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??
Golda, I love your blog! Just thought I would tell you that I would have translated "eine CRAZY DETOUR" instead of "einen". My instinct would link "detour" with "tour" and since "Tour" is female in German I would consider "detour" female as well and not use the article for the German translation "Umweg". Very strange when I think about it. As of course gramatically it should be "einen" because "Umweg" is male.
ReplyDeleteStrange how your brain works and connects and recreates bizarre combinations, isn't it?
Ines
cool, makes complete sense to me! thanks Ines :)
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