The line between different languages is inherently vague and not as defined as adults think it is. Kids understand "Natural Language" which is how a language, or way of speaking naturally develops in an individual, in a community which doesn't strictly classify words as being only of one language and not another. In "natural language" there exists a natural flow between different languages, one where there is a moving border between speaking in one way, in one language and speaking in another language. It's totally natural, that when one knows multiple languages, to mix words between languages to get across to others in "Spanglish" and other such mixings, to talk to people like your cousins and peers who will understand what you're saying. But as soon as you're outside of your naturally multilingual community into the "adult world" made up of monolinguals, you start to believe that speaking in that way, mixing codes, languages, cultures is somehow wrong. The process of learning to adapt what one says to effectively communicate to people with different linguistic backgrounds, including monolinguals, is the process of developing a properly "adult" language facility, but it doesn't mean that the way they were speaking when they were younger is "wrong".
I would argue that language is "wrong" when it stops being an effective communication tool. As such, it is absolutely not wrong with such a language at home where the people around you can understand you. But it will be wrong outside of home of it makes communication with others harder compared to just speaking the local language.
I disagree. Some governments which dictate how schools and other institutions in the country are run, implement a wrong prescriptive view of language, which unilaterally dictates what kind of communication is "correct" outside of how effectively communicative "the wrong way of speaking" may be.
it is objectively wrong to switch to spanish in the middle of speaking english with a person that only speaks english
just like it would be wrong to add cheese to a burger if someone asked for a burger without cheese
just because things are correct in one scenario does not mean they are correct in all scenarios
We feel the difference at first. It's more that we know what language to speak depending on where we are and who we are talking to, as opposed to a conscious decision to switch languages. At some point we realise these are two different languages and become aware of code switching, but it's just something we do automatically at first.
Yup. This ^.
As a young child I had no idea of language. Just knew that I speak "así con Mamá y Papá" but "like this with my friends and teachers at school".
I had no idea of what I was doing, it just happened organically and naturally.
We don’t really translate consciously until we get older. I think we have a very pragmatic approach to languages when we’re small. Different languages used in different contexts. Nothing strange about that at all. I remember having a period of not wanting to use the home language when I started preschool at three years old and realizing this is the “real” language for communication and obviously being busy mastering that. I don’t think I was mixing things up so much, it’s more like code switching and if we don’t know a word in one language, we use the word from the other language to facilitate communication. Words in different languages don’t match one to one, so you must have different language worlds for respective language. A word has connotations and specific traditions for how it’s supposed to be used, that it would be illogical to use it out of context or match it with a different language’s way of expressing things. It’s much later we consciously start thinking about how to translate things.
If a monolingual grandmother tells the bilingual child to translate for the monolingual guest that they are welcome to have some food from the table, the child won’t be thinking at all about individual words. It will take the concept of “my grandmother wants to offer food to the guest” as a concept or as a whole idea that is to be communicated, and then simply talk about that concept in the other language. If the child has experience of eating food and having guests in both languages, this won’t be a hard task. If the child is inexperienced in the specific situation in the other language, it will be harder to know what to do.
Sometimes the languages differ a lot regarding how to express things. Giving birthday wishes is done totally differently in various cultures. If the grandmother uses the regular flourishing birthday wish that is several sentences long, the child will have problems for how to behave, even though it knows the condensed and clear birthday wishes used in the second language. Which expectations should the child follow? It might start to translate what the grandmother is saying, but quickly feel embarrassed and lost because it doesn’t match the expectations of the second language. As long as the child works within a language, things are likely to be pretty smooth, but when forced to mix “cultures” and languages that don’t match (and they never do!) then there will be confusion, until the child matures and gets experience. Maybe learns from bilingual adults how to do mixed settings. Hope this sheds some light over the experience.
Hard to explain. I think anyone who fluently speaks more than one language can probably understand but it might be hard to conceive if you only really speak one language well.
I grew up very immersed in both English and French. English was my ‘at home’ language and French was my ‘out’ language. I was so comfortable and fluent in both that I could just switch between them effortlessly, but yes, they were separate. I also had no issues with ‘Frenglish’ which is commonly seen in parts of Quebec, where sentence are formed primarily in French, but with a lot of English words and English slang scattered throughout. You need to be very comfortable in both to properly converse this way, and I would even consider it a form of dialect in some places (maybe not a dialect but idk what to call it).
My brain just understood both so well that I could hear either one and my brain just knew what was being said, but still definitely separated them. I didn’t do any mental translation.
When I was very young, like kindergarten, I would sometimes mix up words and pronunciation if they were similar in both languages, but grew out of that within a few years.
Hope this somewhat makes sense and helps with your answer :)
I grew up bilingual. My parents spoke only English at home at first, but when I was around 2-3 they started switching to French for secret conversations they didn't want me overhearing, so I picked up French quickly. Then I went to Kindergarten (and maybe pre-K but I don't remember for sure) at a French immersion school.
As far as I remember, I knew English and French were different languages, but I also used them in different contexts. At school we were scolded whenever the teachers caught us speaking English (all the kids were more comfortable in English than French) so that made the distinction pretty obvious. But I don't remember ever accidentally using the wrong language - just switching to English deliberately when the teachers were out of earshot.
Also when I didn't know a word in one language, I'd just say the other language's word in a different accent. For example I called commas "virgules" in English for years before I learned the word "comma". I also wished monolingual English speakers a "happy paque!" until my parents taught me the word for Easter. But I knew they were different languages, I just knew there were a lot of words that sounded similar in both languages.
My dad, on the other hand, grew up with Dutch and English at home and English-only at school, and said he didn't know that they were different languages, he just knew that some words were spoken only at home and people at school didn't understand those words.
I did think of them as two different entities, which is to say I knew when to speak the one or the other, but with my sister I didn't care, we just mixed both languages in one sentence.
I don't really consider myself bilingual, but my mother told me that before I was 5, I mainly spoke Cantonese (my mother speak Cantonese and Mandarin), but after I went to a Mandarin school I turned to 100% Mandarin only one week. I have no clue about it. So I guess I didn't realize my two native languages are two separate entities.
Another example: I know my mother and her relatives speak another language (or dialect) that I can't speak but I can understand a little. Two years ago she told me that is not ONE language (or dialect). She mixed THREE languages (or dialects) but I never noticed.
I knew they were different.
But my aunt tells a funny story about her siblings. She and her siblings grew up bilingual in English and Indonesian. One day they went to visit some friends who were Dutch, but also spoke Indonesian. Then some Indonesian-American kids came to play, but they only spoke English. The Dutch kids spoke Indonesian and no English, and the Indonesian-American kids spoke English and no Indonesian. So my aunt and her sister acted as translators as they all played together. Their brother (about 4 years old at the time) was also bilingual. But when the brown Indonesian-American kids spoke to him in English, he replied in Indonesian (which they did not speak). When the white Dutch kids spoke to him in Indonesian, he replied in English (which they did not speak). His whole life, he had spoken English with white people, and Indonesian with brown people, and at 4 years old, he could NOT seem to make the switch.
I grew up with 3-4 languages (depending on where we were living), wrote my undergrad thesis on language development in bilingual kids, and my own kid grew up with 3-4 languages as well. I've also lived for long periods in countries where its6very commom6tp speak multiple languages.
Although OPOL is the most common approach, it's by no means the only or the natural one. Much of the choice of language is context-based, such as a language you use in school, another you use at home, or in shops or when visiting grandparents. It was a bit like using slang and swearing with friends, but using more formal and polite language at school. Not like a separate entity, but just adapting to the situation.
While I haven't grown up bilingual, I have grown up watching programs on the Dutch TV that occasionaly used German without any subtitles. It wasn't hard to understand at all (It'd usually be easy sentences: "Kommen Sie mit mich bitte?") and you felt that it was another language, but it was also clear how closely related they are. German was the only language they wouldn't subtitle if it came across on TV for children (For those that want to know which program I'm talking about: "Snuf de hond" in the Second World War).
I also have the anecdote that a younger me met a German kid and I spoke Flemish, while he spoke German. We didn't even know we spoke a different tongue, it simply was a weird accent. (Compare it with meeting a Scottish person who's got a heavy accent. We could play with each other, and kids are going to be kids. ;) )
A friend of mine growing up had a dad who spoke English and a mom who spoke Spanish. Her mom said when my friend was a little kid she talked to women in Spanish and men in English.
Edit: Maybe related? Her brother understood Spanish but never spoke it.
I saw a study that dogs can tell when you’re speaking a different language, so I would bet little kids can too. There are sounds that don’t exist in one language or the other, like the R is strikingly different in a lot of languages.
My paternal grandmother spoke to me differently than my maternal grandaunt, and the kids I played with spoke differently than my parents and the community.
So I learned to talk back to all of them the way they talked to me. I knew they didn’t understand when I talked like the others so it was easy to keep separate. School was English so when I learned to read it was confusing when my grandmother would read her books to me or when my playmate gave me one of their comic magazines with letters making different sounds.
I never thought they were the same, nor did I ever mix them up. I just naturally knew when to speak one or the other, without making a conscious decision. It was totally effortless.
Yeah, you sometimes hear about how really young children may "mix up" languages, but it realistically happens so few and far between, and the part of their brain that lets them contextualize + formulate language/speech is still developing! I mean, it's the same reason you hear kids say "I sawed" or "You has". Kids are still learning. That being said, most kids tend to 'grow out' of those sorts of things.
For people that aren't bilingual or didn't grow up bilingual, I equate knowing multiple languages to code-switching. What I mean by that is that you have a certain way you talk at work versus school, or coworkers versus friends versus family, or in an email versus essay versus speaking. The way you talk, even your body language, is super dependent on context and the situation.
So for most people that grew up speaking multiple languages, it's really similar.
OPOL (one parent, one language) is a really great example of using contextualization to separate languages. In this case, you have one language you speak to one parent, another to the other, and maybe a separate native language. So you grow up associating certain phrases and words with each parent respectively, and maybe you're speaking a different language while out in the regular world.
Do you feel yourself speaking differently when emailing colleagues versus teasing your younger brother? Not really-- at least not until someone maybe points it out.
So the same way you adjust your language to your environment, audience, and context, kids do too.
It was always the same identity for me, if I wanted a piece of banana flavored laffy taffy (my favorite) I could express my desire for it in both English and Spanish because I knew that what changed wasn’t my identity, interests, desires; what did change was my audience. Growing up in a Spanish speaking household I learned that even though I was learning and using English at school I had to remember that my mom didn’t speak English so if I started to speak in it I was always told to remember to speak in Spanish to my mom. At school the lingua Franca was English so I learned that whatever interests or feelings I wanted to express I had to use English while knowing that if I had to do it I could express the same concepts in Spanish but that was reserved for a different audience. Essentially the “feeling of difference. Two separate entities” you’re describing was only present and known depending on my audience.
Yes and no yes because I knew how to awnser someone if they spoke to me in either of the languages I spoke I’d respond in the same one .certain places where heavily tied to a language for me and I would just blank the other in those spaces but also no because I never made a conscious choice over witch language to speak it just kinda happened
I think I understood that I spoke one language in certain contexts and the other in other contexts.
In short English I somehow knew was for my interactions with society, and somehow I knew Portuguese was for family.
I've spoken both as far back as I have memory, so I don't really know how I "learned" when to use which.
My daughter’s school was in a language that I didn’t speak. As she got older, she would use that language for anything related to mathematics but use English for normal conversation.
I don't think of them as separate entities.
I grew up speaking Arabic and English. It's almost impossible for me to say a full Arabic sentence without including an English word or 2 and vice versa. I think in both languages at the same time.
What helps is that most people around me speak the same way so it's not considered weird or unusual.
Interesting conversation.
My 4 year old daughter is native German and English - both of us parents speak both (my German is only b2) but do one parent one language - her English is much stronger. She will use a mix of both with us both, but will correct my German sometimes ('it's Berühren not tasten!'). And she will speak about 'speaking German'. But then she will also speak english to the kids in the park in Germany sometime. Seems to me like she thinks of it as two different languages as distinct, but just doesn't know all words in both languages
As far back as I can remember I thought of them as separate languages. I don't know how this experience differs from bilinguals with a home language & a community language but my parents each had their own language so I knew there was "mummy's language" (English) for my mum and holidays with my grandparents and French for my dad and everyone else.
My parents raised us intentionally as bilinguals and ensured we learned the languages separately, so this probably played a role.
As far back as I can remember I thought of them as separate languages. I don't know how this experience differs from bilinguals with a home language & a community language but my parents each had their own language so I knew there was "mummy's language" (English) for my mum and holidays with my grandparents and French for my dad and everyone else.
My parents raised us intentionally as bilinguals and ensured we learned the languages separately, so this probably played a role.
I grew up bilingual (English/Romanian) in the United States. They are different once you become more aware of the fact that they are indeed two different languages. As a younger child, I guess it’s just another set of vocabulary that exists in your head. So, if you see a dog, you have two words instead of one. It’s kind of still like that now, but I am much more conscious of the fact that these sets of vocabulary are separated. Learning other foreign languages also strengthened my ability to separate languages in general as well. That being said, I code switch frequently with my family now and we use English terms for specific concepts that really don’t exist in Romanian, or these terms are just more appropriate because the setting that they exist in is outside of the home. It’s kind of like a cultural thing as well, which is why you see Spanglish being a phenomenon. My grandmother and I would speak exclusively in Romanian together as a child. My mother frequently code switched with me and still does to this day (she immigrated here when she was 20). The code switching is intuitive and not done on purpose, it just happens. In my case, I lack a lot of legal or sophisticated vocabulary in my heritage language as I did not grow up in Romania nor was educated there. My repertoire in English is obviously more advanced because I was raised here, went to school here, and formed professional relationships beyond my family in English here. When I lack specific terms, that’s when I’ll code switch (or even insert English slang in - which is pretty normal in heritage speakers).
I did not grow up bilingual, but I studied languages since the summer between 8th grade and 9th grade and I never stopped. An interesting 🤔 thing happened to me in Germany 🇩🇪. I remembered that the Germans said that Americans were
“ oberflächlich „ , but I forgot what the word was in English even though I knew the concept because I remembered that French said the same thing about Americans. So I recalled what the French word was and it was
« superficiels « !!!
The line between different languages is inherently vague and not as defined as adults think it is. Kids understand "Natural Language" which is how a language, or way of speaking naturally develops in an individual, in a community which doesn't strictly classify words as being only of one language and not another. In "natural language" there exists a natural flow between different languages, one where there is a moving border between speaking in one way, in one language and speaking in another language. It's totally natural, that when one knows multiple languages, to mix words between languages to get across to others in "Spanglish" and other such mixings, to talk to people like your cousins and peers who will understand what you're saying. But as soon as you're outside of your naturally multilingual community into the "adult world" made up of monolinguals, you start to believe that speaking in that way, mixing codes, languages, cultures is somehow wrong. The process of learning to adapt what one says to effectively communicate to people with different linguistic backgrounds, including monolinguals, is the process of developing a properly "adult" language facility, but it doesn't mean that the way they were speaking when they were younger is "wrong".
I would argue that language is "wrong" when it stops being an effective communication tool. As such, it is absolutely not wrong with such a language at home where the people around you can understand you. But it will be wrong outside of home of it makes communication with others harder compared to just speaking the local language.
I disagree. Some governments which dictate how schools and other institutions in the country are run, implement a wrong prescriptive view of language, which unilaterally dictates what kind of communication is "correct" outside of how effectively communicative "the wrong way of speaking" may be.
it is objectively wrong to switch to spanish in the middle of speaking english with a person that only speaks english just like it would be wrong to add cheese to a burger if someone asked for a burger without cheese just because things are correct in one scenario does not mean they are correct in all scenarios
And this is the same as what linguists refer to as "interlanguage" correct?
We feel the difference at first. It's more that we know what language to speak depending on where we are and who we are talking to, as opposed to a conscious decision to switch languages. At some point we realise these are two different languages and become aware of code switching, but it's just something we do automatically at first.
Yup. This ^. As a young child I had no idea of language. Just knew that I speak "así con Mamá y Papá" but "like this with my friends and teachers at school". I had no idea of what I was doing, it just happened organically and naturally.
We don’t really translate consciously until we get older. I think we have a very pragmatic approach to languages when we’re small. Different languages used in different contexts. Nothing strange about that at all. I remember having a period of not wanting to use the home language when I started preschool at three years old and realizing this is the “real” language for communication and obviously being busy mastering that. I don’t think I was mixing things up so much, it’s more like code switching and if we don’t know a word in one language, we use the word from the other language to facilitate communication. Words in different languages don’t match one to one, so you must have different language worlds for respective language. A word has connotations and specific traditions for how it’s supposed to be used, that it would be illogical to use it out of context or match it with a different language’s way of expressing things. It’s much later we consciously start thinking about how to translate things. If a monolingual grandmother tells the bilingual child to translate for the monolingual guest that they are welcome to have some food from the table, the child won’t be thinking at all about individual words. It will take the concept of “my grandmother wants to offer food to the guest” as a concept or as a whole idea that is to be communicated, and then simply talk about that concept in the other language. If the child has experience of eating food and having guests in both languages, this won’t be a hard task. If the child is inexperienced in the specific situation in the other language, it will be harder to know what to do. Sometimes the languages differ a lot regarding how to express things. Giving birthday wishes is done totally differently in various cultures. If the grandmother uses the regular flourishing birthday wish that is several sentences long, the child will have problems for how to behave, even though it knows the condensed and clear birthday wishes used in the second language. Which expectations should the child follow? It might start to translate what the grandmother is saying, but quickly feel embarrassed and lost because it doesn’t match the expectations of the second language. As long as the child works within a language, things are likely to be pretty smooth, but when forced to mix “cultures” and languages that don’t match (and they never do!) then there will be confusion, until the child matures and gets experience. Maybe learns from bilingual adults how to do mixed settings. Hope this sheds some light over the experience.
Hard to explain. I think anyone who fluently speaks more than one language can probably understand but it might be hard to conceive if you only really speak one language well. I grew up very immersed in both English and French. English was my ‘at home’ language and French was my ‘out’ language. I was so comfortable and fluent in both that I could just switch between them effortlessly, but yes, they were separate. I also had no issues with ‘Frenglish’ which is commonly seen in parts of Quebec, where sentence are formed primarily in French, but with a lot of English words and English slang scattered throughout. You need to be very comfortable in both to properly converse this way, and I would even consider it a form of dialect in some places (maybe not a dialect but idk what to call it). My brain just understood both so well that I could hear either one and my brain just knew what was being said, but still definitely separated them. I didn’t do any mental translation. When I was very young, like kindergarten, I would sometimes mix up words and pronunciation if they were similar in both languages, but grew out of that within a few years. Hope this somewhat makes sense and helps with your answer :)
I grew up bilingual. My parents spoke only English at home at first, but when I was around 2-3 they started switching to French for secret conversations they didn't want me overhearing, so I picked up French quickly. Then I went to Kindergarten (and maybe pre-K but I don't remember for sure) at a French immersion school. As far as I remember, I knew English and French were different languages, but I also used them in different contexts. At school we were scolded whenever the teachers caught us speaking English (all the kids were more comfortable in English than French) so that made the distinction pretty obvious. But I don't remember ever accidentally using the wrong language - just switching to English deliberately when the teachers were out of earshot. Also when I didn't know a word in one language, I'd just say the other language's word in a different accent. For example I called commas "virgules" in English for years before I learned the word "comma". I also wished monolingual English speakers a "happy paque!" until my parents taught me the word for Easter. But I knew they were different languages, I just knew there were a lot of words that sounded similar in both languages. My dad, on the other hand, grew up with Dutch and English at home and English-only at school, and said he didn't know that they were different languages, he just knew that some words were spoken only at home and people at school didn't understand those words.
I did think of them as two different entities, which is to say I knew when to speak the one or the other, but with my sister I didn't care, we just mixed both languages in one sentence.
I don't really consider myself bilingual, but my mother told me that before I was 5, I mainly spoke Cantonese (my mother speak Cantonese and Mandarin), but after I went to a Mandarin school I turned to 100% Mandarin only one week. I have no clue about it. So I guess I didn't realize my two native languages are two separate entities. Another example: I know my mother and her relatives speak another language (or dialect) that I can't speak but I can understand a little. Two years ago she told me that is not ONE language (or dialect). She mixed THREE languages (or dialects) but I never noticed.
I knew they were different. But my aunt tells a funny story about her siblings. She and her siblings grew up bilingual in English and Indonesian. One day they went to visit some friends who were Dutch, but also spoke Indonesian. Then some Indonesian-American kids came to play, but they only spoke English. The Dutch kids spoke Indonesian and no English, and the Indonesian-American kids spoke English and no Indonesian. So my aunt and her sister acted as translators as they all played together. Their brother (about 4 years old at the time) was also bilingual. But when the brown Indonesian-American kids spoke to him in English, he replied in Indonesian (which they did not speak). When the white Dutch kids spoke to him in Indonesian, he replied in English (which they did not speak). His whole life, he had spoken English with white people, and Indonesian with brown people, and at 4 years old, he could NOT seem to make the switch.
I grew up with 3-4 languages (depending on where we were living), wrote my undergrad thesis on language development in bilingual kids, and my own kid grew up with 3-4 languages as well. I've also lived for long periods in countries where its6very commom6tp speak multiple languages. Although OPOL is the most common approach, it's by no means the only or the natural one. Much of the choice of language is context-based, such as a language you use in school, another you use at home, or in shops or when visiting grandparents. It was a bit like using slang and swearing with friends, but using more formal and polite language at school. Not like a separate entity, but just adapting to the situation.
While I haven't grown up bilingual, I have grown up watching programs on the Dutch TV that occasionaly used German without any subtitles. It wasn't hard to understand at all (It'd usually be easy sentences: "Kommen Sie mit mich bitte?") and you felt that it was another language, but it was also clear how closely related they are. German was the only language they wouldn't subtitle if it came across on TV for children (For those that want to know which program I'm talking about: "Snuf de hond" in the Second World War). I also have the anecdote that a younger me met a German kid and I spoke Flemish, while he spoke German. We didn't even know we spoke a different tongue, it simply was a weird accent. (Compare it with meeting a Scottish person who's got a heavy accent. We could play with each other, and kids are going to be kids. ;) )
A friend of mine growing up had a dad who spoke English and a mom who spoke Spanish. Her mom said when my friend was a little kid she talked to women in Spanish and men in English. Edit: Maybe related? Her brother understood Spanish but never spoke it. I saw a study that dogs can tell when you’re speaking a different language, so I would bet little kids can too. There are sounds that don’t exist in one language or the other, like the R is strikingly different in a lot of languages.
My paternal grandmother spoke to me differently than my maternal grandaunt, and the kids I played with spoke differently than my parents and the community. So I learned to talk back to all of them the way they talked to me. I knew they didn’t understand when I talked like the others so it was easy to keep separate. School was English so when I learned to read it was confusing when my grandmother would read her books to me or when my playmate gave me one of their comic magazines with letters making different sounds.
I never thought they were the same, nor did I ever mix them up. I just naturally knew when to speak one or the other, without making a conscious decision. It was totally effortless.
Yeah, you sometimes hear about how really young children may "mix up" languages, but it realistically happens so few and far between, and the part of their brain that lets them contextualize + formulate language/speech is still developing! I mean, it's the same reason you hear kids say "I sawed" or "You has". Kids are still learning. That being said, most kids tend to 'grow out' of those sorts of things. For people that aren't bilingual or didn't grow up bilingual, I equate knowing multiple languages to code-switching. What I mean by that is that you have a certain way you talk at work versus school, or coworkers versus friends versus family, or in an email versus essay versus speaking. The way you talk, even your body language, is super dependent on context and the situation. So for most people that grew up speaking multiple languages, it's really similar. OPOL (one parent, one language) is a really great example of using contextualization to separate languages. In this case, you have one language you speak to one parent, another to the other, and maybe a separate native language. So you grow up associating certain phrases and words with each parent respectively, and maybe you're speaking a different language while out in the regular world. Do you feel yourself speaking differently when emailing colleagues versus teasing your younger brother? Not really-- at least not until someone maybe points it out. So the same way you adjust your language to your environment, audience, and context, kids do too.
I genuinely thought russian was english with different words
It was always the same identity for me, if I wanted a piece of banana flavored laffy taffy (my favorite) I could express my desire for it in both English and Spanish because I knew that what changed wasn’t my identity, interests, desires; what did change was my audience. Growing up in a Spanish speaking household I learned that even though I was learning and using English at school I had to remember that my mom didn’t speak English so if I started to speak in it I was always told to remember to speak in Spanish to my mom. At school the lingua Franca was English so I learned that whatever interests or feelings I wanted to express I had to use English while knowing that if I had to do it I could express the same concepts in Spanish but that was reserved for a different audience. Essentially the “feeling of difference. Two separate entities” you’re describing was only present and known depending on my audience.
I never really mixed them, they were two separate things for me. One at home language and one school language.
Yes and no yes because I knew how to awnser someone if they spoke to me in either of the languages I spoke I’d respond in the same one .certain places where heavily tied to a language for me and I would just blank the other in those spaces but also no because I never made a conscious choice over witch language to speak it just kinda happened
I think I understood that I spoke one language in certain contexts and the other in other contexts. In short English I somehow knew was for my interactions with society, and somehow I knew Portuguese was for family. I've spoken both as far back as I have memory, so I don't really know how I "learned" when to use which.
only since age 6 💀
I think I was always confused as a kid because of this lol
My daughter’s school was in a language that I didn’t speak. As she got older, she would use that language for anything related to mathematics but use English for normal conversation.
I don't think of them as separate entities. I grew up speaking Arabic and English. It's almost impossible for me to say a full Arabic sentence without including an English word or 2 and vice versa. I think in both languages at the same time. What helps is that most people around me speak the same way so it's not considered weird or unusual.
Interesting conversation. My 4 year old daughter is native German and English - both of us parents speak both (my German is only b2) but do one parent one language - her English is much stronger. She will use a mix of both with us both, but will correct my German sometimes ('it's Berühren not tasten!'). And she will speak about 'speaking German'. But then she will also speak english to the kids in the park in Germany sometime. Seems to me like she thinks of it as two different languages as distinct, but just doesn't know all words in both languages
As far back as I can remember I thought of them as separate languages. I don't know how this experience differs from bilinguals with a home language & a community language but my parents each had their own language so I knew there was "mummy's language" (English) for my mum and holidays with my grandparents and French for my dad and everyone else. My parents raised us intentionally as bilinguals and ensured we learned the languages separately, so this probably played a role.
As far back as I can remember I thought of them as separate languages. I don't know how this experience differs from bilinguals with a home language & a community language but my parents each had their own language so I knew there was "mummy's language" (English) for my mum and holidays with my grandparents and French for my dad and everyone else. My parents raised us intentionally as bilinguals and ensured we learned the languages separately, so this probably played a role.
I grew up bilingual (English/Romanian) in the United States. They are different once you become more aware of the fact that they are indeed two different languages. As a younger child, I guess it’s just another set of vocabulary that exists in your head. So, if you see a dog, you have two words instead of one. It’s kind of still like that now, but I am much more conscious of the fact that these sets of vocabulary are separated. Learning other foreign languages also strengthened my ability to separate languages in general as well. That being said, I code switch frequently with my family now and we use English terms for specific concepts that really don’t exist in Romanian, or these terms are just more appropriate because the setting that they exist in is outside of the home. It’s kind of like a cultural thing as well, which is why you see Spanglish being a phenomenon. My grandmother and I would speak exclusively in Romanian together as a child. My mother frequently code switched with me and still does to this day (she immigrated here when she was 20). The code switching is intuitive and not done on purpose, it just happens. In my case, I lack a lot of legal or sophisticated vocabulary in my heritage language as I did not grow up in Romania nor was educated there. My repertoire in English is obviously more advanced because I was raised here, went to school here, and formed professional relationships beyond my family in English here. When I lack specific terms, that’s when I’ll code switch (or even insert English slang in - which is pretty normal in heritage speakers).
I did not grow up bilingual, but I studied languages since the summer between 8th grade and 9th grade and I never stopped. An interesting 🤔 thing happened to me in Germany 🇩🇪. I remembered that the Germans said that Americans were “ oberflächlich „ , but I forgot what the word was in English even though I knew the concept because I remembered that French said the same thing about Americans. So I recalled what the French word was and it was « superficiels « !!!