lourdesdeath:cobaltmoony: silentwalrus1:justgot1:cricketcat9:artykyn:prideling:gunvolt: im
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’. Okay, so I wouldn’t call myself bilingual, but many of these really hit home. xD Let me share some of my stuff too… (background: Finnish is my mother tongue, I obviously know English, and some Swedish as well, after studying it 10 years at school.)Let’s start with Swedish, actually. My English is a lot stronger, and English words always try invade when I talk in Swedish. I remember one time I was talking with someone and noticed suddenly that the tiniest smile passed on her lips. I went on talking while my brain tried to decipher that smile, and then I realized that instead of “det är mycket viktigt” (it’s very important) I had said “det är mycket important.”And the most ridiculous case? We were talking about traffic in my Swedish class when I was on student exchange over there, and I wanted to say something like “when you’re driving a car” (när man kör en bil), and what my brain provided me was “när man driver en kar”. Luckily I I realized right away there’s something wrong with this and didn’t say that aloud, but honestly, did I mention I’d had 10 years of Swedish at school? And for the life of me I couldn’t remember what “car” is in Swedish. xD Also, I wrote car there with k cause when I use Egnlish words in Swedish like this, I pronounce them in Swedish way (like, driver is dree-ver. Which, yes I know, is a real verb in Swedish. Just, not “to drive”.)Sometimes I use English words in Finnish too, cause I can’t think of the Finnish equivalent (which honestly makes me kind of sad.) The most ridiculous case of that, though, was back when I couldn’t remember the word “orange” in Finnish (the color, not fruit. Which are the same word in English… I wonder which was named after which?) Btw, it’s oranssi, so shouldn’t have been too hard, but nope. In fact, as I kept on thinking about it, I started getting this unreal feeling, kind of like I’m trying to come up with a word for something that doesn’t exist. How can it exist if I don’t have a word for it? But it was so annoying. I did remember it some time later, but it did take a while. Refused to check it in a dictionary. >_>Using Finnish sayings in English. Yep. I always have to pause and think, is this now an English saying or am I doing it again? I recently noticed I’d used one in one of my fics, where I said something like “nothing but frogs come out when that boy opens his mouth.” That’s based on a Finnish saying “let frogs out of your mouth” which means you’re blurting out something you didn’t mean/shouldn’t be saying. I decided to leave it there, cause I think it’s kind of funny and probably understandable. (is there any English equivalent, btw?)Random thing about that last point in the stuff I reblogged, about Tagalog: in Finnish, you say that food is “in the table” (common thing to say when e.g. calling out that dinner’s ready). Doesn’t make much sense now that I’m thinking of it, but yeah. On that note, I’ll never master English prepositions. They’re out to get me. >_>Oh well… maybe that’s long enough. ^^;; -- source link
#languages#bilingualism