Many of my colleagues are Hindi-speaking Indians, and in conversation with each other they frequently switch from Hindi to English and back to Hindi. Sometimes they switch languages mid-sentence.
I also work with Chinese speakers, but they never switch languages mid-conversation.
Interesting linguistic background, Aldebaran! Out of curiosity, would you say that you feel equally fluent in Arabic, French, and Flemish? That is, do you feel comfortable talking about any topic in all three of these languages? And can you read and write equally well in all three? I apologise for peppering with you with all these questions, but the fact that you have achieved a high level of comfort in all three languages is particularly interesting to me as I work with a number of children with dyslexia (I’m a speech-language pathologist) and one fairly common programming modification is a foreign language exemption.
With regard to your last post, I’m not sure which part of the quotes you disagree with. To me, it seems that the info is consistent with your experience. Namely, that code switching is not an unnatural manner of communication, does not reflect a lack of fluency in either language, and is not viewed as being unusual or undesirable in many multilingual communities. If you live in such a community, then you’ll code-switch freely depending on the communication circumstances (e.g., if a word or phrase in another language would better illustrate what you’re trying to say or if you think that your listeners are more likely to know a word in a different language, etc.). Or, you may not code-switch at all. As you said, it all depends on who you’re talking to.
If you live in a community in which code switching is frowned upon, however, then it’s just more likely that you will consciously try to stick to one language. Now, how common this negative attitude towards code switching is, I don’t know. The article only says that the majority of cultures studied at that time attached a social stigma to code switching, not that this negative attitude is prevalent.
I wonder if the negative attitude towards mixing Cantonese and in English mentioned in that 1983 study still exists. Perhaps someone from Hong Kong will be able to comment on this – if you hear someone mixing do you consider it “…ill-mannered, show-off, ignorant, not good-looking, aggressive, and proud?”
My apologies for the delay in my reply on this thread.
There is no difference at all between those 3. The same counts for some other ones (I needed to study quite a few languages). Of course, whenever I don’t use one of the languages other then my 3 “first ones” for a longer period, it takes a certain period of whatever I can invent or do in order to regain my former fluency. (I recovered up to date from a lot of headaches/ nervosity/impatience/really bad moods because of this :).)
What is for me interesting about this whole issue is the quesiton why I seem to have the writing/reading difficulties that are so typical for dyslexia only when I use languages that use the Roman script. The same when I write with my right hand (I’m left-handed): it is much harder to stay ocncentrated (just like it happens when I am tired or distracted) and thus faults occur much frequently and pass unnoticed.
For the rest twinbrother Dyselx intervenes in my daily life as it does with all other people who are belssed with this birthgift.
Maybe I misread this, but if not: I disagree with the described pattern that would be the one and only to allow language switching. The same for writing.
Maybe the author means by this that now and then the switch can come across as “unnatural” in one of the languages involved - or in all of them -, especially when you are not used to do this.
But to me he sounds as if only languages belonging to the same language group would be interchangeable.
Salaam. A
I don’t think that is exactly what he is saying. The first rule, the Bound Morpheme Constraint, simply says that grammatical affixes from one language aren’t mixed with regular words from another. So, to use an example of someone switching between French and English, no one would say <He walkais> to mean <He was walking>, even though they might say <He marchais> or <Il was walking>. My wife switches all the time between English and her native African language (Waali - which I understand pretty well) and she would never mix things like <Il walkais>.
The second rule, the equivalence constraint rule, seems to say that the two languages should have the same Basic Word Order, at least in simple sentences. If you have already said the subject and verb in one language, then the object pretty much has to follow, in whichever language. So if the second language has the object before the verb, this does present a problem, I suppose. Since Flemish, French, and Modern Arabic are SVO, perhaps this is not an issue. English and Waali are also SVO, so I’ve never really thought about it. But languages can be from different groups and have the same basic word order.