Bilingual conversations

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linguoboy
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Bilingual conversations

Postby linguoboy » 2017-05-25, 16:00

A recent post here got me wondering: How many of you have ever had a conversation in which each participant spoke a different language? I don't mean ordinary code-switching; I mean you spoke one language the whole time and the other person spoke a different language.

This has really only happened to me once. I was hiking around Gellért-hegy in Budapest and I met a young Hungarian film student. He wasn't confident enough in his English-speaking ability to speak English to me, but he understood my English and we soon figured out that I could understand his French if he spoke slowly enough. We ended up chatting for the better part of an hour that way.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Johanna » 2017-05-25, 22:06

If you count the different Scandinavian national varieties as separate languages: every time I have a conversation with a Norwegian or Danish tourist. It also happened quite a lot in the Faroe Islands, where I'd speak Swedish and they their particular non-native version of Danish, one which happens to be much easier for Swedes to understand than Danish in Denmark.

Once or twice with people of other nationalities, I've spoken Swedish and they English, but in that situation it takes a lot of concentration for me not to reply in English automatically, so I usually don't do it even if the other person's understanding of Swedish is really good.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-26, 0:53

Sometimes when my parents talk to me in English, I (try to) respond exclusively in Malayalam. This is the exact opposite of the way Indian immigrants and their children usually talk to each other. Lately, I've started talking to them even more in Malayalam than I used to, and they've been using English with me less as well, so much so that I can't remember a specific instance of us following the more typical pattern. Oh, and of course, there was that (Croatian) guy I mentioned in Croatia who talked to me only in English when I spoke to him only in Croatian.

On the other hand, I think there were a few times when Saim posted something in Serbian and I responded in English. I know this happened at least once (at that time, it was because I didn't think I could produce Serbian well enough to respond in it, only try to understand it), at which point he managed to coax me into responding in Serbian as well.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby voron » 2017-05-26, 3:46

I speak Russian, other people speak Belarusian or Ukranian -- happenned to me countless times.

In particular, we have a network of supermarkets whose cashiers would only speak Belarusian to you -- I usually speak Russian back to them. (Why? Good question. Perhaps I shouldn't.)

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Antea » 2017-05-26, 11:07

It happens to me with Italian persons. I usually understand them very well, but I'm not fluent in Italian. And they also understand a lot of Spanish, so usually there's no need to change languages or to switch to English.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Hoogstwaarschijnlijk » 2017-05-26, 14:00

Once I was very nervous because I needed to give a training to someone who e-mailed in English to me, but when I came there she said it was okay if I spoke Dutch as long as she could speak English to me. Worked really well :)
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby linguoboy » 2017-05-26, 15:02

Antea wrote:It happens to me with Italian persons. I usually understand them very well, but I'm not fluent in Italian. And they also understand a lot of Spanish, so usually there's no need to change languages or to switch to English.

I was kind of sceptical when I first heard this was possible. (Mario Pei talks about it in his book The story of language, my first introduction to linguistics.) But then I witnessed it firsthand when I was in Rome.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-26, 16:55

linguoboy wrote:
Antea wrote:It happens to me with Italian persons. I usually understand them very well, but I'm not fluent in Italian. And they also understand a lot of Spanish, so usually there's no need to change languages or to switch to English.

I was kind of sceptical when I first heard this was possible. (Mario Pei talks about it in his book The story of language, my first introduction to linguistics.) But then I witnessed it firsthand when I was in Rome.

I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby eskandar » 2017-05-26, 17:10

vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).

I have studied just a tiny bit of both languages and know Spanish, and somehow I feel like I understand more written Portuguese than Italian, but more spoken Italian than Portuguese.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-26, 18:03

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).

I have studied just a tiny bit of both languages and know Spanish, and somehow I feel like I understand more written Portuguese than Italian, but more spoken Italian than Portuguese.

Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes me think it's probably mostly the phonology. My understanding is that both Spanish and Italian are pretty phonologically conservative whereas Portuguese is a bit more innovative. In fact, when I first started studying Latin on my own from the Oxford Latin Course, one of the first things the first book in the series said was that the pronunciation of Latin was relatively similar to Spanish or Italian.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Car » 2017-05-26, 19:01

eskandar wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I'm always surprised when I see Spanish-speakers claiming that they understand Italian better than Portuguese. Maybe that's just the narcissism of small (in this case, probably mostly phonological) differences again? (Or of course it could make sense if they just happened to be exposed to be Italian more for whatever reason).

I have studied just a tiny bit of both languages and know Spanish, and somehow I feel like I understand more written Portuguese than Italian, but more spoken Italian than Portuguese.

I agree, especially if you are talking about spoken European Portuguese.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Prowler » 2017-05-26, 19:04

The worst is when Italian tourists assume you're gonna understand them. Or maybe they just speak Italian because they can't speak English. I mean most Italian tourists I see are old. They must get a lot of blank stares.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby eskandar » 2017-05-26, 20:29

Prowler wrote:The worst is when Italian tourists assume you're gonna understand them. Or maybe they just speak Italian because they can't speak English. I mean most Italian tourists I see are old. They must get a lot of blank stares.

What about Spanish tourists? In your experience, do they use Spanish or English more often in Portugal? When I briefly visited Lisbon I would ask people I had to talk to, in Portuguese, whether they understood English or Spanish, and the answer was almost invariably "both." (The exception was a cab driver who didn't know English but was happy to put up with my Portunhol). I couldn't figure out if one of the two languages was more annoying for them.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Prowler » 2017-05-26, 20:38

eskandar wrote:
Prowler wrote:The worst is when Italian tourists assume you're gonna understand them. Or maybe they just speak Italian because they can't speak English. I mean most Italian tourists I see are old. They must get a lot of blank stares.

What about Spanish tourists? In your experience, do they use Spanish or English more often in Portugal? When I briefly visited Lisbon I would ask people I had to talk to, in Portuguese, whether they understood English or Spanish, and the answer was almost invariably "both." (The exception was a cab driver who didn't know English but was happy to put up with my Portunhol). I couldn't figure out if one of the two languages was more annoying for them.

I assume Spanish since "Spaniards can't speak foreign languages" in our mind either.

French speaking tourists tend to speak French as well, although some do attempt English.

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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby md0 » 2017-05-26, 20:58

Happens to me often, in a specific context: we are speaking English in a group where not everyone speaks Greek. The person or people not speaking Greek leave, but some of us continue speaking in English for several more minutes, while others make the switch immediately, so we end up having conversations where one speaks in English exclusively and another replies in Greek all the time.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby dEhiN » 2017-05-27, 12:36

I actually had an experience regarding Spanish and Italian. I had a job last summer doing door-to-door fundraising for UNHCR. I went to one house and the elderly woman who lived there is Italian and only spoke/understood Italian. My Spanish is pretty basic, but I tried to talk to her in Spanish and she'd respond in Italian. After a couple of minutes her sister (who lived in the house next door) came out, and she called her to join us. Her sister also only understood and spoke Italian, so I restarted my spiel - well, more like my attempt to explain in Spanish the spiel I had learnt in English! Fortunately the sister's daughter, who spoke and understood English and Italian, came out and I was able to restart my spiel again, except this time in English! But for maybe 5 or 10 minutes I was speaking haltingly in Spanish and the ladies were responding in Italian. Definitely challenging!

A few years ago I used to attend a lot of French/English Meetups, and if I remember correctly, I think there was at least one time where I spoke to someone completely in English and they spoke to me completely in French.

Oh and how can I forget my landlord's dad! My current landlord (I've been living in this location since October 2014) has his parents living with him, and his dad doesn't speak any English. (The whole family is Chinese and speaks Mandarin). The dad and I have had greeting type exchanges where I speak in English and he speaks in Mandarin. However, there was one time where he knocked on my door, entered my room (I was asleep, but woke up to the knocking) and beckoned me to follow him. He led me to the garage where he wanted help putting some box on top of a stack of other things. It was interesting because he was giving me (what I presume were) instructions in Mandarin, but most of them I wasn't able to understand or respond to. It was mainly through body language that I figured out what he was trying to do. I've had many other similar experiences, including times where I've used Google Translate on my phone to explain something to him (i.e., a request I had or something). So I guess these weren't conversations in the usual sense, since neither of us fully understood each other, but they were bilingual and we somehow managed to communicate with each other! :D
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby mōdgethanc » 2017-05-27, 19:04

I have had conversations like this. When I was learning Swedish for some unknown godforsaken reason (this was almost 10 years ago) I had some halting conversations with my friend who was learning German, with the help of a lot of Swenglish and Denglish grammatical constructions.
vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes me think it's probably mostly the phonology. My understanding is that both Spanish and Italian are pretty phonologically conservative whereas Portuguese is a bit more innovative.
That's an interesting understatement for "totally wacked out".
In fact, when I first started studying Latin on my own from the Oxford Latin Course, one of the first things the first book in the series said was that the pronunciation of Latin was relatively similar to Spanish or Italian.
If they mean ecclesiastical Latin, then it's basically Italian. Otherwise, no Romance language is all that close IMO.
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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-27, 19:45

mōdgethanc wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:Yeah, this is the sort of thing that makes me think it's probably mostly the phonology. My understanding is that both Spanish and Italian are pretty phonologically conservative whereas Portuguese is a bit more innovative.
That's an interesting understatement for "totally wacked out".

Nah, "totally wacked out" would be French. ;)
In fact, when I first started studying Latin on my own from the Oxford Latin Course, one of the first things the first book in the series said was that the pronunciation of Latin was relatively similar to Spanish or Italian.
If they mean ecclesiastical Latin, then it's basically Italian. Otherwise, no Romance language is all that close IMO.

I think Oxford kind of has its own pronunciation standard, and yeah, none of them are really that close to it, but I think at least most of the vowels have kind of stayed the same in Spanish and Italian, diphthongs and long vowels aside.

הענט

Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby הענט » 2017-06-01, 11:42

I saw this happening rather than experiencing it on my own.

The Japanese - English conversation between the Yakuza elder and his subordinate in Johnny Mnemonic. (Why does Keanu Reeves keep playing Johns? Constantine, Mnemonic, Wick, maybe even Mr. Anderson. :))

Star Wars- the scene where H. Ford is having a chat with the oversized fly

Laoshu505000 - Moses keeps talking to strangers in foreign languages, but the responses are usually in English

As for me I did have a couple of conversations like these, but usually pretty short ones.



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Re: Bilingual conversations

Postby Saim » 2017-06-01, 13:09

vijayjohn wrote:Nah, "totally wacked out" would be French. ;)


I remember when I was trying to transcribe some French audio a couple of weeks ago it took me ages to figure out that /ʒənfzɛ/ was simply je ne faisais (I was like, "what is a fzè"?). :lol: Good thing Wiktionary has IPA on its French conjugation tables (this is the only language I've seen them do this for)!


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