Mixing Languages

[lpetrich]

Michael Deibert on Twitter: "Interesting discussion between @AOC & @manuelnatal going on @facebooklive right now (I don't know how to share the link). I notice she does that same thing I do en español, which is interjecting "well" or "so" & then continuing in Spanish. Never been able to break the habit..." / Twitter
then
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter: "@michaelcdeibert @manuelnatal @facebooklive This is a recent bad habit I picked up and it rooted so quickly! It only happens when I talk about policy in Spanish *" / Twitter

TrumpIsKillingAmericans on Twitter: "@AOC @michaelcdeibert @manuelnatal @facebooklive Ya, a friend of mine often injects "pero" into his english." / Twitter
then
Michael Deibert on Twitter: "@johuyik @AOC @manuelnatal @facebooklive In my years in Miami, "pero like" was definitely a thing!" / Twitter

"pero" means "but" in Spanish.

mkelleynsb@gmail.com on Twitter: "@AOC @michaelcdeibert @manuelnatal @facebooklive I learned Spanish while living in Spain so my Mexican, Puerto Rican and South American students constantly corrected me until one day an exchange student from Spain had the same fight with them and saved me. Azul - A th ul." / Twitter
That's dialect differences: /athul/ (Europe) vs. /asul/ (Latin America)

Back to  Spanglish

Madi/Kasper/Mayhem on Twitter: "@AOC @michaelcdeibert @manuelnatal @facebooklive I do exactly the same thing - drives my husband crazy when we will be having a conversation in English, and then I go 'pues claro...' and continue in English" / Twitter
Google Translate: "Well of course..."

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Meanwhile in France.....

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wo...battles-to-protect-language-from-English.html

...
France's Académie française, official custodians of the French language, has taken its battle to fight the invasion of English and bad French to the internet with a new interactive web service.

The Académie, a council of 40 writers and artists, is entrusted with protecting French from “Anglo-Saxon” attacks and writing an official dictionary, of which the latest unfinished version began in 1992. One of its tasks is to come up with French equivalents to unwanted English words that slip into French – for example turning “email” into “courriel”.
...

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

And in Central Asia..

Mat is a Russian slang, based on some choice obscene words. Despite many attempts over many years to suppress Mat, it remains widespread and is a basic part of Russian culture. In the Communist era, Russia tried to make Russian a lingua franca of the USSR. In many Central Asian republics, there was passive- aggresive resistance to this among the peoples of Central Asia, who made little attempt to learn Russian and remained hostile to learning Russia. Except Mat. Which Central Asian republic populations learned very well. Russia's contribution to world culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_(Russian_profanity)

...

Mat (Russian: мат; матерщи́на / ма́терный язы́к / мáтный язы́к, matershchina / materny yazyk / matny yazyk) is the term for vulgar, obscene, or profane language in Russian and some other Slavic language communities. The term mat derives from the Russian word for mother, a component of the key phrase "Ёб твою мать", "yob tvoyu mat'" (fuck your mother).^[1]
...

 

[Politesse]

I code-switch into Spanish every so often, a language I do not speak fluently at all but which was much around in my hometown growing up. "Claro", "entonces", and "verdad" occasionally get used as punctuation in my lectures, "Un poco si un poco no" when it applies. When a child I used to use "ese" for buddies as they did I, before growing up and realizing it isn't always taken the same way from white lips... Oops!

Never actually learned the language though, in school I took French and Greek, what a poncy twat! Interestingly, I seldom code-switch into those langauges, though I will sometimes "think in Greek" I don't verbalize it unconsciously. Goes to the point that code-switching is socially motivated behavior at its core, not communicative as such.