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Bilingual problem | ||
Tags: Code-switching | Diglossia | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| nowayyy Bilingual Triglot Newbie Germany Joined 5329 days ago 6 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, German*, French Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 9 24 September 2015 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | ||
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Before I go over to the actual problem, I feel like I should give you some backgroud information on myself: I grew up bilingually with German and English. I spoke German with my mother and English with my father. My father cannot speak German. I currently live in Germany. My skills in both languages are the same level, so my problem has nothing to do with this. My boyfriend is a German native language speaker and all our conversations are in German, and all our surrounding and friends are also German speakers. He is studying English at University, so he is eager to practice English and he also now wants to practice with me. He will start saying things in English and expect me to switch and speak back to him in English...just that I will want to talk in German and often do. Speaking to him in English feels very 'unnatural' and it even goes so far that I will not be able to think of words and that I will start to feel very uncomfortable. I explained to him many times that it does not work, but he doesn't seem to understand and thinks that I just do not want to help him and that if I just wanted to speak English with him, it would work. But that isn't the case. I now would like to know if this is a common phenomenon and what the reason for it is and of course what it is called.
Can anyone help me or has anyone had similar experiences? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5140 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 9 24 September 2015 at 11:55pm | IP Logged | ||
Your skills are obviously not at the same level in both languages if you feel this way. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 4062 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 9 25 September 2015 at 12:30am | IP Logged | ||
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Hello Nowayyy,
My wife and I have a somewhat similar situation. When I met her, although she was a perfectly bilingual French-English speaker, because I had recently moved to Québec and was making a serious effort to learn French, she agreed that we would speak only French together. The years passed and, given the nature of my professional and social situations, I simply gave up speaking English in favour of French. Nonetheless, occasionally, we would find ourselves in a social situation where our interlocutors were unilingual English speakers and, of course, we spoke English with them. What surprised us both is that, when speaking to one other in English on such occasions, we felt quite "uncomfortable" and the whole process seemed, as you described "unnatural" to us. Some time later, at home, we tried speaking English together and, once again, we felt as though were speaking to someone whom we really did not know! After a number of attempts, we simply gave up and continued speaking only French together. To many people, this anecdote sounds absolutely bizarre, particularly as my wife worked in English whereas I worked in French! I find it comforting to know that we are not alone. I do not see this as representing a problem. As to your boyfriend, he will have many opportunities to practice English elsewhere, and you both know it. So, enjoy your time together in the language in which you are most comfortable together. Finally, as to the phenomenon itself, your post prompted me to conduct a Google Search under "bilingual couples". There are hundreds of thousands of articles that describe this phenomenon as well as other facets of multilingual families. These aren't problems, they're wonderful experiences. Thank you for your post. Edited by Speakeasy on 25 September 2015 at 12:33am 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4782 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 4 of 9 25 September 2015 at 8:09am | IP Logged | ||
I grew up in Almaty in Kazakhstan, a largely Russian-speaking city where many people are bilingual in Kazakh and Russian. I've heard of many couples who wanted to raise their children as native speakers of Kazakh and would try to speak only Kazakh at home. They would report feelings of awkwardness and discomfort, as well as the urge to switch to Russian, even if they could speak Kazakh perfectly well with their grandparents or their relatives out in the countryside. Apparently for them talking to one's peers who have grown up in the same environment as them felt most natural in Russian, in addition to having got to know one's soulmate through that language. I do also know people who managed to get over those feelings of discomfort and get used to the new mode of communication, but it does take a lot of time and effort which may or may not be worth it ultimately. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5236 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 5 of 9 25 September 2015 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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As others said above, not switching languages because of feeling awkward often stems from self-consciousness (f.e. when you know your skills are not that great) or pointlessness (communication would be more fluid in another language) but the issue can come from a wide array of factors.
I often find people tend to stick with the language they started communicating in and won't switch, unless others make them do so, regardless of native language -- as an English teacher, I've had many local students who didn't learn early on that I'm a Spanish native speaker, but would refuse to switch to Spanish anyway. OTOH I have a cousin who needed help with his English but would only speak Spanish with me. Then he enrolled in some English classes... just to find out I was the teacher. As you can imagine, that was good for some laughs! I've had my own problems with switching in the past (and I still have when my skills are not up to par), so I would advise to gradually force yourself to 'snap out of it' instead of sticking to one language and make switching grow as a new skill, so to speak. I didn't use any 'tricks', though, so I can't give more advice on how to do it. When I tried to help others, we did it in little steps and it mostly worked. Edited by mrwarper on 25 September 2015 at 2:50pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chaotic_thought Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 3552 days ago 129 posts - 274 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Dutch, French | Message 6 of 9 25 September 2015 at 11:48pm | IP Logged | ||
You probably won't like this answer, but I think the problem is that your boyfriend is right. If you truly wanted to help him practice English, then you would speak English. Since you don't speak English with him, then it simply means you don't want to help him in that way. You can't have it both ways on this. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3852 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian | Message 7 of 9 26 September 2015 at 9:54am | IP Logged | ||
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Perhaps you don't want to speak with your boyfriend the language you speak with your father: it's 100$, thanks for the psycho-analysis :)
2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6607 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 9 26 September 2015 at 10:37pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, it's awkward to change the language you speak with someone once it's been established. See this thread for example. Edited by Serpent on 26 September 2015 at 10:39pm 7 persons have voted this message useful |
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