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?

3 comments:

  1. I have a similar feeling about my code switching. I feel I'm much better at it in English/Spanish then in English/Italian, and, even worse, Italian/Spanish. I think it must be, as you say, that I have many more opportunities to mix English and Spanish (Spanglish is what I speak at home with my partner) than the other languages.

    One of my favourite examples of code switching is not actually real code switching , but a case of using an English construction with Italian words. It came from my friend's 8 year old daughter, who's English/Italian bilingual (with English as the dominant language, as she lives in England). We were talking about some cheese in the fridge, and she asked:

    "Il formaggio che ho fatto i panini con?" which is ungrammatical in Italian, as Italian doesn't have preposition stranding. The correct sentence would have been "il formaggio con cui ho fatto i panini?".

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  2. English/Dutch for me.. Well, its the easiest :) And almost became a language of its own between me/Nora/Ivan. Though I began to combine a lot more Hungarian/English as well while living in Hungary. Don't think I've done very much Dutch/Hungarian switching. I'm going to have to practise more of that one with you, will teach you some of our classics! (For example, can I have some more ricet (rijst)? (Ivan refuses to use the word rice ;)

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    Replies
    1. You can't mix Hungarian and Dutch?
      haha: Adjál még egy kis rijstot.

      Or (whatever this would be in Dutch)
      Nem kéne ezeket a nyelveket össze-wechs-olni

      :)

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