Today, my son pointed to the washine machine, and said: "Mama, Auto Tür auf!" (Mama, car door open!)
I didn't know what he was talking about, since he wasn't pointing at any cars. Then his dad, said in Russian,
"No, that's not a car ("mashina") "that's a stiralnaja mashina"
So basically our son had done a back-translation from Russian to German, and decided, since both cars and washing machines are types of "mashina" in Russian, that a washing machine was an "Auto."
Glad we managed to sort out this little misunderstanding ... :)
I am sure there are plenty more to come so keep reading!
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
My favourite code-switches
So it has been established that code-switching follows rules and is not a sign of confused, undifferentiated language mixing.
It is actually really quite difficult to define the syntactic rules of code-switching, but bilingual speakers have very clear intuitions as to what is grammatical and what is not. (I thought it might be a fun project to write the Syntax of German/English code-switching for example)... But anyway, it's clearly not random mixing, as indeed studies on code-switching also confirm.
Because code-switching is such a very striking feature of early bilingual language production (and indeed all bilingual speakers code-switch when they speak with other bilinguals) this apparent mixing often causes parents of bilingual children some concern that their children are not able to "tell their languages apart." Generally, code-switching is discouraged by parents.
However we know now that language mixing in production does not mean that the child does not differentiate between their languages.
Here is some anecdotal evidence from my son!
For some words, my son can actually tell you what each of us says:
Yesterday, he was holding a spoon, and he said:
"Kindergarten! Boon" (and said with a real Scottish accent!)
I said, yes, and what do you say?
"Löffel"
and Papa?
He had to think a little bit, and then said:
"Loshka"
Then he said: "Thoko auch "boon"" (Thoko also says spoon)
Anyway, here are some of my favourite code-switches from my family:
Habt ihr schon eingefütet? (German/Hungarian)
"Have you already switched the heating on?"
He really honked that one up.( German/English)
"He really messed that one one up- eg er hat das wirklich verhonkt)
Hát hiszen ez lófat! (Hungarian-English) (this one is from some relatives in the US)
"But this is lowfat!" (this one sounds quite rude in Hungarian)
And here is a nice one from a friend:
Sometimes I start a conversation in English y terminó in español (English/Spanish)
I have actually noticed that you can be more or less fluent in code-switching depending on whether you have contexts in which you have other bilinguals to "practise" with. I, for example, am very good at code-switching in Hungarian/German (family context) and German/English (from my school) but I am not very "good" at Hungarian/English. I had a Hungarian friend here in Edinburgh, and I kept code-switching into German when speaking with him, which he found quite funny. He took me up on it and asked me to switch into English instead, because he was having difficulty following me. And I found that really hard! In my life, Hungarian and English just do not mix!! (But I will practise...)
So, over to you: what are your favourite code-switches?
It is actually really quite difficult to define the syntactic rules of code-switching, but bilingual speakers have very clear intuitions as to what is grammatical and what is not. (I thought it might be a fun project to write the Syntax of German/English code-switching for example)... But anyway, it's clearly not random mixing, as indeed studies on code-switching also confirm.
Because code-switching is such a very striking feature of early bilingual language production (and indeed all bilingual speakers code-switch when they speak with other bilinguals) this apparent mixing often causes parents of bilingual children some concern that their children are not able to "tell their languages apart." Generally, code-switching is discouraged by parents.
However we know now that language mixing in production does not mean that the child does not differentiate between their languages.
Here is some anecdotal evidence from my son!
For some words, my son can actually tell you what each of us says:
Yesterday, he was holding a spoon, and he said:
"Kindergarten! Boon" (and said with a real Scottish accent!)
I said, yes, and what do you say?
"Löffel"
and Papa?
He had to think a little bit, and then said:
"Loshka"
Then he said: "Thoko auch "boon"" (Thoko also says spoon)
Anyway, here are some of my favourite code-switches from my family:
Habt ihr schon eingefütet? (German/Hungarian)
"Have you already switched the heating on?"
He really honked that one up.( German/English)
"He really messed that one one up- eg er hat das wirklich verhonkt)
Hát hiszen ez lófat! (Hungarian-English) (this one is from some relatives in the US)
"But this is lowfat!" (this one sounds quite rude in Hungarian)
And here is a nice one from a friend:
Sometimes I start a conversation in English y terminó in español (English/Spanish)
I have actually noticed that you can be more or less fluent in code-switching depending on whether you have contexts in which you have other bilinguals to "practise" with. I, for example, am very good at code-switching in Hungarian/German (family context) and German/English (from my school) but I am not very "good" at Hungarian/English. I had a Hungarian friend here in Edinburgh, and I kept code-switching into German when speaking with him, which he found quite funny. He took me up on it and asked me to switch into English instead, because he was having difficulty following me. And I found that really hard! In my life, Hungarian and English just do not mix!! (But I will practise...)
So, over to you: what are your favourite code-switches?
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
The rules of code-switching
People often remark that bilinguals "mix up their languages" a phenomenon that is sometimes referred to as "code-switching." How much mixing happens obviously depends on context, and the highest rates of mixing is when bilinguals talk amongst themselves.
I clearly remember a friend of mine at school (an English speaking school in Germany) saying:
"I had to do a KRASSE UMWEG this morning" (crazy detour)
But codeswitching is not at all random and it actually follows its own grammar. For example, there is just no way that you could say the above sentence with the determiner "a" in German:
eg.
* I had to do EINEN KRASSEN UMWEG this morning
This is just impossible.
Likewise, you could not say
*Heute morgen musste ich A CRAZY DETOUR machen (which is essentially the phrase above in "German")
It would have to be:
"Heute morgen musste ich einen CRAZY DETOUR machen" with the determiner "einen" in German.
Do you German/English bilinguals out there agree??
I clearly remember a friend of mine at school (an English speaking school in Germany) saying:
"I had to do a KRASSE UMWEG this morning" (crazy detour)
But codeswitching is not at all random and it actually follows its own grammar. For example, there is just no way that you could say the above sentence with the determiner "a" in German:
eg.
* I had to do EINEN KRASSEN UMWEG this morning
This is just impossible.
Likewise, you could not say
*Heute morgen musste ich A CRAZY DETOUR machen (which is essentially the phrase above in "German")
It would have to be:
"Heute morgen musste ich einen CRAZY DETOUR machen" with the determiner "einen" in German.
Do you German/English bilinguals out there agree??