thegreenmeridian:queer-crusader: botanicallydubious: a-poeticallychaotic-bee:wannabe-santiago:ma

thegreenmeridian:queer-crusader: botanicallydubious: a-poeticallychaotic-bee: wannabe-santiago: mango-pickle: letscheereachotheron: kasper-the-unfriendly-ghost: araku-validrava: riskpig: eg515: theboywhocan11: theleakypen: lourdesdeath: cobaltmoony: silentwalrus1: justgot1: cricketcat9: artykyn: prideling: gunvolt: im going to have a stroke Instead try…Person A: You know… the thingPerson B: The “thing”?Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed: Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!” Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.” I use Spanish and English daily, none is my native language. When I’m tired or did not have enough sleep I loose track of who to address in which language; I caught myself explaining something in Spanish to my English-speaking friends more than once. When I’m REALLY tired I’ll throw some Polish words in the mix. There is nothing more painful than bad fake Spanglish by an American writer. Bilingual people don’t just randomly drop words in nonsensical places in their sentences ffs. “I’m muy tired! I think I’ll go to my cama and go to sleep!“ Nobody does that. From my bilingual parents: - Only being able to do math in their original language. “Ok so that would beeeeee … *muttering* ocho por cuatro menos tres…” - Losing words and getting mad at you about it. “Gimme the - the - UGH, ESA COSA AHI’ CARAJO. The thing, the oven mitt. Christ.” - Making asides to you in Spanish even though you’ve told them to not do this as lots of people here speak Spanish. “Oye, mira esa, que cara fea.” “MOM FFS WE’RE IN A MEXICAN NEIGHBORHOOD.” - Swears in English don’t count. - Swears in Spanish mean you’d better fucking run, kid. - Introducing you to English-only Americans using your Spanish name so that they mispronounce your name for all eternity because that’s what your mom said your name was. “Hi Dee-yanna!” “sigh, Just call me Diana.” “Yeah but your mom said your name was Dee-yanna.” - Your parents give you a name that only makes sense in Spanish. “Your name is Floor?” “No, my name is Flor.” “FLOOR?” “Sigh.” - conjugating English words with Russian grammar and vice versa. Sometimes both at once, which is extra fun. самолет -> самолетас -> самолетасы - when vice versa, dropping English articles entirely. The, a, an: all gone. e.g. “I go to store and buy thing, I fix car and go to place.” This also happens when i am very tired - speaking English with heavy accent you don’t actually have - when my family and I are switching over fast, we say the English words in a very heavy Russian accent that mostly doesn’t show up otherwise bonus: - keysmashing in the wrong language when your keyboard is still switched over - using ))))) instead of :))) or other culture-specific emoji/typing quirks all of the above I don’t actually speak Tagalog, but my mom’s Filipino. One of my favorite things is when she forgets how to preposition, so something is ‘in the table’. SOMEHOW I NEVER REBLOGGED THIS?!?!?!?!? this is one of my absolute favorite posts on all of tumblralso, to add to the pile of fun things bilinguals do: cackling over bilingual puns that nobody else in the room will get and then being completely unable to explain why this is funny Interesting. Reblogging this for future reference. my favourite is that feeling when you have the perfect response to something but halfway through saying it you realised it’s in a language the other person doesn’t speak so you either just kind of… fade out, or try desperately to make it make sense in the other language I lose my place all the time when I’m counting in English, but never when I count in German. I’m swedish but at this point I’m so fluent in english that I can switch between languages on a dime. i hate forgetting a word in english and having to describe but realizing that i cant describe it in english. so im just stuttering between russian and english and none of my english speaking friends can help Same Let’s not forget speaking in a mixture of the two languages all the time, especially when you’re around people who also speak both languages. Also, making puns in their mother tongue. Quickly switching to your mother tongue while insulting your friends. God, the typing quirks…almost always need to reprimand myself for doing them ‍♀️ im only like. barely conversational in german but in english i STILL end up tagging ‘ge-’ onto the beginning of verbs and ’-en’ onto the end ‘i have. up gefucken’ is absolutely stupid and doesn’t mean anything and yet i say it constantly I was chatting to my sister once about how comfortable she and her fiancé had gotten around each other. Comfortable to let out the occasional fart around one another, and also to have some fights without feeling like they are walking on eggshells and with the ability to recover well from those. We’re both Dutch, but he’s foreign. So I jokingly told my sister she could now comfortably give him “de wind van voren EN van achteren”. Loosely translated this means “rip him a new one AND let one rip”. But then she tried to translate it to English so she could share this joke with her fiancé later, and it uhh. Was a bit too literal, not to mention incorrect. She quickly realised that to “blow him from the front AND the back” was,,, not quite the same as what she meant. We sobbed with laughter for a solid ten minutes Every fluent ESL speaker I know has at least once started talking to me in their native language without realising it. When I tell them what they’re doing, without fail the response is “oh, sorry!” *continues talking in native language* -- source link
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