(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

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

My former bosses Y and E used to do this all the time with Japanese words. Oddly though, my father never does this with Polish. Although he does often sing a version of "Row Row Row Your Boat" that is a hybrid of Polish and English that was (and maybe still is) sung in the Polish immigrant community of northern NJ.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I often say "gracias" or "danke" instead of "thank you", etc, and I don't know why. I shudder to think that it's an affectation and therefore a bad habit rather than an eccentricity. :(

[rmd.livejournal.com]

I code-switch with my level of boston accent in my speech. It's almost completely unintentional, too. I think part of it is being with someone who has the accent and part of it is trying to discuss certain subjects or strike a certain conversational mood.

It's been kind of startling to some people who haven't heard my wicked pissah accent.

[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.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

My sister, who was born in Germany, was in kindergarten in the US, and had the following exchange:

*teacher shows a picture of a cow* *all the students say, "It's a cow!"*

*teacher shows a picture of a house* *all the students say, "It's a house!"*

*teacher shows a picture of a helicopter* *all the students say, "It's a helicopter!" Except my sister*

*my sister says, "It's a hubschrauber!"* because my folks thought that was a nifty word. And that's what we all learned that that was what those were. Even me, and I was born in the US.