(no subject)

[randomness]

I'm reposting this post from the Economist's Johnson blog for bloodstones, who explained code-switching to me a while back, and digitalemur, who more recently asked me to translate Gemütlichkeit.

Mixing languages: Que es ese code-switching?

An excerpt:

"There is no reason to say Weltanschauung for "worldview", unless you just don't get enough chances to type two u's in succession and have tired of writing about vacuums."

The comments are worth a glance, too.

Comments

[sarakate.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if this is truly code-switching, but since my son is taking both Spanish and Japanese in school this year, a lot of the short conversational responses are in one or the other of those (e.g., I say, "Go take the trash out," and I get back, "Hai!" as he heads off to do it. But if the response is "Mom, I'm in the middle of this game and it can't pause!" that's always in English.)

I know just enough Spanish that Spanish-language TV drives me *insane*, being neither intelligible enough to fully follow nor ignorable noise to me, and I have a few phrases I tend to drop in ("mijos locos" is a favorite form of address for my children, for instance), but like browngirl, I suspect this falls more in the realm of affectation.