The Truth About Code-switching (and Why Y'all Do It Wrong)

[StarriEyedMan]

Code-Switching
code-switch·ing
noun
LINGUISTICS

1. the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation.

What is Code-Switching

So, I took an anthropology course last year, of which a section was on linguistics, and I learned something about "code-switching." This is a common thing in other countries, where people switch what language they're speaking for a few words, a sentence, and interjection, etc. And example conversation can be found in this video from the movie Three Idiots (found about 34 seconds in, when the character of Chatur says "Give him a hand folks! Give him a hand."

What Does This Mean?

You probably didn't understand much of what was being said, as it's in Hindi. But what's more interesting here is what you do understand. Code-switching typically occurs when someone is speaking their native tongue, and, to highlight certain things, like jokes, exclamations, profanity, etc., they will switch into another language, most commonly English (though some languages, like Tagalog, with code-switch into both English and Spanish).


What doesn't this mean?

It doesn't mean people who speak, say, Spanish, as a first language will code-switch back into Spanish while speaking to an English speaker in English. The most you'll hear is them speak to themselves in their native tongue when making side comments to themselves.

I speak English as a first language, and about the only time I've heard someone code-switch while speaking English is fellow native-English speakers code-switching to Spanish, German, French, etc. as jokes to each other.


How Does This Affect Me?

In reality, it probably won't. But if you want to code-switch more realistically in-character, try doing it while talking in another language other than Common.

An unrealistic example

Daen Person asks: "Hola! How are you, Amigo?

Ithanian Person says: "Pretty merde-y."

Daen Person asks: "Ay Caramba! Sorry to hear about that! Life is a load of mierda, isn't it?"

Ithanian Person asks: "Oui. It really is, isn't it?"


This is comical, and a caricature of real-life. Of course, some of this is meant to be funny, but some is legitimately what is often seen.



A more realistic example:

Suvial 1 asks: "<Common> Hey! <Agasi> How are you, friend?"

Suvial 2 says:"<C> Pretty shitty."

Suvial 1 asks: "<Aga> Oh! Sorry to hear that. <C> Life sucks, doesn't it?"

Suvial 2 asks: "<C> Yeah. <Aga> It really does, doesn't it?"


This is a very simplified example, and overuses the concept a bit, but it gets the point across.


Anyways, don't let my rant make you feel attacked. This is just something I've been thinking about lately. And I'm no expert on code-switching.

Anyways, have a Massive day!

 

[MonMarty]

I think the intention of the thread is in the right place. A lot of people do play bilingualism wrong, and sometimes even downright offensive, the ones who use "dumb-speak" by just randomly removing words to sound "foreign", not understanding that this comes from a misreading of grammar, like how a Swedish person tends to mostly get plurals and singulars wrong, but is overwise pretty accurate.

I think the theory this thread proposes is inaccurate, from a personal experience as a polyglot living in a different country and someone who speaks with people who code-switch. As a person with a strong interest in linguistics, let me first address some referential mistakes you're making:

• Hindi is a very bad example for code-switching, because it much like other ex-Anglo colonial nations, "suffers" (debatable) from severe linguistic barbarisms. for those reading who don't know what this means, barbarism is when a word is wholesale adopted from a different language, and made part of the native language. A good example is the word "Cuisine" in English. This is a French word and it was adopted 1:1 (even if this is technically a bad example since that word was adopted as a consequence of the Norman invasion of England, and so technically not a barbarism because the upper class spoke French). Anyway, Hindi is a bad example because this does not feature code-switching, many cosmopolitan Hindi speakers are bilingual with English, and the Hindi language itself features many barbarisms or idioms that fulfill linguistic gaps within the native Hindi language at the time of Colonialism. A good example is "C'est la vie" which is a French idiom, but one often used in Dutch and Uk English, because this idiom does not have a good equivalent in these languages, and it is used by people who do not natively speak French. This does not mean they are code-switching, but just using an adopted expression.
• Secondly, people who in fact say "How are you, Amigo". This goes a bit into cultural isolationism and cultural segregation in America and I won't touch upon that subject, but it's a common form of street language retention. A good equivalent for myself is ex-colonial immigrants who speak a Creole version of Dutch, and then shift language to what we call "ABN" Dutch. They however still retain some words as a means of expressing their culture (and some of those expressions even in the Dutch language in itself as they contribute to the development of the language). Similarly, "Amigo" is used as a derogatory reference in American English by people who do not even speak Spanish, in the same way, that "Sweetie" is used in the South to be endearing or demeaning in variance.

So, the example I would have used would actually be a French one:

• "Oui, I would like to have a sandwich, sil-vous-plaît." - This statement makes the assumption that a French person doesn't know the word "Yes" and "Please", even though they are some of the earliest learned words, or so much choose to replace them for whatever reason. This is often bad expression of bilingualism or expressing the foreignness of a speaker in media that does not carry over to the real world. People do not replace simple words, they replace complex words. Because here is the crux:

English is a dumb language. I think any non-English speaker can agree, it has no gender conjugation, no formal case, the grammar is all wrong (in comparison to continental languages), and it generally is very easy to learn. This means it's great for a "world" language that everyone speaks (it's even implied that the internet is operatively English, this is in no way an expression of lack of intellect for people who only speak English), but it means that during fluid conversation you have to code switch to fill the gaps that English cannot express due to its limitations. You have this explanation the wrong way around, non-English speakers do not randomly break out into English (or Common) to express jokes, or words or sentences, people code-switch when they do not know the right word to use, specifically because English as a language on average lacks about 40,000 words when compared to other languages, in particular in the field of compound words. Here are some examples of me code switching:

• I code-switch to people who speak Dutch like Waterdruppel when I want to talk to her in private while in a large group of people and I don't want to have them understand who we are talking about.
• I code-switch to people who speak Dutch like Waterdruppel, when I am looking for an English word that I have forgotten, or it flat-out does not exist. For example the word "somber" (the feeling of looking at someone and grasping a flash of their life, and understanding the sentiment that this person has feelings, dreams, ambitions, and a history of their own, but you will never experience that flash or meet this person ever again). I just spent two sentences explaining a single word, and while this is an exaggerated example, our languages are full of these.
• I code-switch to make a joke to someone in a language we both speak but nobody else is fluent in. Case and example, me, Carl, and Jall speak English to each other. Carl does not speak French, but Jall and I do. I will sometimes make a joke to Jall in French, which Carl will not understand, but Jall will reply in English because he is mindful of Carl and does not want to exclude him.

So in short: Code-switching occurs when we: Want to talk shit, Want to use a word (or idiom) that doesn't exist in the language we are speaking, or want to make a joke in our native language.

This gets a bit more complicated when you consider internal monologue, but I won't get into that because internal monologues aren't consistent across all humans, I think something like half of all Humans has no internal self-examining thought, and while that number is probably proportionally higher on Massive, nobody benefits from an explanation on how to code switch in your internal monologue because you can't roleplay this.

I think this summarizes it. I wanted to correct the incorrect example of the Suvial and the incorrect example of Hindi because they replace one bad form of code-switching with an arguably even worse one.

 

[StarriEyedMan]

I think the intention of the thread is in the right place. A lot of people do play bilingualism wrong, and sometimes even downright offensive, the ones who use "dumb-speak" by just randomly removing words to sound "foreign", not understanding that this comes from a misreading of grammar, like how a Swedish person tends to mostly get plurals and singulars wrong, but is overwise pretty accurate.

I think the theory this thread proposes is inaccurate, from a personal experience as a polyglot living in a different country and someone who speaks with people who code-switch. As a person with a strong interest in linguistics, let me first address some referential mistakes you're making:

• Hindi is a very bad example for code-switching, because it much like other ex-Anglo colonial nations, "suffers" (debatable) from severe linguistic barbarisms. for those reading who don't know what this means, barbarism is when a word is wholesale adopted from a different language, and made part of the native language. A good example is the word "Cuisine" in English. This is a French word and it was adopted 1:1 (even if this is technically a bad example since that word was adopted as a consequence of the Norman invasion of England, and so technically not a barbarism because the upper class spoke French). Anyway, Hindi is a bad example because this does not feature code-switching, many cosmopolitan Hindi speakers are bilingual with English, and the Hindi language itself features many barbarisms or idioms that fulfill linguistic gaps within the native Hindi language at the time of Colonialism. A good example is "C'est la vie" which is a French idiom, but one often used in Dutch and Uk English, because this idiom does not have a good equivalent in these languages, and it is used by people who do not natively speak French. This does not mean they are code-switching, but just using an adopted expression.
• Secondly, people who in fact say "How are you, Amigo". This goes a bit into cultural isolationism and cultural segregation in America and I won't touch upon that subject, but it's a common form of street language retention. A good equivalent for myself is ex-colonial immigrants who speak a Creole version of Dutch, and then shift language to what we call "ABN" Dutch. They however still retain some words as a means of expressing their culture (and some of those expressions even in the Dutch language in itself as they contribute to the development of the language). Similarly, "Amigo" is used as a derogatory reference in American English by people who do not even speak Spanish, in the same way, that "Sweetie" is used in the South to be endearing or demeaning in variance.

So, the example I would have used would actually be a French one:

• "Oui, I would like to have a sandwich, sil-vous-plaît." - This statement makes the assumption that a French person doesn't know the word "Yes" and "Please", even though they are some of the earliest learned words, or so much choose to replace them for whatever reason. This is often bad expression of bilingualism or expressing the foreignness of a speaker in media that does not carry over to the real world. People do not replace simple words, they replace complex words. Because here is the crux:

English is a dumb language. I think any non-English speaker can agree, it has no gender conjugation, no formal case, the grammar is all wrong (in comparison to continental languages), and it generally is very easy to learn. This means it's great for a "world" language that everyone speaks (it's even implied that the internet is operatively English, this is in no way an expression of lack of intellect for people who only speak English), but it means that during fluid conversation you have to code switch to fill the gaps that English cannot express due to its limitations. You have this explanation the wrong way around, non-English speakers do not randomly break out into English (or Common) to express jokes, or words or sentences, people code-switch when they do not know the right word to use, specifically because English as a language on average lacks about 40,000 words when compared to other languages, in particular in the field of compound words. Here are some examples of me code switching:

• I code-switch to people who speak Dutch like Waterdruppel when I want to talk to her in private while in a large group of people and I don't want to have them understand who we are talking about.
• I code-switch to people who speak Dutch like Waterdruppel, when I am looking for an English word that I have forgotten, or it flat-out does not exist. For example the word "somber" (the feeling of looking at someone and grasping a flash of their life, and understanding the sentiment that this person has feelings, dreams, ambitions, and a history of their own, but you will never experience that flash or meet this person ever again). I just spent two sentences explaining a single word, and while this is an exaggerated example, our languages are full of these.
• I code-switch to make a joke to someone in a language we both speak but nobody else is fluent in. Case and example, me, Carl, and Jall speak English to each other. Carl does not speak French, but Jall and I do. I will sometimes make a joke to Jall in French, which Carl will not understand, but Jall will reply in English because he is mindful of Carl and does not want to exclude him.

So in short: Code-switching occurs when we: Want to talk shit, Want to use a word (or idiom) that doesn't exist in the language we are speaking, or want to make a joke in our native language.

This gets a bit more complicated when you consider internal monologue, but I won't get into that because internal monologues aren't consistent across all humans, I think something like half of all Humans has no internal self-examining thought, and while that number is probably proportionally higher on Massive, nobody benefits from an explanation on how to code switch in your internal monologue because you can't roleplay this.

I think this summarizes it. I wanted to correct the incorrect example of the Suvial and the incorrect example of Hindi because they replace one bad form of code-switching with an arguably even worse one.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for the well thought-out and well worded response!

Sorry about the Suvial example. Somehow that history slipped my mind while writing this little thread. I know of it, of course, but forgot about/didn't think how it would affect code-switching.

I guess it's the white privilege showing, there. Something I try to recognize every step of the way, but still struggle to see until in hindsight.

 

[BeetrootSalad]

I speak English as a first language, and about the only time I've heard someone code-switch while speaking English is fellow native-English speakers code-switching to Spanish, German, French, etc. as jokes to each other.

Click to shrink...

An unrealistic example

Daen Person asks: "Hola! How are you, Amigo?

Ithanian Person says: "Pretty merde-y."

Daen Person asks: "Ay Caramba! Sorry to hear about that! Life is a load of mierda, isn't it?"

Ithanian Person asks: "Oui. It really is, isn't it?"


This is comical, and a caricature of real-life. Of course, some of this is meant to be funny, but some is legitimately what is often seen.

Click to shrink...

This is not exactly accurate; maybe I am a special case because Hong Kong Canto has also been colonized and directly rips some English words, but there are certainly cases in Chinglish, Spanglish and Dinglish where words can be used interchangeably.

I would argue the only reason the example is inaccurate is because of the specific words chosen (amigo, merde, etc) and because the two people speaking are not fluent in the same language. Chinglish (and other hybrids/weaving inbetween languages midsentence) usually only occurs if:
1. Both speakers are completely fluent in both languages.
2. The very rare exception where there is a forced need to communicate and one or two words is unknown.

A realistic example (realistic because I have said this IRL and had the same thing said to me by both strangers, friends and family):
"你想唔想 split 啲蝦餃？" (Do you want to split this dumpling?) being said to someone else to knows the language.
Another note is that the implanted word usually has the accent of the sentence being spoken (I can speak perfect American English but always implant with a Chinese accent), although this is more complicated and I deeply and sincerely recommend that nobody types out an accented English word in the middle of a different language.

I think the unrealism again, comes from saying "Nihao, how are you doing ah?" (How are you, how are you? Question sound?) being said to a total stranger who does not know the language to prove how awesome and Sihai you are + a general nonunderstanding of the language itself.

 

[BeetrootSalad]

This is not exactly accurate; maybe I am a special case because Hong Kong Canto has also been colonized and directly rips some English words, but there are certainly cases in Chinglish, Spanglish and Dinglish where words can be used interchangeably.

I would argue the only reason the example is inaccurate is because of the specific words chosen (amigo, merde, etc) and because the two people speaking are not fluent in the same language. Chinglish (and other hybrids/weaving inbetween languages midsentence) usually only occurs if:
1. Both speakers are completely fluent in both languages.
2. The very rare exception where there is a forced need to communicate and one or two words is unknown.

A realistic example (realistic because I have said this IRL and had the same thing said to me by both strangers, friends and family):
"你想唔想 split 啲蝦餃？" (Do you want to split this dumpling?) being said to someone else to knows the language.
Another note is that the implanted word usually has the accent of the sentence being spoken (I can speak perfect American English but always implant with a Chinese accent), although this is more complicated and I deeply and sincerely recommend that nobody types out an accented English word in the middle of a different language.

I think the unrealism again, comes from saying "Nihao, how are you doing ah?" (How are you, how are you? Question sound?) being said to a total stranger who does not know the language to prove how awesome and Sihai you are + a general nonunderstanding of the language itself.

Click to shrink...

Here's a video example of this happening. It's surprisingly accurate for a movie and features a lot of language movement between Mandarin (Evelyn and Husband), Cantonese (Evelyn and Gong Gong) and English (General).