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Like I speak English and Portuguese, learning Dutch, and (not doing it for the sake of a primarily English-speaking community) but I will often switch between the two, like saying "Bom dia/Oi" to someone or "Tchau!"

I may also falar assim and I don't do it to show off, it's just comfortable pra mim. I will mix in a few português words. (Not exactly like this but YKWIM, maybe).

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[-] circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 weeks ago

In linguistics this is called "code switching", and it is extremely common among native bilinguals.

[-] stringere@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

Dialects, too.

Saint Louis Public Radio has a show titled Code Switch which is about discussing racism and derives it's name from the behavior.

[-] sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Have a relative who has another language as their mother tongue but has perfect of my native language so we code switch a lot, I'm not fluent but I enjoy throwing in bits of what I know and they seem to appreciate it and encourage it

Weirdly, I kind of like parts of their language so I have lots of fun with wordplay and playing with the spelling and such and mashing them together for comedic effect like Sacha Baron Cohen does in Bruno

[-] solrize@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, that is very normal for multilingual people. It's called code-switching and it has been intensively studied by linguists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching

[-] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I'm bilingual English and Mandarin and I mostly do this in Chinese restaurants. The real hole in the wall places with the best Chinese food where the servers greet you in Mandarin by default if you look Chinese. Mandarin is more "computationally" expensive for my brain because I'm so used to speaking English so as soon as I have to express something complex I'll just blurt it out in English instead of stuttering it out in Mandarin, which prompts an English response from the server, and we'll go back and fourth switching between the two languages.

[-] underscores@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yes, eng fr spa, mix all sorts of words together or use gendered words ungendered when using them in English

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

I've been noticing that when I read an English text to someone who also speaks my mother tongue, that I will switch to my mother tongue for reading out numbers. For some reason, it feels pretentious to pronounce it in English.

[-] menemen@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 weeks ago

TurkoGerman here and we do that all the time. Our families back in turkey learned enough german by now thay we even do it in turkey...

Same for my tunisian wife (Arabic instead of Turkish though).

[-] crmsnbleyd@sopuli.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago

Quite common in India to speak a mix of English and another language. My partner and I mostly speak English, but some sentences just happen in Hindi.

[-] GiorgioPerlasca@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago

They do that also in Bollywood movies! It was unexpected the first time I hear that!

[-] orsopolare@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I speak english, italian and arabic. and it's so much fun to switch between the three with other multi-linguals, personally sometimes i find it hard to switch to english after speaking italian for a long period of time, and when i read english text i tend to pronounce the numbers in italian as it feels much easier and makes more sense for me.

I think it's overall a fun experience.

[-] atheqtpie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Ciao! Parlo anche italiano :)

[-] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 0 points 2 weeks ago

Are you Maltese by any chance ?

[-] pipes@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

No Mr. Owl, he's a polar bear

this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
3 points (100.0% liked)

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