen before, or seen only once or twice. I cannot really claim to be able to compose any writing in Spanish, and when I talk I sound - non-fluent. I can sort of make myself understood, as long as I'm speaking to someone patient.
I have to think of the words consciously, and even so I get many of them wrong.
But I'm sure a few more years of practice will get me up to speed. Spanish is my strongest intentionally-studied language. Other languages are sort of hanging out there, at various levels of passive acquisition (I understand but can't speak intelligibly) and I intend to add a few more as time goes by. I'm not even 60 yet! There's plenty of time.
posted by Shunra at 5:55 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
I learned English the easy way, by hearing it around me as an infant and young child, in Missouri. I learned Hebrew the other easy way, by moving to live in a Hebrew-speaking environment (in Israel, sigh) when I was four. That was young enough for me to become fully fluent both in the language and the culture. By which I mean: I learned the nursery rhymes and early childhood stories, which form the cultural foundation of these languages.
I've been interpreting (hearing things in one language and repeating them in another) since I was five. At first this was mostly for the benefit of my mother and/or visiting relatives. When I learned how to read and write, I started translating (reading thins in one language, writing them in another.) Notes to school were my first area of focus. My poor mother... she would eventually become able to communicate on a practical level. But she never did gain the elegance of speech in Hebrew and educated presentation that she had in English (I think she would have, but she didn't live long enough to.)
What it feels like? It feels like talking. I stumble to express myself to about the same extent in both - not very much. Some domains of knowledge come more easily in one language, some in the other, mostly based on where I was first exposed to them. So I count in English and multiply in Hebrew, and I divide and do trigonometry and geometry proofs and so forth most easily in Hebrew, because I learned to count in English (Sesame Street!) and did all my k-12(ish) education in Hebrew.
By profession, I'm a translator and interpreter. To translate, I keep my eyes on the source document (Heb or Eng) and touch-type in the target language (Eng or Heb). Do I look up words? Probably as much as I do when writing, and often it's more to find the exactly right nuance than the meaning. I generally *know* what it means.
There are many words and phrases and concepts that don't convey easily from language to language. Modern Israeli Hebrew lacks exact counterparts for "nice" and "kind", to name two common bugbears, and it doesn't do well with the imperative ("press the button" is a pain in the neck, because if I'm talking to someone, I need to know which of the two-and-only-two grammatical genders to use.) American English doesn't have a counterpart for דווקא and פרייר. Hebrew doesn't sufficiently differentiate between crocodiles and alligators, and has muddled up rabbits, hares, and hyrexes to the point of requiring me to do an actual dictionary lookup to verify I've used the correct English word. To say nothing of tigers and leopards! Massive animal muddle for somewhat amusing historical reasons.
Phrases and adages and proverbs and allusions are unique per language. Those may be the hardest to convey, even if my text is technical. But what my process of translating looks like, to an observer, is that my eyes are on my left screen and my typing is appearing on my right - and that I type at about the speed I type when composing a letter or writing a report in either language. And interpreting sounds like I'm listening intently to someone and repeating what they say. It's just as hard for me to repeat English verbatim as it is to repeat the meaning in Hebrew (or Hebrew into English.)
I am about equally likely to want to share a bit of poetry in either language, and they float up to my consciousness depending on context, and ignoring the language of the people I'm speaking with. This ends up with me doing a lot of impromptu poetry translation.
My speaking and declamation voice is very different in Hebrew than in English. I'm not sure quite why. I'm recognizably the same person - but the Hebrew sounds a lot more eloquent.
By comparison, I took several years of Spanish at a community college, after falling in love with Mexico City's vibrant art life. Understanding it is ok, by now, as long as I have a dictionary handy for the hard words. The many, many hard words, which are the ones I have never seen before, or seen only once or twice. I cannot really claim to be able to compose any writing in Spanish, and when I talk I sound - non-fluent. I can sort of make myself understood, as long as I'm speaking to someone patient.
I have to think of the words consciously, and even so I get many of them wrong.
But I'm sure a few more years of practice will get me up to speed. Spanish is my strongest intentionally-studied language. Other languages are sort of hanging out there, at various levels of passive acquisition (I understand but can't speak intelligibly) and I intend to add a few more as time goes by. I'm not even 60 yet! There's plenty of time.
posted by Shunra at 5:55 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
I grew up bilingual English/German (and currently looking for a job in the bay area where I can use those skills!) and for me, "switching" between the languages is like flipping a page. Same me, no lag, just different language. But will note that when I'm in an English-speaking environment, I think in that language, and vice-versa for German-speaking environments.
posted by slater at 6:16 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by slater at 6:16 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
There has been a lot of research on "second language [or L2] acquisition" (the technical term in linguistics, even if it's actually the third or later language for a given individual). There are significant differences between people who acquire more than one language at more or less the same time (i.e., in infancy and childhood) and those who acquire a second language after a first.
I recall reading once about research indicating that people were less emotional and more logical when approaching problem solving in L2 vs. L1, but I don't remember the details. I'm a native English speaker who learned French starting at 20 and German a couple years later. When I had reached the point of being able to converse, but with effort, I found the cognitive load involved in formulating my thoughts did leave me less emotionally engaged in the conversation than when speaking in English, though as I gained fluency, the effect seemed to diminish.
posted by brianogilvie at 6:54 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I recall reading once about research indicating that people were less emotional and more logical when approaching problem solving in L2 vs. L1, but I don't remember the details. I'm a native English speaker who learned French starting at 20 and German a couple years later. When I had reached the point of being able to converse, but with effort, I found the cognitive load involved in formulating my thoughts did leave me less emotionally engaged in the conversation than when speaking in English, though as I gained fluency, the effect seemed to diminish.
posted by brianogilvie at 6:54 PM on March 8, 2023 [1 favorite]
I'm completely bilingual in English and Afrikaans. People always "compliment" me that they could never tell that I'm Afrikaans.
I can translate between the 2 languages in real time, reading English text out loud as Afrikaans or vice versa.
I learnt most of my English after the age of 9 but I could speak it from younger, mostly from being read English children's books, and Asterix and Tintin in English.
I spend more time with English people so my Afrikaans is somewhat mixed with English when I can't think of a word.
I revert to Afrikaans when in pain.
I have different perceptions of sounds and pronunciation, for example I automatically switch to perceiving an "a" sound as "ey" in English and "ah" in Afrikaans without conscious effort.
There's a lot of social hierarchy involved in language choice, for example Afrikaans speaking people will sometimes signal that I'm excluded from the group by responding in English when I speak Afrikaans.
When I meet a new person, and we're speaking English I will subtly insert Afrikaans pronunciation in my speech to check if they pick up on it, and other Afrikaans people usually do.
There are some topics, like new tech, where there aren't enough Afrikaans words (or I don't know them, or dislike them) so I talk about that topic much more easily in English.
When I talk to monolingual people about etymology, they often seem to have a really wooden ear for how words are related to one another or guessing what an unknown word means.
posted by Zumbador at 7:37 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
I can translate between the 2 languages in real time, reading English text out loud as Afrikaans or vice versa.
I learnt most of my English after the age of 9 but I could speak it from younger, mostly from being read English children's books, and Asterix and Tintin in English.
I spend more time with English people so my Afrikaans is somewhat mixed with English when I can't think of a word.
I revert to Afrikaans when in pain.
I have different perceptions of sounds and pronunciation, for example I automatically switch to perceiving an "a" sound as "ey" in English and "ah" in Afrikaans without conscious effort.
There's a lot of social hierarchy involved in language choice, for example Afrikaans speaking people will sometimes signal that I'm excluded from the group by responding in English when I speak Afrikaans.
When I meet a new person, and we're speaking English I will subtly insert Afrikaans pronunciation in my speech to check if they pick up on it, and other Afrikaans people usually do.
There are some topics, like new tech, where there aren't enough Afrikaans words (or I don't know them, or dislike them) so I talk about that topic much more easily in English.
When I talk to monolingual people about etymology, they often seem to have a really wooden ear for how words are related to one another or guessing what an unknown word means.
posted by Zumbador at 7:37 PM on March 8, 2023 [9 favorites]
I am bilingual. While I wouldn't say I have a different personality in each language, I think owing the ages at which I learned the languages, respectively, I have entire domains that I feel comfortable with in one language but not the other. For example, I know all the terms and words for everything sex-related, but I don't feel comfortable as a "sexual person" in my native tongue and I don't feel like I have a "sexual subjectivity" in it -- I have only been in sexual and romantic situations with people who are the speakers of the language I acquired in adolescence.
I don't translate in my head -- it's more like tuning the radio station to AM or FM and then being on that wavelength. Perhaps relatedly, unless it is in the specific context of translation or simultaneous interpretation, which I sometimes do, and which I am good at, I find it uncomfortable to the point of it feeling almost unbearable in a sensory processing way to have both languages around me at once if I am not "connecting" them through translation. For example, if I am trying to have a conversation in English and a song is playing in my native tongue, that will produce immediate intense discomfort for me.
Here is another quirk -- rhymes sound more "rhymey" to me in my native language than in English -- in English almost everything rhyming sounds like an imperfect rhyme. And I fundamentally cannot process slant rhymes as rhyming.
posted by virve at 10:13 PM on March 8, 2023
I don't translate in my head -- it's more like tuning the radio station to AM or FM and then being on that wavelength. Perhaps relatedly, unless it is in the specific context of translation or simultaneous interpretation, which I sometimes do, and which I am good at, I find it uncomfortable to the point of it feeling almost unbearable in a sensory processing way to have both languages around me at once if I am not "connecting" them through translation. For example, if I am trying to have a conversation in English and a song is playing in my native tongue, that will produce immediate intense discomfort for me.
Here is another quirk -- rhymes sound more "rhymey" to me in my native language than in English -- in English almost everything rhyming sounds like an imperfect rhyme. And I fundamentally cannot process slant rhymes as rhyming.
posted by virve at 10:13 PM on March 8, 2023
Although some of his greater writings are problematic, I'm quite fond of the part in the Language Instinct where Steven Pinker argues that thought exists outside of language by appealing to the common experience of wanting to express a concept, knowing that there's a word that expresses said concept, whilst finding oneself utterly unable to bring that word to mind.
So it's not the case that you're thinking in one language and consciously translating to another. Neither is it the case that you have to "shift modes" to begin "think[ing]" in one language or another. Rather, you're generally formulating concepts in a very pure sense, and letting those formulations drift down and take form according to whatever particular strengths and weaknesses comprise the expressive power of the language you happen to be using at the time.
As sid points out, individuals will switch between different registers, dialects, and even languages very rapidly to maximally leverage their respective expressive power. But the very definition of fluency is that this takes place with a minimum of conscious effort.
posted by 7segment at 11:23 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
So it's not the case that you're thinking in one language and consciously translating to another. Neither is it the case that you have to "shift modes" to begin "think[ing]" in one language or another. Rather, you're generally formulating concepts in a very pure sense, and letting those formulations drift down and take form according to whatever particular strengths and weaknesses comprise the expressive power of the language you happen to be using at the time.
As sid points out, individuals will switch between different registers, dialects, and even languages very rapidly to maximally leverage their respective expressive power. But the very definition of fluency is that this takes place with a minimum of conscious effort.
posted by 7segment at 11:23 PM on March 8, 2023 [2 favorites]
Lol what coincidence, i was just sharing a thing that's part of a thing I noticed isn't quite mentioned here yet: when you're all multilingual in a group. The world building in The Expanse gives a more representative view than whatever went on in Firefly, for instance. Today's topic is acts of grammatical terrorism (towards a pidgin/creole version), but I'm pretty sure most of the relevant posts would be under my #Malay tag.
posted by cendawanita at 1:30 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cendawanita at 1:30 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
I grew up bilingual, and my family insists that I spoke flawless French as well when I was nine. I can still read French, albeit slowly. As an adult, I have learnt German and Italian. I was fluent in German, but because I was a bit put off by the fact that my accent sounds "cute" to many Germans, I try to speak English unless the German speaker absolute refuses, and as with the French, my spoken language has gone a bit rusty while I can still read more or less fluently.
That all said, if I am in an immersive French or German context, I dream and think in that language. Less so in Italian, but it happens.
In my day to day life, I change between Danish and English all the time, both in speaking and thinking. I can't tell you what triggers one or the other language. A weird thing is that when I am teaching students from all over the place, I have a thick Danish accent. If I am in an immersive English-speaking context, I have a Mid-Atlantic accent, which makes sense, because I went to both American and English schools when I was a child. I could also do a Yorkshire dialect, and a Northern Danish one, as they are similar and those were the places I spent most time, but I've lost that skill.
I don't think about language much today, unless I am translating for work, as I sometimes do. I just have more words for the same things. There are some technical terms where I don't know the translation, and have to use a dictionary. Lot's of young people here use English phrases while speaking Danish, and sometimes as a teacher I catch on to that, though I try not to. Also, I hate it when non-native English speakers swear a lot when they speak English. It's very distracting.
When I was studying German, I was a bit preoccupied with the things one can say more accurately in German than in English. I guess all countries have some words that are very specific to their culture, and also that different cultures deal differently with importing words from other places. And that again changes over time. Today I am not sure there is that big a difference on the word-level, though obviously there is some. At least within my field of work, it's more of a cultural thing: if you are educated in France or Germany, there is an other set of norms for writing assignments in schools than in the UK or Norway (random countries).
posted by mumimor at 1:31 AM on March 9, 2023
That all said, if I am in an immersive French or German context, I dream and think in that language. Less so in Italian, but it happens.
In my day to day life, I change between Danish and English all the time, both in speaking and thinking. I can't tell you what triggers one or the other language. A weird thing is that when I am teaching students from all over the place, I have a thick Danish accent. If I am in an immersive English-speaking context, I have a Mid-Atlantic accent, which makes sense, because I went to both American and English schools when I was a child. I could also do a Yorkshire dialect, and a Northern Danish one, as they are similar and those were the places I spent most time, but I've lost that skill.
I don't think about language much today, unless I am translating for work, as I sometimes do. I just have more words for the same things. There are some technical terms where I don't know the translation, and have to use a dictionary. Lot's of young people here use English phrases while speaking Danish, and sometimes as a teacher I catch on to that, though I try not to. Also, I hate it when non-native English speakers swear a lot when they speak English. It's very distracting.
When I was studying German, I was a bit preoccupied with the things one can say more accurately in German than in English. I guess all countries have some words that are very specific to their culture, and also that different cultures deal differently with importing words from other places. And that again changes over time. Today I am not sure there is that big a difference on the word-level, though obviously there is some. At least within my field of work, it's more of a cultural thing: if you are educated in France or Germany, there is an other set of norms for writing assignments in schools than in the UK or Norway (random countries).
posted by mumimor at 1:31 AM on March 9, 2023
I am German and learned English at school, then did my tertiary education in England and started my professional life there. I also had to lean Latin and French at school. I was never very fluent in French and only had to use French rarely since then. Now back in a more German speaking environment. Despite my geographic location, most of my work related communication is in English - either because my colleagues/clients only speak English or because English is the only shared language with native speakers of other languages.
As I started my professional life, including all training, in England, I tend to default to English for all technical things. And even though I can read German technical writing and understand people when they discuss technical matters in German, that is the only time I find myself actively translating things in my mind. As a result, I don't always sound very smooth when I communicate about technical topics in German. I am sure I would no longer do that if most of my colleagues and clients were German speakers. Basically, I never had to make a full switch back to German for work. Even though I could not hold a conversation in French, I recently had to read a proposal document in French and I was able to understand the proposal just fine - there was a lot of English jargon in it.
I make no conscious switch for any other topics. A few years ago I was listening to a trailer for a popular show on TV. They were pushing the show hard, the trailer was shown frequently for a few days. And for the longest time I was wondering why they seemed to be talking about different plot lines. And then I realised that they were talking about different plot lines because they were advertising different episodes (even seasons) because one trailer was on German TV and one on British TV...I was just listening to the TV in the background.
It makes a difference how tired I am. Sometimes I write emails and they just feel a bit off. When I focus more, I realise they feel off because I am using German words and English grammar or that I managed to switch language mid sentence...always a good signal to stop and revisit in the morning.
posted by koahiatamadl at 4:00 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
As I started my professional life, including all training, in England, I tend to default to English for all technical things. And even though I can read German technical writing and understand people when they discuss technical matters in German, that is the only time I find myself actively translating things in my mind. As a result, I don't always sound very smooth when I communicate about technical topics in German. I am sure I would no longer do that if most of my colleagues and clients were German speakers. Basically, I never had to make a full switch back to German for work. Even though I could not hold a conversation in French, I recently had to read a proposal document in French and I was able to understand the proposal just fine - there was a lot of English jargon in it.
I make no conscious switch for any other topics. A few years ago I was listening to a trailer for a popular show on TV. They were pushing the show hard, the trailer was shown frequently for a few days. And for the longest time I was wondering why they seemed to be talking about different plot lines. And then I realised that they were talking about different plot lines because they were advertising different episodes (even seasons) because one trailer was on German TV and one on British TV...I was just listening to the TV in the background.
It makes a difference how tired I am. Sometimes I write emails and they just feel a bit off. When I focus more, I realise they feel off because I am using German words and English grammar or that I managed to switch language mid sentence...always a good signal to stop and revisit in the morning.
posted by koahiatamadl at 4:00 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
FWIW, I am fully bilingual in Mandarin Chinese and English. I also speak Cantonese and some Spanish.
Generally, you "task switch" if you are fully fluent in both languages, so you just "switch" your brain over to the other language completely (thinking, reading, writing, etc.) then switch back.
Listening can happen passively, so your mind switch automatically, but speaking and thinking often require "mentally switching gears".
IMHO, if you still have to translate in your head, you are NOT fully fluent in the other language. But that's just my personal definition.
posted by kschang at 4:27 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Generally, you "task switch" if you are fully fluent in both languages, so you just "switch" your brain over to the other language completely (thinking, reading, writing, etc.) then switch back.
Listening can happen passively, so your mind switch automatically, but speaking and thinking often require "mentally switching gears".
IMHO, if you still have to translate in your head, you are NOT fully fluent in the other language. But that's just my personal definition.
posted by kschang at 4:27 AM on March 9, 2023 [1 favorite]
Italian/English bilingual - native Italian, learned English later.
Like others have said, it's not translating in my head (I can, for instance if I'm reading in one language and translating it into the other, but I have to deliberately engage "translation mode", it's not always on); if I'm speaking in one language, I'm thinking in the same language. It does happen sometimes that I'm writing or speaking in one language, and I can't remember the word for a thing or concept, so I reach for the other language and then try to translate it... sometimes successfully, sometimes I end up having to ask Google. But I distinctly remember having the "augh, what's that word, it's on the tip of my tongue" issue when I only had English at a "hello, my name is" level, too, except then I couldn't reach for English to fix it.
I dream in either language, pretty interchangeably - sometimes a dream is all in one language, sometimes there's a distinct switch from one language to the other, sometimes it's a mixture of both.
I am extremely good at crosswords, but can only solve them in my native language. That includes those codeword crosswords where each letter equals a number, and you're given one or two words to start you off and you have to fill in the whole thing, so it's not just about the clues not clicking.
I don't have a discernible accent in English, except if I spend a week or two speaking only Italian, then my English gets an Italian accent for a day or so.
I can lipread in both languages and it makes it absolutely impossible to watch a TV show that was made in one language and dubbed into the other without endless frustration.
posted by sailoreagle at 4:36 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Like others have said, it's not translating in my head (I can, for instance if I'm reading in one language and translating it into the other, but I have to deliberately engage "translation mode", it's not always on); if I'm speaking in one language, I'm thinking in the same language. It does happen sometimes that I'm writing or speaking in one language, and I can't remember the word for a thing or concept, so I reach for the other language and then try to translate it... sometimes successfully, sometimes I end up having to ask Google. But I distinctly remember having the "augh, what's that word, it's on the tip of my tongue" issue when I only had English at a "hello, my name is" level, too, except then I couldn't reach for English to fix it.
I dream in either language, pretty interchangeably - sometimes a dream is all in one language, sometimes there's a distinct switch from one language to the other, sometimes it's a mixture of both.
I am extremely good at crosswords, but can only solve them in my native language. That includes those codeword crosswords where each letter equals a number, and you're given one or two words to start you off and you have to fill in the whole thing, so it's not just about the clues not clicking.
I don't have a discernible accent in English, except if I spend a week or two speaking only Italian, then my English gets an Italian accent for a day or so.
I can lipread in both languages and it makes it absolutely impossible to watch a TV show that was made in one language and dubbed into the other without endless frustration.
posted by sailoreagle at 4:36 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
There might be differences worht wondering about based on when in life someone became bilingual: an early childhood or in adulthood. Some of the answers to your questions might be really different for people who picked up their fluency at different stages of life!
I grew up in a monolingual, deeply rural American town in the southern states. I craved language, though, especially French from an early age (for some reason that is lost to me). I started taking French classes when I was 9 or 10, but when I was v18/19 I vdid my second year of university in France. And boom, all those years of picking up piecemeal bits of vocabulary and grammar took shape so quickly that those first six weeks of immersion felt like jumping up to light speed after years and years of riding in a fishing boat. Immersion is the key thing, the amazing thing, because even though you have to focus your attention on picking up the language that's really the only active, conscious part of it. You give your brain the gift of that focus, and your brain just slips into this hyperactive language acquisition mode that is a surreal experience. Every later-learner remembers the first time they dream in the second language, and I'm no different. One day you notice that it's easier to sort of relax your mental grip and yield to the urge to let youself recognize and comprehend automatically instead of relying on the brute force real-time translation that all new learners have to start with. So that's a thing I can tell you it's like: realizing that you're using a crutch that you don't really need so much and then marvelling that you can just... understand?
I'd also say it's an experience of learning your mother tongue better. I took English classes, sure, but they always felt a bit abstract and unneccessary. Picking up a second language, though, is like realizing that all the puzzle pieces are pretty similar but they're cut differently. They fit into one another in ways that don't make sense at first, but as you experiment with combinations you start to see that there are similar kinds of patterns that are only superficially different. Learning a romance language with English as a backdrop, you get this deep contact with the infrastructure of big parts of how you mentally think and speak: roots of words, etymologies, historical changes in meaning, on and on and on. And the net effect is that you learn how to circumlocute really well—your vocabulary grows in all directions, you realize what some fancy-sounding words mean just because you can see a root you recognize.
I remember feeling as if my English transformed from this "non-thing" that I never thought about to a deep, wide ocean that had been held back by only speakign English, as if that were a dam that was being eroded away by learning French. As my French got better, all these English references and grammar structures and rhymes and context cues started trickling through that eroded gap, faster and faster until I reached this point where the dam was suddenly in pieces all this language came pouring out and the English and French were mixing and sloshing and foaming and filling up my mind. I wrote so, so much in those years, I was obsessed with French/English wordplay and French idioms and my little paperback reference dictionary (which I still have) is scribbled in and annotated and bookmarked and dogeared and worn as hell. You can get really wordy! It's fun! I wish everyone had the time and resources it takes to give yourself this kind of immersive language dunk. I'm grateful for it.
I once heard someone say that he's a different person when he speaks Italian than when he speaks English. If you relate to this, can you say how and why this is so?
French made me realize how still English is. We don't really move our mouths much. French, though? Man, your mouth and pharynx and tongue are working overdrive. Even the fundamental phonemes have you pursing your lips, arching your tongue, trilling your uvula, focusing sounds deep in your throat and way up in your nasal sinuses. As a result, gestures become a key part of the language—facial movements, body movements, head tilts and nods... they all mean things. You end up holding and carrying your body differently, so you feel that difference.
I also think that learning languages kind of mutates your self-identity. When and where I grew up, I had a profound regionally-expected twangy accent. Learning French made me (somewhat consciously) aware of my natural voice, and so I started to modify it in small degrees. As aresult, I sound nothing like the rest of my family. I moved toward the adialectical 'broadcast English' that doesn't betray your point of origin. I feel a little weird about that 20-30 years after the fact, but inasmuch as its a loss it also brings gains. I learned a very specific regional French, so now when I'm in France people think hilarious, wonderful things about where I must be from ("are your parents Dutch, and were you raised in the Ardèche?" is the surprisingly specific read that I get from time to time). Identity, language, dialects, regional quirks... these things are all so tied up, how could you take on a new set of those things and not feel a partition or expansion of the self? It really is amazing.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:11 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
I grew up in a monolingual, deeply rural American town in the southern states. I craved language, though, especially French from an early age (for some reason that is lost to me). I started taking French classes when I was 9 or 10, but when I was v18/19 I vdid my second year of university in France. And boom, all those years of picking up piecemeal bits of vocabulary and grammar took shape so quickly that those first six weeks of immersion felt like jumping up to light speed after years and years of riding in a fishing boat. Immersion is the key thing, the amazing thing, because even though you have to focus your attention on picking up the language that's really the only active, conscious part of it. You give your brain the gift of that focus, and your brain just slips into this hyperactive language acquisition mode that is a surreal experience. Every later-learner remembers the first time they dream in the second language, and I'm no different. One day you notice that it's easier to sort of relax your mental grip and yield to the urge to let youself recognize and comprehend automatically instead of relying on the brute force real-time translation that all new learners have to start with. So that's a thing I can tell you it's like: realizing that you're using a crutch that you don't really need so much and then marvelling that you can just... understand?
I'd also say it's an experience of learning your mother tongue better. I took English classes, sure, but they always felt a bit abstract and unneccessary. Picking up a second language, though, is like realizing that all the puzzle pieces are pretty similar but they're cut differently. They fit into one another in ways that don't make sense at first, but as you experiment with combinations you start to see that there are similar kinds of patterns that are only superficially different. Learning a romance language with English as a backdrop, you get this deep contact with the infrastructure of big parts of how you mentally think and speak: roots of words, etymologies, historical changes in meaning, on and on and on. And the net effect is that you learn how to circumlocute really well—your vocabulary grows in all directions, you realize what some fancy-sounding words mean just because you can see a root you recognize.
I remember feeling as if my English transformed from this "non-thing" that I never thought about to a deep, wide ocean that had been held back by only speakign English, as if that were a dam that was being eroded away by learning French. As my French got better, all these English references and grammar structures and rhymes and context cues started trickling through that eroded gap, faster and faster until I reached this point where the dam was suddenly in pieces all this language came pouring out and the English and French were mixing and sloshing and foaming and filling up my mind. I wrote so, so much in those years, I was obsessed with French/English wordplay and French idioms and my little paperback reference dictionary (which I still have) is scribbled in and annotated and bookmarked and dogeared and worn as hell. You can get really wordy! It's fun! I wish everyone had the time and resources it takes to give yourself this kind of immersive language dunk. I'm grateful for it.
I once heard someone say that he's a different person when he speaks Italian than when he speaks English. If you relate to this, can you say how and why this is so?
French made me realize how still English is. We don't really move our mouths much. French, though? Man, your mouth and pharynx and tongue are working overdrive. Even the fundamental phonemes have you pursing your lips, arching your tongue, trilling your uvula, focusing sounds deep in your throat and way up in your nasal sinuses. As a result, gestures become a key part of the language—facial movements, body movements, head tilts and nods... they all mean things. You end up holding and carrying your body differently, so you feel that difference.
I also think that learning languages kind of mutates your self-identity. When and where I grew up, I had a profound regionally-expected twangy accent. Learning French made me (somewhat consciously) aware of my natural voice, and so I started to modify it in small degrees. As aresult, I sound nothing like the rest of my family. I moved toward the adialectical 'broadcast English' that doesn't betray your point of origin. I feel a little weird about that 20-30 years after the fact, but inasmuch as its a loss it also brings gains. I learned a very specific regional French, so now when I'm in France people think hilarious, wonderful things about where I must be from ("are your parents Dutch, and were you raised in the Ardèche?" is the surprisingly specific read that I get from time to time). Identity, language, dialects, regional quirks... these things are all so tied up, how could you take on a new set of those things and not feel a partition or expansion of the self? It really is amazing.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 5:11 AM on March 9, 2023 [7 favorites]
Like @zumbador, another Afrikaans/English bilingual speaker here. Grew up in an Afrikaans household, but in SA you are exposed to so much English in daily life that by your teens they are effectively both first languages. Which you speak depends on who you speak to. In mixed groups, everyone uses English. One-to-one, it would feel strange to speak English to a first-language Afrikaans speaker, even if you're both fluent. Afrikaans speakers mix in an a lot of English words in everyday speech – it can be quite an effort to find the "correct" Afrikaans word or expression sometimes, especially if you spend most of your time in English company. Sometimes when I speak to my brother, almost all words in a sentence are English, but using Afrikaans syntax and glued together with Afrikaans pronouns and conjunctions. But in our heads, we're speaking Afrikaans to each other. My inner monologue can be either Afrikaans or English, ditto when I count in my head.
posted by snarfois at 6:54 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by snarfois at 6:54 AM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm perfectly bilingual. In fact, I am now more comfortable with English than I am with my native tongue (Italian), despite the fact that I didn't move to an English speaking country until I was 20. I was fluent in English beforehand but I did not have the experience of speaking it ALL the time for everything.
Yes, I do feel like two different people because I think in two different languages. The subtleties and quirks of either language show through in how my thoughts take shape, which affects how I reason in one language or the other. When I'm in the US I speak and think predominantly in English and it takes me some time to switch gears back to Italian. The only thing that cuts through that, normally, is unexpected pain. I still often say "ahia!" instead of ouch.
This is actually one of the aspects of fictional bilingualism that tends to throw me out of a story. Take sex. It's almost a trope to have a character devolve into the native language while in the throes of passion, or whatever, but in reality, that character would devolve into whatever language has FORMED THEIR EXPERIENCES. Childhood fears? Italian. Sex, which I only started experiencing as a young adult in an English speaking country? English.
It's two separate grooves. Just because my native tongue was Italian doesn't mean my formative experience was in Italian.
I have a much harder time writing at a level that I am satisfied with in Italian now. It's hard, I was an excellent writer, but I much prefer the flexibility and playfulness of English, especially for technical writing. Some of it is definitely that my adult consciousness matured in English and therefore mature, confident writing comes more naturally to me in English.
posted by lydhre at 8:58 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
Yes, I do feel like two different people because I think in two different languages. The subtleties and quirks of either language show through in how my thoughts take shape, which affects how I reason in one language or the other. When I'm in the US I speak and think predominantly in English and it takes me some time to switch gears back to Italian. The only thing that cuts through that, normally, is unexpected pain. I still often say "ahia!" instead of ouch.
This is actually one of the aspects of fictional bilingualism that tends to throw me out of a story. Take sex. It's almost a trope to have a character devolve into the native language while in the throes of passion, or whatever, but in reality, that character would devolve into whatever language has FORMED THEIR EXPERIENCES. Childhood fears? Italian. Sex, which I only started experiencing as a young adult in an English speaking country? English.
It's two separate grooves. Just because my native tongue was Italian doesn't mean my formative experience was in Italian.
I have a much harder time writing at a level that I am satisfied with in Italian now. It's hard, I was an excellent writer, but I much prefer the flexibility and playfulness of English, especially for technical writing. Some of it is definitely that my adult consciousness matured in English and therefore mature, confident writing comes more naturally to me in English.
posted by lydhre at 8:58 AM on March 9, 2023 [4 favorites]
For me it's simply code switching, which is something that you are also familiar with (even if you don't realize you're familiar with it).
You have a "separate languages" you use with your doctor vs. your mother vs. your pet. And it's kind of like, when you look at their faces, the particular language suitable to that particular person is what comes out of your mouth. Maybe in some cases you get the languages mixed up - like, you're trying to describe a symptom to your doctor and you hunt around for the right vocabulary in Doctor Language but you come up short, so you have to borrow a phrase from Mommy Language and say, "You know what I mean?" and hopefully your doctor does know what you mean even though you used Mommy Language instead of Doctor Language.
And how about the language in your head, the language you speak to yourself in? That has its own particular flavor too, I expect, a tonality and vocabulary and structure you wouldn't use with anyone else. Sometimes you're conscious that you're translating, say, Mommy Language into Self Language in your head. You'd think something like, "Mom would call this _____," and you kind of hear your mom say that particular phrase in her voice, and you continue that thought in your own Self Language. That's conscious translation. But most of the time you're not conscious of any translation even if you really are doing it. Who knows whether any translation is even occurring? There is no way to find out.
That's exactly how being multilungual works for me. I used to speak one language at home until I was about three years old, then I started speaking one language to mom and another to my dad, then I started to learn english in pre-k, then at age 5 I had to learn a whole new language to communicate with school friends because we moved to a new area, and my brain is wired to pick up languages quickly so I learned another language when I got married to someone who spoke the new language.
I think to myself in two or three dominant languages. Dreams are in those two or three languages as well. My out-loud self talk is always one particular language. And when I speak with other people, I barely have any control over what language comes out of my mouth. I code-switch and speak the language that feels most relevant, even if that's a wild guess (e.g. with strangers in another country). It's very automatic. It can get me in trouble a lot because I also switch accents depending on who I'm speaking with and it's very hard for me to exert conscious control over any of it!
posted by MiraK at 9:03 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
You have a "separate languages" you use with your doctor vs. your mother vs. your pet. And it's kind of like, when you look at their faces, the particular language suitable to that particular person is what comes out of your mouth. Maybe in some cases you get the languages mixed up - like, you're trying to describe a symptom to your doctor and you hunt around for the right vocabulary in Doctor Language but you come up short, so you have to borrow a phrase from Mommy Language and say, "You know what I mean?" and hopefully your doctor does know what you mean even though you used Mommy Language instead of Doctor Language.
And how about the language in your head, the language you speak to yourself in? That has its own particular flavor too, I expect, a tonality and vocabulary and structure you wouldn't use with anyone else. Sometimes you're conscious that you're translating, say, Mommy Language into Self Language in your head. You'd think something like, "Mom would call this _____," and you kind of hear your mom say that particular phrase in her voice, and you continue that thought in your own Self Language. That's conscious translation. But most of the time you're not conscious of any translation even if you really are doing it. Who knows whether any translation is even occurring? There is no way to find out.
That's exactly how being multilungual works for me. I used to speak one language at home until I was about three years old, then I started speaking one language to mom and another to my dad, then I started to learn english in pre-k, then at age 5 I had to learn a whole new language to communicate with school friends because we moved to a new area, and my brain is wired to pick up languages quickly so I learned another language when I got married to someone who spoke the new language.
I think to myself in two or three dominant languages. Dreams are in those two or three languages as well. My out-loud self talk is always one particular language. And when I speak with other people, I barely have any control over what language comes out of my mouth. I code-switch and speak the language that feels most relevant, even if that's a wild guess (e.g. with strangers in another country). It's very automatic. It can get me in trouble a lot because I also switch accents depending on who I'm speaking with and it's very hard for me to exert conscious control over any of it!
posted by MiraK at 9:03 AM on March 9, 2023 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: Wow, so glad I asked this question and thank you all for these wonderful answers and explanations. Really fascinating and illuminating, every one.
posted by swheatie at 11:31 AM on March 9, 2023
posted by swheatie at 11:31 AM on March 9, 2023
I just remembered a specific incident where I surprised myself.
Once, when our whole family was on holiday in South Africa, my mum had a heart attack. It was terrifying.
Now the important thing here is that I have a very fraught relationship with my mum, for good reason. But obviously, five year old mumimor had a mum who was the mum with no alternatives.
And when that heart attack happened, my normal Mid-Atlantic English shifted to the English of five-year-old mumimor, The language of a Yorkshire girl who attends a private school because our village was too small for a school. Not entirely RP, but mostly RP with a bit of dialect in there.
posted by mumimor at 12:37 PM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
Once, when our whole family was on holiday in South Africa, my mum had a heart attack. It was terrifying.
Now the important thing here is that I have a very fraught relationship with my mum, for good reason. But obviously, five year old mumimor had a mum who was the mum with no alternatives.
And when that heart attack happened, my normal Mid-Atlantic English shifted to the English of five-year-old mumimor, The language of a Yorkshire girl who attends a private school because our village was too small for a school. Not entirely RP, but mostly RP with a bit of dialect in there.
posted by mumimor at 12:37 PM on March 9, 2023 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by alchemist at 3:48 PM on March 8, 2023 [7 favorites]