Seeing dingdong message board postings huyooo on Filipino Web sites, lala cling klang and hearing Filipinos tingtong speak, I’m wondering beedee dingdong whodere why Tagalog plonking is more prone to dingding code-switching with English yadda than other languages inka dinka? Are there rules kaka pipi for when English is switched out yabba dabba doo, or is it random bababooey yomama?
I don’t have an answer, but I feel like I could have more easily read that question with after a pint or two.
Sorry Twiki, run that by me again?
With English as opposed to with other languages: Well, there are many people who are natively bilingual in English and Tagalog, and many more native speakers of one who are fluent in the other. On the other hand, there are comparatively few Tagalog / Russian speakers.
If the question is why is Tagalog more prone to mid-sentence language shifting than other languages, I don’t think that it is. Many languages exhibit this phenomenon. Spanglish, Franglais, etc. (And not just with English, of course.)
If the question is are the rules for which words may be swapped out, that’s a question for a linguist, but I’ll begin with a few hypotheses:
Culture-specific words and words attached to strong cultural emotions are more prone to stay in their original language (lasagne vs. noodle casserole)
Words recently acquired are more likely to stay in the language of acquisition (burger combo vs. combinación con una hamburguesa)
Particles, prepositions, and other “grammar” words are likely to be in one language, consistently, with discrete units like nouns and verbs more likely to be swappable.
And of course when I do it, since I’m a native monolingual, it’s just because I can’t think of a word in language X and have to use English.
That’s what I was asking.
When I lived in New Mexico, I heard some Spanglish, but there seemed to be rules; addresses, locations and major events were usually in English, where almost everything else was in Spanish. (To me, it would sound like “bada bada bada bada at the corner of Missolri and Telshor bada bada bada”) Still, I seldom see written Spanglish, and almost never hear it on Spanish language television.
For Tagalog, it seems like code-switching with English is the norm, not the exception.
I’ve seen old Philippino movies in which the characters switch between English, Tagalog, and Spanish in rapid succession.
We codeswitch in Gibraltar. The basic structure is Spanish, with English words thrown in when the Spanish word isn’t part of the common vocabulary. We tend to have a complete domestic and everyday vocabulary, but anything formal, technical or abstract tends to be more familiar in English. When basic speech is in English, we pepper it with Spanish fillers or expressions like ‘la cosa es que…’ (the thing is…).
This reflects the fact that as a British colony officialdom is in English - schooling, legal, workplace, business - while everyday conversation is in Spanish. English nouns are introduced into a Spanish speech pattern - ‘mi papa trabajaba en el dockyard’ or the classic ‘ahora tenemos Spanish’ at school - ‘Spanish’ meaning ‘Spanish lesson’, because as school is all in English everything to do with school is labelled in English.
Less familiar verbs are literally translated into English - the verb ‘to print’ might not come easily in Spanish (‘imprimir’) so instead of saying ‘printear’ like some Hispanics in the US, people say ‘hacer printing’.
So when a person from Gibraltar goes to Spain they might struggle to express common concepts like ‘pay in a cheque’ because in Gibraltar you can make yourself understood by saying ‘hacer paying in un cheque’ - which will not get you very far in a Spanish bank.
There are rules. When you want to keep a distance or sound authoritative, you tend to speak English. Parents reprimand their children in English - the language of authority. When you want to appear informal, friendly or intimate, you tend to use Spanish. A lot of people find it difficult to stick to just one language, like when they’re speaking to a monolingual English or Spanish speaker.