The little hiccups of my bilingual brain.

[randomness]

digitalemur thinks it's amusing that I sometimes lose English words when the word in Mandarin immediately pops into my mind. Just now it was having "能干" (nénggàn) right away when I simply couldn't come up with "capable". I flail for a bit searching for the word in English until I find it.

To be fair, it happens a lot more the other way around but obviously non-Mandarin speakers don't hear that. It happens much less often with words in French. Unless of course it is a word without any particularly easy translation into English, but I think that's a different situation.

(Googling for "bilingual aphasia" got me The Implications of Bilinguality and Bilingual Aphasia.)

I guess I should bring this up with bloodstones.

Comments

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

I'm shocked, shocked. :)

Some words are just a better match to concept

Definitely.

My first memory of screwing up a translation was one of those. At the age of three I tried to explain to another kid what was in the steamed bun I was eating. I translated 豆沙 (dòu shā) as "bean dirt". This did not sound particularly appetizing to the other kid, who made a face and said something disparaging.

Later, I found out that I wasn't going to be able to translate this to a kid my age easily. While 豆沙 literally translates to "bean sand", that doesn't sound any more tasty. And the actual preferred translation bean paste isn't any better, not to a neighborhood kid who's never tasted anything like it before.

"Bean glue? Ew, how can you eat that?"

You see where this goes. But an educational experience in the subtleties of translation!

(Now I want a red bean bun.)

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about this type of aphasia, but I do like thinking about what being bilingual does to ones brain, so I would like talking about it.
I also have a story about a different, but related brain hiccup that's funny because it involves the NSL word for virgin.