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Do you know which language you speak? | ||
Tags: Code-switching | Native Fluency | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| hagen Triglot Senior Member Germany Joined 6757 days ago 171 posts - 179 votes  6 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 17 of 29 19 February 2008 at 2:36am | IP Logged |
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It happens to me all the time when reading articles on Wikipedia. I usually check out the English articles first, because they tend to be more detailed than the German ones (not always though). But sometimes when I'm through I have to go back and look which of the two languages it was so that I can check out the other one.
This wouldn't happen to me with Chinese (let alone Korean), but I might forget what language I used for a little chat with a Chinese colleague a week ago. So I'd say for me it correlates with fluency - if I'm less comfortable in a language I'll remember the language I used by the effort it cost me. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Phil_K Diglot Newbie Mexico Joined 5926 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese, Esperanto | Message 18 of 29 22 February 2008 at 10:50am | IP Logged |
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I live in Mexico but I'm a British native speaker of English. We have SAP on the TV (I don't know if this is a worldwide device, but basically it means the signal comes with 2 languages and you can choose). Although I am fluent in Spanish, I like to watch "The Simpsons" in English, as the voices are terrible in Spanish. Sometimes after the commercial break, the program comes back in Spanish for a few minutes, and I don't notice. As some said, a sure sign you are comfortable with both languages!
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| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6700 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 19 of 29 22 February 2008 at 12:23pm | IP Logged |
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I had something like that a few days ago. I was watching an American film on TV with Polish voice-over (it's usual on TV in Poland). Suddenly I noticed that there is no voice-over any more, just the original soundtrack. I had no idea how long was it like that and I noticed it eventually not because of the language but because the soundtrack was louder.
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| jdmoncada Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4831 days ago 470 posts - 741 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Finnish Studies: Russian, Japanese | Message 20 of 29 18 February 2011 at 9:53pm | IP Logged |
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I always know which languages I'm speaking, though that is most likely because I am not beyond intermediate in any of the second languages. I've dropped in vocabulary before, that wasn't in the same language without realizing I've done it. But I think that's a rather common event with beginners.
I also tend to subconsciously translate most of my foreign language experiences so I can repeat them in English. This may end as I get more fluent. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| yawn Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 5223 days ago 141 posts - 209 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, FrenchC2, SpanishC2 Studies: GermanB1 | Message 21 of 29 18 February 2011 at 10:29pm | IP Logged |
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I'm usually aware of which language(s) I'm speaking, although not in the "wait... yeah I'm speaking Spanish right
now" sense. Like, I don't consciously think to myself "Ahora debo hablar solamente en espanol" or anything like that; rather, it just seems to come out on its own when someone else starts speaking in Spanish to me. Not sure if that makes any sense, but that's just my own $0.02. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5563 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian | Message 22 of 29 19 February 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
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I can think of a few times when looking back at conversations when I don't remember which language the conversation was in. I end up going back to the topic of conversation and picking a word that I know would have been said - then going through the possible languages the conversation could have been in, in order to work it out. Also a couple of weeks ago after a German oral exam, after the last person had finished, the usual practise would be to switch right back to English - which I must stress is never my preference. I asked my friend a couple of questions about her presentation and explained how I felt mine had gone - she answered me in English. After a minute or two I realised that everything I'd said to her had been in German, completely without realising it - for which I apologised, as I was a bit surprised that it had happened and wasn't sure whether she considered it rude. Edited by LanguageSponge on 19 February 2011 at 1:20am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Ichiro Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6006 days ago 111 posts - 152 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, French Studies: Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Malay | Message 23 of 29 19 February 2011 at 5:25am | IP Logged |
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I know a second-generation Japanese American who was brought up only in English, and acquired her Japanese largely by osmosis. (She'd heard it all her life, lived in Japan for 5 years, then suddenly started speaking it to her friends in her favourite spaghetti restaurant.) I remember her speaking to her mother on the phone, "バスに乗ったら、go five stops, それから降りたら, we're right in front." I asked her if she knew what language she'd been speaking and she said, English, I only speak English with my mother.
By the way, as a side-story, her elder brother was brought up in the household initially only in Japanese. The family lived in Alaska. When the parents sent the boy off to kindergarten for the first time, he came back very upset. "Why don't you want to go back to school?" "All the kids there are stupid. They don't know how to speak." At that point the family realised they would have to change their language policy. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| ruskivyetr Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5278 days ago 769 posts - 962 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Russian, Polish, Modern Hebrew | Message 24 of 29 19 February 2011 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
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This happens quite often with me, especially since German and English were once equal powers in my mind. I
don't remember stuff happening like this when I was little, but then again I'm sure I wouldn't be able to remember it happening. Often when I space out, and someone is speaking to me (in German or English), I don't recognize consciously what language it's in. I just know what they're saying. I usually have to consciously THINK "What language are they speaking?" to get myself to decide which language I'm hearing. With reading it doesn't happen as often, although sometimes I will mistake a German word for an English word or vice versa (I used to LMAO when I saw the word "after" in English). Regarding speaking, I usually slip in and out with German and English (it's completely arbitrary), when I'm speaking to someone who speaks both natively (as in like some of the other German- Americans I know). If I am speaking to someone who speaks German or English natively, and speaks the other but not native, I speak in the dominant one. It's not a conscious decision I make (because if I had the option I'd only speak in German), it just happens. It's mostly habit, and I usually forget which language I was using. For example, the other day I was speaking with my friend in English. Apparently somewhere along the line I switched into German (he's bilingual). When we arrived at our friends house I must have continued in German because my monolingual English friend asked me to stop speaking in German, which I didn't really realize. This switching happens NEVER in writing though. Occasionally I'll write the German spelling of the word in English. For example, in my PM with Chung, I accidentally wrote Finnland instead of Finland. When the occasion arises that I write in German, my English grammar and my English vocabulary are more than ever present. In speaking I almost have no trouble and show almost no "English" traits regarding vocab or grammar. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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