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Bilingual conversation dynamics | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| starst Triglot Senior Member China Joined 5516 days ago 113 posts - 133 votes  Speaks: Mandarin*, Japanese, EnglishC2 Studies: FrenchC1, German, Norwegian | Message 9 of 17 06 January 2010 at 10:02am | IP Logged | ||
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In the conversations between friends, I guess it turns to the language in which you communicate best no matter from which the conversation starts. From my personal experience, the switch happens often when one person can't understand the other.
Moreover, the environment always plays an important role. For example, I take French classes in Tokyo. When I talk with Japanese classmates, it's quite normal that we start in French and switch to Japanese later. We seldom speak English, though most of them also speak not bad English (probably much better than my French and Japanese). I do have several French friends who insist on speaking French with me all the time, but they just mean to help me to learn the language rather than "overpowering" a non-native speaker. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ncruz Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5540 days ago 31 posts - 56 votes Speaks: Spanish, English*, Dutch, Portuguese, Afrikaans Studies: French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, Japanese, Scottish Gaelic | Message 10 of 17 12 January 2010 at 8:33am | IP Logged | ||
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This is a fascinating thread.
Where I live, the conversation dynamics are different than any of those that you described and are dictated mainly by ethnicity rather than actual ability to speak the language. Language binds immigrant communities together and instills in them a strong sense of unity and community. In my experience, no matter how friendly they are, they are often unwilling to share this sense of community with "outsiders". I bet that if you spoke Spanish exactly the same (same vocab., accent, everything) as you do now and were of Mexican background, your Mexican co-workers would speak to you exclusively in Spanish. It is, at least based on my observations, not meant to be unfriendly or rude. It's a matter of community solidarity and not related to your ability to speak Spanish. For example: I was born in Puerto Rico, but have lived all of my life in the Colorado. My mom is American and I consider myself to be pretty bilingual (I use Spanish often to communicate with my Dad, and almost exclusively with my aunt who just moved from Puerto Rico and lives with us and the rest of that side of my family). English is certainly my dominant language, but nobody in Puerto Rico or any other Spanish-speaking country I have visited has really suspected me of being American. But, I'm sad to say, I have NEVER spoken Spanish at length with a native speaker at my high school or about town. The reason, sadly, is that I don't look like the Spanish speakers (mainly mestizo Mexicans) here think a "Hispanic" person should look(I have pretty pale skin,very light brown hair, and green eyes). I would love to speak Spanish with some of the Mexicans at my school because they're great people, but they simply won't let me and are constantly trying to change the conversation back to English. I initially thought that this was because they felt uncomfortable speaking Spanish or felt that my Spanish was unacceptable. I finally began to believe that it was a matter of ethnicity, rather than either of these two things earlier this year. In my French class, I was speaking Spanish with a girl who is learning Spanish and a Mexican kid in my class (who's always very nice to me and I consider to be somewhat of a friend) suddenly blurts, "You have a great accent, you sound like a native.......except you're white." Unsure of how to take this "compliment". I tried to initiate a conversation with him in Spanish to explain to him that I AM sort of a native, but although he seemed interested in hearing about Puerto Rico he insisted on changing the conversation back to English no matter how hard I tried to keep it in English. I left feeling a little dissatisfied and wondering if my Spanish was really so bad that it was necessary to change the conversation to English. I later saw him and one of his Mexican friends. As I was walking by, reflecting on the earlier incident, I heard his friend(who I know for a fact speaks perfect English and was more than capable of speaking with him in English) say *NO JOKE*, "Está llueve mucho". For those of you who don't speak Spanish, that is very, very wrong. I wondered why he was willing to tolerate that, but not my carefully planned Spanish sentences, that I had designed specifically to impress him. I asked him later (in Spanish) why he would speak Spanish with him and not me and he simply responded (in English), "He's Mexican, you're not". I'm sorry for boring all of you with that story, I just thought that it seemed quite appropriate for this thread. -Nick 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6591 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 11 of 17 12 January 2010 at 10:57am | IP Logged | ||
Nick, it could be a particularly high school issue, so I'd encourage you to try speaking to people in Spanish outside of HS, when you deem appropriate. I'd seen how my Mexican-American husband was constantly being addressed in English by Spanish speakers, since being very tall and of light complexion he does not look Hispanic – perhaps Native American, if anything. That is, until he started to initiate conversations in Spanish, and then people actually just respond in Spanish and proceed with a Spanish language conversation rather contentedly. To relay a similarly amusing anecdote, though, about 10 years ago, my husband and I came back to California after having lived in Russia for 2 years. A few weeks after the relocation there was a large family event, where I was meeting a great number of his relatives for the first time. One of his primos, upon being introduced to me, asked whether I spoke Spanish, and when I responded with "unfortunately no", he exclaimed, "ah, so you are like an American, then". My husband and I laughed, as being a native Russian, who'd just been "off the plain" from Europe for less than a month, I was definitely as far from being "like an American" as one can imagine :). In any case, that was amusing then, and seems to point in the direction that is very similar to what you were describing – inclusion or exclusion based on a language in the Hispanic communities. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cherepaha Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 6591 days ago 126 posts - 175 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: Spanish, Polish, Latin, French | Message 12 of 17 12 January 2010 at 11:15am | IP Logged | ||
Children are known to "decide" which language a person speaks, and to then refuse to speak anything else to that particular adult. When a few languages are spoken in a family context, there is a phenomenon of bonding with a child in a particular language. Then similarly, your kid would not mind your speaking whatever languages you want to the world outside, but would insist that you spoke to them in the language you'd initially bonded in. Thus, my daughter at 16 right now is very comfortable no matter what we speak. Yet just a few years ago, she would request that I spoke Russian with her, and would out right refuse to answer to anything I would say in English. At the same time as she happily spoke English or Spanish with everyone else. As for adults, I live in the U.S., and when meeting a Russian speaker, even in the work context, I like to explicitly give them an opportunity to choose a language. So I typically ask if they would like to speak Russian. If in response the person replies in Russian, that established our language of communication from that point on (obviously excluding situations when non-Russian speakers are a part of that conversation). If, however, a person responds in English with something like "you can try", I smile at that and proceed in English, taking that for a statement that they'll be uncomfortable doing that for whatever reason. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5868 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 13 of 17 12 January 2010 at 6:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yesterday, at a booth at the Toronto Boat Show, I spoke to an obviously-francophone man in French. He immediately answered my question in English, without missing a beat. His English was very good, with a very slight accent. It later occurred to me that maybe he replied in English simply because he was very proud and pleased to be able to speak very good English. Maybe it just felt very good to do so. That caused me to think that if I ever become fluent in Dutch, I may well do something similar, and speak in Dutch to Dutch-speaking people even if they seem to want to use or practice English. If I were fluent in Dutch, it would "feel very good" to be able to use it effortless. Probably this feeling of self-satisfaction and 'feel-good' is a big player in bilingual or multilingual situations.
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| manpped Groupie United States Joined 5957 days ago 55 posts - 71 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Japanese, Spanish Studies: Sign Language | Message 14 of 17 13 January 2010 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I can't claim bilingual stasis (yet!) but I do think that my story sheds an interesting light on how passive vs. active language understanding can color a bilingual conversation!
While I was studying in Germany, I often met with my native-speaking academic adviser. I decided to try and speak to her solely in German, even though my speaking skills were pretty awful. When I sputtered out the occasional ill-conceived drabble, she responded her her own mellifluous Deutsch. By the end of our session, I was totally exhausted. I didn't catch a lot of what she said, and I was worried that it would affect my understanding of my academic situation. Now, my adviser spoke excellent English. She was slated to go to America in just a few months. So, our next meeting, I tried speaking in English. I felt awkward just... asking her to switch back. I had, after all, "understood everything" during our last session. So, with trepidation, I responded in English to her German question. She answered in German without missing a beat. We entered an informal agreement: I could speak English, and she'd respond in German. We both understood one another, so there were no problems. The only oddness came from eavesdropping on us as we wandered the campus grounds. ME: Oh, by the way, I'm going to Czech this weekend! HER: Ah, das klingt ja schoen! Mach viel Fotos! Bring's mir spaeter. ME: OK, no problem. I always take lots of pictures. HER: Das ist 'ne gute Idee. It really, really worked for us. Although I didn't get as much accomplished with practicing my spoken German, I was able to get past my shyness and actually learn a bit about my adviser. (Sadly, at our very last session, I had to stress that I needed her to explain a complicated set of directions to me in English. Boah.) Edited by manpped on 13 January 2010 at 8:21pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| ellasevia Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2011 Senior Member Germany Joined 6144 days ago 2150 posts - 3229 votes Speaks: English*, German, Croatian, Greek, French, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian Studies: Catalan, Persian, Mandarin, Japanese, Romanian, Ukrainian | Message 15 of 17 23 January 2010 at 6:31pm | IP Logged | ||
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I attend the same high school as Nick, and have a similar story. I have a friend in my grade who is half Mexican and half German, but looks more German than Mexican. However, except for a year or so when she lived in Germany when she was very young, she was raised entirely in Mexico City (until she was about twelve, when her family moved to Colorado). She speaks both native Spanish and German and she also speaks English fairly fluently (with just a bit of an accent). Anyways, a lot of the Latino kids here refuse to speak with her in Spanish or even talk about her behind her back (but while she's present) in Spanish. She once told me that she heard some Latino kids talking about her like this after she tried speaking Spanish with them: "Mira esa blanca, ella no sabe nada de México." (Look at that white girl, she doesn't know anything about Mexico.) This is ironic, because she has lived in Mexico for longer than most of them have, if at all. In any case, she got very offended.
But this happens a lot. I myself am not by definition a native Spanish speaker (and by no means look like one), but have been exposed to it since I was five, because of my experience at a Spanish-English bilingual elementary school. I speak essentially as well as a native (in fact, my Spanish teacher last year allowed me to skip to a higher level in Spanish but refused to let some native speakers make the same jump) and have been told by countless natives that I sound perfectly native, but nonetheless, they prefer to speak to me in English... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vientito Senior Member Canada Joined 6340 days ago 212 posts - 281 votes | Message 16 of 17 23 January 2010 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Tommus, perhaps you live out there in toronto you have no idea of the language complex we have out here in quebec. Quebecois, if they are bilingual they really tend not to speak to you in quebecois unless you demonstrate that you are very fluent in french. I have lived here for almost a decade and i kinda figure out the reasons behind.
(a) Quebec french is a league of its own. Such differences between standard french and french being used here in quebec can really throw off a lot of non-natives (sometimes even to french speakers from other parts of the world). For a quebecois to respond to you, he or she has to worry first about whether you could understand them at all. (b) Quebec is still a bit of a closed community as compared to the rest of Canada. Closed in the sense that they are very certain of what their tribal identity is. Though they may appear to be very open and welcome to outsiders, they keep that line between them and others very clear. You either are a quebecois or you are not. Being a quebecois means more or less that you speak french. If your effort in speaking to a quebecois appears to be less than perfect, they will switch (no question asked) because somewhere in their mind they have made a decision that you are an outsider. To learn french in quebec is not easy because you generally have to overcome this particular obstacle. It gets very frustrating because no one is willing to practise with you until you progress to a reasonably good level. Talking about a catch-22 scenario here! Quebec folks are in general very nice people but it is not easy to be fully accepted into their community. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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